Reply To: Work in Progress

[ipsofacto]

I could get choked up reading this thread. When it comes to parenting, we are all so conditioned to be judgmental. My wife (who also has ADHD) is a gifted program teacher; so there’s always a few 2E kids in her classroom. Sometimes I have to remind her that the kids with ADHD almost certainly have ADHD parents. She totally gets it of course, but it’s still frustrating to be the teacher.

There is one parenting program I would encourage others to look at. Love and Logic was a help to us. As ADHD parents, we are never going to provide perfect structure, and consistency, but the general theme is especially helpful given our tendency to overreact.

The first idea is that disciplinary consequences should always be logical. I think this is important because that’s the way the ADHD brain works. The second idea is that you as a parent should show empathy and understanding, while still enforcing the consequence. This so much reduces the resentment a child might feel. An clever device they emphasis, that again is great for ADHD parents, is not to feel pressured into finding an immediate, and maybe less logical consequence. It’s OK to say, “I’m so upset by what you have done, I can’t think of the right consequence at this moment. Don’t worry about it for now, I’ll come up with something later, when I feel calmer”. Of course the hard part is to remember later.

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