ADHD:
Survival Strategies for Parents
By Douglas Cowan, Psy.D.
1. Have Realistic Expectations. We all
have expectations for our child; just make sure
that your expectations are “realistic”
for your individual child. If your expectations
are too high, you will be constantly be subject
to feelings of hurt or disappointment or anger.
2. Keep Your Home Organized. The more "scheduled"
you can keep your home or the more "organized"
you can be at home, the better for your ADD/ADHD
child. Routines can help your child to accept
order in his life. Be consistent with routines.
3. Simplify Your Life. Please don't try
to do all things, be all things, lead all groups.
Reduce the number of your commitments to others.
Your child needs your time and attention more
than others do (except perhaps your spouse). Spend
more time at home with your child and family.
4. Accept Your Child's Situation. If your
child is hyperactive, then come to the place of
acceptance that your child is, has been, and will
be: a person with very high levels of energy,
limited impulse control, and difficulty sitting
still. Don't feel guilty about it. Did you cause
it? No. Is the child intentionally hyperactive?
No. Don't waste your time trying to eliminate
the hyperactivity, just learn how to redirect
it into positive channels. Be patient.
5. Be Fair, Firm, and Consistent with your
Discipline. Make sure your child knows the
rules ahead of time. Review them as you need to.
Always be fair to the child. Be firm. Don't reward
inappropriate behaviors by ignoring them, but
use your best wisdom on how to discipline or punish.
6. Teach to Incompetent Behaviors and Punish
Rebellious Behaviors. Kids are weird. Know
the difference between "incompetence"
and "rebelliousness." Kids will forget
to put the lid down on the toilet seat. They run
through the house. They do kid things. When your
child acts incompetently, then teach him how to
do things the right way and have him practice
doing it right. Rebellious or defiant behaviors,
however, need to be disciplined through punishment.
Yes, your child does need to know who's in charge,
and that person needs to be you, not him.
7. Avoid Allowing Either Yourself or Your Child
to Become Fatigued. We all get grouchy and
irritable when fatigued. Don't schedule so many
activities in your day that you or he gets tired.
If it happens, either you'll be hard to live with,
or he will. Cut back on your activities: do less,
not more. Save your energy. Slow down. 8. Only
Take Your Child to Places Where He Has a Chance
to Be Successful. If your child simply cannot
handle going to the store, or to church, or to
birthday parties where they are serving punch
and cake, then don't take him there. Or go but
stay around and provide the supervision that he'll
need so that he doesn't blow it with his behavior
and have the event turn into just another failure
in his life.
9. Watch Less TV, Not More. When we are
tired, the tendency is to turn on the TV and just
"veg out" in front of it. The problem
is that the average person (yes, the average person)
watches over 35 hours of TV per week. Since I
don't watch TV at all, someone else out there
is watching more than 35 hours to make up for
me! Watching TV simply steals our precious time
and the attention that we should be giving our
family. Read books, talk to each other, play board
games, go for walks --- but don't watch TV.
10. Take Care of Yourself Too! Eat right,
work out and spend time with your spouse, your
friends and yourself. Don't focus all of your
energies on your ADD child. There is more to life.
Read good books, not just ADD books. Pray. Enjoy
sunsets. Go for walks. If your life reflects a
sense of balance, then in a crisis you will respond
with more wisdom and discernment.
Douglas Cowan, Psy.D., is a family therapist
who has been working with ADHD children and their
families since 1986. He is the clinical director
of the ADHD Information Library's family of seven
web sites, including http://www.newideas.net,
which helps over 350,000 parents and teachers
learn more about ADHD each year.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
|