PROBLEM:

Parenting a child who has ADD can be an exhausting and, at times, frustrating experience. Parents play a key role in managing the disability. They usually need specialized training in behavior management and benefit greatly from parent support groups.

Parents often find that approaches to parenting that work well with children who do not have ADD, do not work as well, or at all, with children who have ADD. Parents often feel helpless, frustrated and exhausted. Too often, family members become angry and withdraw from each other. If untreated, the situation only worsens.

SOLUTIONS:

Children with ADD often need their parents to identify their areas of strength. By focusing on these areas, children can develop the confidence and skills to tackle other, more difficult situations. Parents of children who have ADD must work on the task of not over-reacting to their children's mistakes.

TRAINING FOR PARENTS:

Parent training can be one of the most important and effective interventions for a child with ADD. Effective training will teach parents how to apply strategies to manage their child's behavior and improve their relationship with their child.

Without consistent structure and clearly defined expectations and limits, children with ADD can become quite confused about the behaviors that are expected of them.

A technique called "charting" is often the first step in any behavior modification program. It requires that parents specifically define the behavior they are concerned about, so that can be observed and counted. Charting makes parents more aware of their own behavior and children more aware of a problem behavior.

Parents are encourages to designate 10 to 15 minutes of each day as "special time." Parents use this time to focus on being with the child, attending to what he/she is doing, listening to the child, and providing occasional positive feedback.

Parents are taught how to effectively use positive reinforcement by attending to their child's positive behavior while ignoring, as much as possible, negative behavior.

Parents are also taught to decrease innappropriate behavior through a series of progressively more active responses--ignoring behavior, natural consequences, such as not replacing a toy left out in the rain. Logical consequences, such as loss of television time if the child leaves the room without turning the TV off; and timeout. Time-out involves having a child sit quietly in a designated place for a specific time after he/she has misbehaved.

PEER RELATIONS:

Making and keeping friends is a difficult task for children with ADD. A variety of behavioral excesses and deficits common to these children get in the way of friendships. They may talk too much, dominate activities, intrude in others' games, or quit a game before it's done. They may be unable to pay attention to what another child is saying, not respond when someone else tries to intiate an activity, or exhibit inappropriate behavior.

Parents of a child with ADD need to be concerned about the child's peer relations. Problems in this area can lead to loneliness, low self-esteem, depressed mood, and increased risk for anti-social behavior.

Parents can help provide opportunities for their child to have positive interactions with peers. There are a number of concrete steps parents can take:

Setting up a home reward program that focuses on one or two important social behaviors.

Observing the child in peer interactions to discover good behaviors and poor, or absent behaviors.

Directly coaching, modeling and role-playing important behaviors.

"Catching the child" at good behavior so as to provide praise and rewards.