Managing Your ADHD Kids

You envy the simple ease with which other parents manage their children — they take their children to the mall, they send their children to their rooms to do their homework, and their children have their choice of playdates. Everything seems efficient, everyone seems content, and their children's report cards accurately reflect their skills. Your life is quite the opposite. Everything involving your children seems to be marked with stress! Do these examples sound familiar?

• Your child gets rambunctious on playdates; this results in fewer and fewer invitations. You suppose that he or she just so excited about actually being invited somewhere that he loses control!
  
  
• Your child is smart and understands what he is learning at school. Why is it that he barely passes quizzes and tests and that his teacher is always telling you that he never pays attention?
  
  
• You watched your child struggle for hours to get homework done. You know she finished it, yet somehow it never got turned in.
  
  
• You try to get your child to do homework, but unless you are standing there the whole time, he or she won’t focus for more than a few minutes.
  
  
• You didn’t like homework when you were a kid but that is nothing compared to how you feel about it now — why can’t homework ever get done without you and your child melting down?
  
  
• Your child tells you how tired she is, but at bedtime she is wide awake refuses to go to sleep. In the morning she is exhausted. You finally drag her out of bed and get her dressed, but you’re going to be late — AGAIN.
  
  
• Your kids seem to be just like you. You get on their case to clean their rooms and to stay on top of their homework.... but in the back of your mind you wonder how you can expect more from them in light of the disorganized and growing stack of paper on your desk. Watching them is somehow like looking back in time into an old mirror.

These are all very real examples of how ADHD can affect your children. There are solutions. There are ways to learn to channel your child’s energy to help them relate to their world. There are ways to help your child to actually turn in the work they spent all night working on. There are ways to help your child understand what is involved in the long term science project so that they start it before the night before it is due.

I can help you discover these ways. I can work with you in an understanding and insightful manner to help you discover and use your child’s strengths, how to compensate for your child’s weaknesses so that they can reach their potential.