10 Tips for Parenting Kids with ADHD

Parenting kids with ADHD can be a challenge, but your role as a parent is crucial for your child's success as an adult. In his book Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It, Dr. Gabor Mate describes how the quality of the parent-child relationship can be used to help promote the emotional and cognitive skills that are underdeveloped in a child with ADHD.

A diagnosis of ADHD requires two of the following three features: deficient attention skills, poor impulse control, and hyperactivity. Your child may be easily distracted unless engaged in activities that they are highly motivated for or interested in. And then, when they’re involved in these high-interest activities, they might hyperfocus to the extent that they are completely unaware of the environment around them.

Your child may also have great difficulty inhibiting their speech or behavior. They might chronically interrupt others or have a hard time waiting for a turn. Regardless of negative consequences, they act impulsively and without forethought.

Your child’s reactions are influenced by your reactions to them.

If your child is also hyperactive—not all kids with attention deficits are—they may also have trouble being physically or mentally "still." This might look like constant fidgeting, nail biting, and excessive talking and explaining. Other symptoms might be low motivation, poor memory, and social problems. People with ADHD also tend to have high emotional sensitivity, which can make for unpredictable and outsized mood swings and angry outbursts when interrupted or thwarted.

Parenting a child with ADHD can be anxiety provoking and frustrating, but reacting with your own impulsiveness, verbal and/or physical aggression, or helplessness will only escalate the situation in a vicious cycle. By the time families receive a diagnosis, this cycle has usually been in place for a while. Before embarking on any plan to help your child learn missing skills, it’s important to work toward stabilizing your relationship with your child by doubling down on emotional connection. The closer you and your child feel to each other, the easier it will be to work together toward positive change.

Here are 10 tips for parenting ADHD kids

1. Be conscious of your own emotional regulation

As the person with the fully developed brain in the parent-child relationship, your moods set the emotional atmosphere in your home. Your child’s reactions are influenced by your reactions to them.

Model taking responsibility for...

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