Dear ADHD Parents.

I am a parent of 2 ADHD children and I am married to a wonderful man, husband and father, who is ADHD.  We have been thinking a great deal about ADHD in our home of late. Part of this has sprung up from the very real struggles ADHD children have as they navigate life and our inability to parent these difficulties with successful outcomes AND a permanent change in behaviour.

If you are a parent of an ADHD child you will know what I mean by this. 

There are some behaviours that just do not seem to change. 

The child does not seem to be internalising these for himself and needs us, the adult, to remind and remind and remind and sometimes do it for them. 

These can be things like...

1. making a bed

2. brushing teeth

3. writing down all the homework

4. remembering books from school

5. remembering to pack a bag

6. what day is it?

7.where are my shoes... again?

8. I should not do this 'thing' that got me into trouble last time... but here I go again

Do these sound familiar to you?

This is ADHD.

In our more up to date search for information and ideas and help I came across two excellent talks that I have spoken about. 

Both Doug and I have learnt an enormous amount from listening to these talks. 

Here is what the speaker, Dr Russel Barkley, encouraged all parent with ADHD children to do.

Here they are...

1. get a good, evaluation of your child by and EXPERT in ADHD.

Linked to this is becoming an experimenting parent. In other words try stuff. Some stuff works for some kids and some does not. I know this is true in our home. Our one son is motivated by competitionand so he is driven to win. The other is not and so we struggle on to find something that motivates him to endure and persisit in activities that are boring and not interesting foe him.

2.become an expert on ADHD yourself.

read, research and read again. The Internet is FULL of information on ADHD and in fact when he googles ADHD he came up with 14 million sites. Clearly we can not read them all and to be honest I would not want to read many of them. BUT there are good sites  with sound , up to date information on ADHD. They will have a common thread running through them and not offer all kinds of wonderful JUNK that will not help us or our children one little bit.

3. Medicate. Medication is the one effective solution to all ADHD children that works so far.

The main reason for this is that we can not always be there with our child to help him navigate the difficulties he will experience in life. Medication does for his brain what it can not do for itself. Much like a diabetic and insulin!

4. Suck it Up. This was Dr Russel Barkley's advice to us. OWN our child's ADHD. It is real. It exists and we need to face it and accept it.

ADHD is not all of who our child is. He is a beautiful and unique person with gifts and talents that have nothing to do with ADHD. His is a boy who is ADHD. ADHD is part of who he is.

I found this very, very real and helpful. 

I hope you do to.

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