What should I be aware of when parenting my child with ADHD?

Easy question. The first thing you should be aware of is your own reactions to the child. When we want our voice to be heard, and typically your voice is not heard real well by an ADHD child, we tend to get louder. We tend to move into anger. We tend to move into frustration, which of course always makes things more difficult. It makes it difficult for you, for the child, and for your relationship together. Anger inevitably will tear down, though the good news is for you as a parent, inevitably you're going to be angry, and when you are, it is easily repaired by a child who is willing to forgive. So you ask the child for the child's forgiveness and then you set off to grow in love and patience. So the first thing is to be aware of your own reactions.

The second thing is to be aware that the task is a challenging one. You want to be aware of a child who is not like you. Typically, the more a child is unlike us, the less patient we will become. You have this sense in the back of your mind—I would never say that, I would never do such a thing, and you probably never would, but you are not that particular child. This is an occasion for you not to make the child like you. This is an occasion to study the child. Now, I'll just say a few things here. The points I'm making are not going to be complete in any way. The category, however, is a critical one. One of the pleasures that we have in all our closer relationships is there's always more to know. That's the nature of love. There's always more to know about a parent, about a child, about a spouse, about a friend. This is what you're bringing to the child. You are going to study the child. How are they unique? How are they different? Sometimes they might seem disobedient, but it's not as though they're indifferent to their disobedience. They just don't quite understand why you were so upset with something that they did because as far as they were concerned, they were just busy. They were focused on certain things, and in their own hearts, there was no intent to harm or to disobey. So you move into the child's life.

A couple categories that might be useful. One is, how does the child view the world around him or herself? Where perhaps when you look at the world around you, you scan it, but then you focus on those things that are especially important. Your child might have the ability to scan, but not to come back to those things that seem to be most important, but their attention seems to wander. Perhaps an illustration would be it's as if life is being lived at this highly congested amusement park where there are noises everywhere, there are people jostling around everywhere, there are lights flashing, and there are all kinds of things to eat, all kinds of amusement rides to do. And it feels like there's no plan. You're just running from one thing to the other, and as soon as you see that one thing, all of a sudden it becomes the most important thing and you lock right into it. What you're trying to do is, what does life look like for your child? And here is where you, again, what a great opportunity. You're going to be reading about ADHD. You're going to be talking to your child's teachers. You’re going to be talking to other parents who perhaps have gone through this in their own experience or their experience with their children. You're going to look for as much help as you possibly can, and perhaps what you're going to recognize is sometimes your child will say, yes, I'll do this. But meanwhile, their attention is all kinds of other places, and they know there was a question and they have a good idea that they supposed to say yes to that question, but they have not truly attended to it. And so when they do know, it's not personal necessarily, it's not against you, it's their mind was wandering off to the clouds or to their friends or who knows what it might be.

Inattention would be one category. Another category would be, what is life like within them? Not just what is life like outside as they listen to all the different stimuli of life, but what is happening within them? Well, for example, sometimes people have desires—all of us have desires, and sometimes our desires are relatively moderate and we know how to say no to them or we know how to say later to them. Sometimes they are loud, and when they are allowed, they usually don't take no for an answer. They certainly prefer not to take later for an answer. What would it be like to be a child where some of those desires, when they come on you, they are loud and they don't take no for an answer. From a desire that interrupts homework, from a desire to say something to a child when it's supposed to be a quiet time in the classroom, to experience frustration with your sister and to hit her rather than to have some kind of self-control. What you want to do is you want to be a student of your child, and it's something you're going to do together and the study accumulates over time and over the rest of your life with that child from that particular study. What do you do? You develop a plan. Now your attitude in the plan I think is probably an important one. Your attitude is this—I'll consider it this way: This is going to be great. This is going to be a pleasure. We are going work on these things together. Perhaps the image of a coach would be relevant. A coach wants to bring the best out of the person. A coach is thinking, teamwork. We're in this all together. We're going to work as a team and we're going to keep improving as a team and do as well as we possibly can. You're going to love it. You're going to love it. We are working together. That would be one way to capture the interest of your child and also capture the essence of this: How can we grow ultimately in wisdom?

Now, the plan next moves to, here are the things that you do really well. You are creative, you are smart, you are passionate about things. When you do something and you are taken by it, you are filled with all kinds of enthusiasm. You love it and it's inspiring to see. I love to see those things. You have all kinds of strengths, but you are just like the rest of us. There is always one place where we can grow and then you perhaps can share, and here's the one place that I'm hoping to grow in. Here's one place for you: Sometimes it is hard to listen when there's all this other noise in life. So here's our mission: For the next two weeks, what we're going to do is your parents' voice is going to be the loudest voice you hear. Even if we whisper to you, somehow it's going to stand out among all the different voices. So when I'm speaking to you and I know you're busy doing other things, I'm going to tap you on your shoulder. I'm going to take your face and I'm going to have it face toward mine. I'm going to remind you of this mission that we're on, that I'm going to say something, it might not be everything you want to hear, but it's really, really important. So okay, listen to what I'm going to say, and after you listen, I'm going to ask what did I say and what do we do with what I've said?

And then you add to that. This week, we are going to stick with homework for five more minutes. You've been able to sit and do your math homework for two minutes. Two minutes is a long time. We're going to try to do it for five minutes. I'm going to help you. I'm going to sit with you as you're doing your homework, and when you think that you're finally done, you don't want to do it anymore, just talk about it. We'll talk about it together and I'm going to encourage you. The next problem, we're going to do the next problem before we do the things that are easier in life.

You see what we're doing. There's a few ingredients to this process. We're doing this together. It is this adventure in wisdom. I'm going to see the things that are really good about you, and there's one thing that we are going to work on together. And then you learn and then you develop the next module. You're a little bit more wise together as you do the next module, and then your child is curiously just like yourself. Like you want to grow in wisdom and recognize or strengths and weakness in you, you're going to be doing the same thing with your child, and it will be potentially a pleasure with minor frustrations in the midst of it as you care for them.