Parenting A Child With ADD Or ADHD

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

Elizabeth Stone.

If you have a child with ADD or ADHD, parenting can sometimes feel even tougher. Do you occasionally struggle with feelings like these?

• Do you sometimes feel a sense of guilt? As if you have somehow brought this upon your family or your child through (fill in the blank): upbringing, food, medicine, even an unhappy or difficult pregnancy?
• Do you wonder if you have missed something? If there is some treatment out there that will cure everything – a magic pill, a new doctor?
• Are you often worried that your child will not have the same life as other children? Or worried about their academic future?
• Do you feel guilty that your other children do not get quite as much of your time or attention?

These Feelings Are All Very Normal, And Shared By Many Others

It is helpful, though, to learn both acceptance and ways of changing our thought patterns.

When dealing with our children, a gentle, caring heart will go a long way towards easing their minds and our own.

We need to remind ourselves that it is just as frustrating for the child with ADD or ADHD as it is for us; they want to be able to sit still and do their homework (or clean their room, or pay attention), but they aren’t able to.

We might want to remember a time when our children were very young and needed our help to do simple tasks (getting dressed, being fed, being bathed). This helps us to think of them as more innocent and child-like.

Find more information in my complete article: Long Island Emotional Support for Parents of Children with ADD or ADHD.

My wish for you today is that you are able to see through the eyes of your child.

Kathleen Dwyer-Blair, LCSW, BCD, Director.