Friday, January 29, 2016

How Do You Respond to your Child with ADHD’s Behavior?

There are many comments that have been written about how to manage children with ADHD. However, parents need to know how to respond appropriately to their children’s unfocused and/or hyperactive behavior as well.

The only way to respond to a child with ADHD’s “annoying” behavior (as parents have expressed to me) is to respond and NOT to react.  I spend a lot of time talking to parents and explain to them that they must think ahead of time about how they think their child will behave in the future. Why? If they are prepared for their child to behave in a specific way they can then plan how they will respond to their child’s behavior.

It is imperative to deal with your child’s behavior in an intentional and predictive way instead of just reacting to their behavior. When a parent reacts to their child’s behavior, their behavior, therefore, may be as uncontrolled as their child’s behavior.

You should have a prescribed set of responses that you can call upon at all times. For example, think about how you would want to respond before your child with ADHD does the following:

§  Your child hits you
§  Your child pushes his younger sibling down
§  Your child runs away from you when you get out of your car in the driveway into the street
§  Your child runs continuously in your house sliding on the floor
§  Your child whines in the grocery store
§  Your child throws his/her toys on the floor and laughs

Thoughts?  Social Skills Training Services


  1. I've started putting my son in 10 minute time outs for every behavior like those you listed. He's already a happy, super-attached kid, so this new strict discipline is working so well! It's a miracle.

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