One of my kids has pretty severe ADHD. When he was younger, it showed up a lot in the form of hyperactivity and impulse control. The challenges have evolved as he’s gotten older. Today, I’m talking about my experience of parenting a kid with ADHD and sharing what I’ve learned along the way.
You’ll Learn:
I’m not an expert on ADHD. I’m a parent who’s been there, and I’ve helped lots of other parents navigate life with a neurodivergent kid, too. Listen in to learn strategies you can use to help your kid and work with their unique brain.
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My goal is to help you understand ADHD more, because the more you understand, the more you can help your child understand. The more you understand what's going on for them, the more compassion you'll have and then the less critical you will be.
When someone is neurotypical, it simply means that their brain is developing in a typical way, they’re hitting common milestones, etc. With a neurodivergent brain, a child will hit milestones at a different pace, and different challenges will come up. Their development is diverging from the typical path.
It's important that you don't compare your child's development with their peers who are neurotypical. Instead, you want to compare your child's development to themselves - their past self to their present self and their future self.
The sooner you're able to recognize that they're on their own timetable, the less frustrated you'll be when you see some of the traits and behaviors that come up with ADHD.
The main three features of ADHD are attention deficit, impulse control issues and hyperactivity.
Imagine being in a really crowded room, and everyone around you is talking all at once. No one's talking to you, but you're hearing everybody talking. Then, somebody suddenly asks you what the person next to you just said. You would have no idea, because you weren't listening to that one person. You were listening to the entire room speak.
When there’s a lot of stimulation, noise or activity, an ADHD brain can’t figure out what it’s supposed to be paying attention to. This is the “attention deficit” piece. Overstimulation is very overwhelming for someone with ADHD.
Attention deficit can also look like someone putting their attention on the “wrong” thing. And it’s difficult for an ADHD brain to change direction once it gets going. It’s like a train stuck rolling down a track, but it’s not the track that we want it to be on. We want them to slow down or change direction, but the braking system is very difficult to activate.
Impulse control is also common with ADHD. These kids might have more trouble with delaying gratification, procrastinating, understanding how time works or creating a plan or sequence of events.
Hyperactivity can also be thought of as hyper-arousal.
In daily life, you might notice behaviors like:
