“Stop Trying to Fix Your Child’s ADHD”
When you do, you can make your child’s life experience so much better.
You are here right now, on a website all about attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD), because you want to help your child and improve your family life. Just being here is evidence that you are a great parent. You’re making an effort to help your child, and you’re doing your very best. You are enough.
Can you “fix” everything for your child with ADHD? No. There’s no cure for ADHD. It’s a physiological difference in the brain your child was born with. It’s not your fault. It just is. I know your parental intuition is to “fix” it, but you can’t. Take that expectation off the table, and you clear the first hurdle to getting your mind right to help your child. While you can’t “fix” it, you can make your child’s life experience so much better, and even guide him or her to craft a life of success and happiness.
Next, stop trying to tackle everything at once. This is something I focus on a great deal in my parent training. By trying to tackle every struggle at once, you’re making things worse instead of better. You’re diluting your efforts. If you pour all your efforts into two goals, you’re contributing far more effort to each goal than if you divided that effort among 10 goals. If you pour more effort into those two top-priority goals, you contribute enough to create improvement. When you pour only a tiny amount of effort into each of 10 goals, chances are you’re not getting any closer to any of them. Yes, there’s a lot that needs your attention when your child has ADHD. A lot! But when your mind is right, prepped to create improvement, you’re not trying to change everything at once. The focused, mindful parent scores the prize of improvement.
Positivity is habitually your guide, if your mind is right in this special brand of parenthood. You’re focusing much more of your time and attention on your child’s strengths, talents, and interests than on ADHD and weaknesses. You’re using your child’s strengths to work around the struggles. You’re thoughtfully acting as a beacon of calm during your child’s emotional storms. You’re reorienting toward the positive when the compass begins to move toward the negative. You’re showing the tactics and behavior you want your child to learn and adopt, so he or she can flourish.
Lastly, when your mind is right for effectively raising a child with ADHD, you recognize that your nemesis — those dreaded behaviors — is merely a symptom, not the problem. Ross Greene, Ph.D., author of Raising Human Beings, teaches parents and educators of challenging children that unwanted behavior signals specific problems. The only way to improve the behavior is to address the underlying problem. This flies in the face of everything most of us know about parenting. Yet it’s, by far, the most effective approach for kids with ADHD. If your mind is right, you’re frequently and consistently acting like a detective.
[Free Download: 13 Parenting Strategies for Kids with ADHD]
Success and being enough is all about how we make our kids feel. It’s not about:
- Helping them feel “normal”
- Measuring up to peers
- “Fixing” things
- Worrying about what others think of our parenting and our child
- Perfection
Instead, parenting a child with ADHD is about making our kids feel:
- Heard
- Supported
- Valued
- Loved
- Wanted
- Special
- And strong
When we get our minds right, we block out the noise and focus on the strategies that help our kids feel important and valuable. That’s precisely how we help them (and our entire families) survive and thrive.
You’ve got this. I believe in you, and your child believes in you. Now, go on. Get your mind right, and collect the benefits.
