Parents of Children with ADHD Support Group

My son has the same problems. Its so heartbreaking. He gives up so easily if he can't be perfect. I am reading a book called THE ADD BOOK and it has been very helpful. It mostly talks about positive feedback and commending them for lots of things. It says - and I believe it - that sometimes we as parents don't realize how many negitive messages we are sending. I try to be mindful but sometimes when the day is really busy, I may not realize I am being short or not giving him the positive feedback that he needs. There are so many frustrations that come along with ADD/ADHD for the parents, its hard to be patient at times. But I'm working on it really hard. It even suggests you count the positive msgs and negitive msgs you give so you can see it in reality. It says they hear so much negitive, it just really gets the best of them.

I know how I feel when I receive negative comments and i can only imagine what they feel at their age! I am working really hard on positive feedback but your right...somedays I get so busy or we had a bad start to the day that it makes it hard to remember the good. Thanks for the advice and I will have to get a copy of that book your reading. Right now i'm reading Jenny McCArthy's Mother Warriors and a book called "Please don't label my child" Really good books so far.

My son is now 23 and I am raising HIS son, also ADHD....

I know this trait that you bring up was particularly prevalent with my son. Still is. I never did figure out what to do to help him. His dad was pretty non-existant in his life emotionally, and I always thot that a strong male role model would have helped him. But obviously that isn't your case. I DO know that as a result of a lot of abuse, I sent many negative messages to the kids. He took them to heart more than my girls did. The msgs. weren't directed AT the kids, but they were caught up in the whole negativity of the situations.

Let me give you an example. We would strive to NOT make their father angry. We would spend our entire day working toward NOT doing anything to make daddy angry when he came home. We even went to the extent of having daddy make lists of what he wanted done during the day and we would do those things, no matter what it took.

Unfortunately, daddy would still be angry. Over something. It didn't matter what. The point is...... I made daddy's anger conditional on how we acted, and daddy was always angry...thus it was always our fault in my ds's mind.

I can understand where it came from. It is convoluted and wrong. I've told him that a thousand times. I told them that at the time. But it still is how they perceived it.

How do we counteract this/?? I surely don't know!! I'd love some answers to that one myself!!! In all honesty, I still have similar feelings myself!! How do I convince my son that he is valuable and important??? OMgosh....if only I could....

My son is the same way. Gets angry if he can't get it the first time even though I keep telling him everyone has to practice to get things right. He is in 5th grade and is reading at a 10th grade level, but struggles with math, which is very common among ADD people. I have also read that, we as parents give our children positive reinforcements, but if 1 child says something negative to our children, because they are their "peers" it can set them back. They are more concerned with how their friends see them not us. It is something we just have to continue working on and give praise and reminding them that even "us" parents have to work on things even as adults to get them right.

Good points!!! :)

I think also that going one step further can help them a lot. Take the math you mentioned, for example. The reason many ADHDers have problems with it, from my understanding, is that their brains lose the "multi-function" aspect of the problems. They cannot follow the progression of step 1, step 2, step 3 to work through to a conclusion. Helping them to break the problem down more into many "little" one-step problems will help them to be able to understand the problem.

The same applies to anything in life. They have a hard time separating the important from the unimportant, categorizing what goes with what, breaking down things into categories, etc. Multi-step things kill them.

I found at home that instead of saying "when you are done picking up your toys please empty the garbage" if I said "when you are done picking up your toys, please come to me" THEN I would tell him to empty the garbage. He never could remember multiple steps. He still can't. Lists also work well when they get older, as do chore charts. I never had much luck with reward systems because he actually COULD NOT remember, it is not that he didn't WANT to. lol.

I think this is a little off-topic from the OP, but in some ways not. I'd love to hear how other people have dealt with these issues with success! :)

I think this is the hardest thing about my son. It breaks your heart as a parent, and its one of those things that I can't fix. Our son is convinced that everyone at his school hates him, and there is nothing we, or his teacher, or counselor can say that changes his mind on this one. His psych is working on this, says that it is common due to the difficulty ADHD kids often have in social skills. We acknowledge his feelings about not being liked, being dumb, and we try to show him positive things. It's a constant struggle, sometimes it feels futile. But it is what it is, and we just keep trying to support him. We did find that martial arts is helping him some with his self-esteem, and we are hopeful!

I get what your saying, my son gets so frustrated that he starts crying and saying, "I can't do it." He'll cry for over a half hour. I told him that I don't want to hear him say bad things about himself and I re-direct him with positive statements. I make him repeat those positive statements several times. I find that kids tend to want to make us feel bad along with them. Kids know that it hurts us to hear these things and they want to get our attention. TRY TO BE FIRM AND NOT ALLOW THEM TO TALK NEGATIVE. Hope this helps.

thanks everyone for your input....it's nice to have a support group you can talk to because not everyone understands or even wants to. Or they don't have these problems with their children so they have no clue what you are going through! Thanks!

My daughter is the same way , she is so smart yet she gets so frustrated when she dont do something perfect that she dont want to do it at all ! She wants to learn , but as soon as it gets just a little hard, she dont want to be bothered by it ! For example.. she asked me what a word was in a book... I responded to her sound it out, she got so frustrated and told me she didnt learn that word and insisted I tell her what it is , I try to explain to her , that she will not learn EVERY word in school , but she will learn how to figure out what they say , they basically teach her the ability to read every word. She then throws the book down and walks away. I want to be able to help her , I try the positive reinforcement, but to no avail.

This is something I struggle with too, with my son. And I agree, it is nice to have a group like this where everyone understands what it is like. Just this morning, my co-worker was talking about her neighbour, who has an overweight child who has low self-esteem, and she said to me "Can you imagine what that is like every day?".. And the truth is, Yes, I can. A lot of people don't see it, but we do deal with this every day. It's not just the ADHD classic symptoms that we have to deal with, but it's so much more that, sadly, often comes with it.

I have to remind myself every day too to go overboard with the positive reinforcement, but as it was mentioned a few times, it's hard when it's been a particularly stressful or busy day. We struggle tremendously every night with homework, and he often cries and says he's stupid. Most times he doesn't even want to try to do it, because he thinks he'll just get it wrong anyway. It was a really tough school year last year, where his teacher didn't do anything to help his self-esteem either, which makes matters worse. I feel like we're always taking a step forward and two back.

As I'm sure we all are, I'm trying to get this new school year off to the right start, and I'm really laying on the compliments and the praise. With everything - not just school work, but how well he set the table, how nice he was to his friends, how great it was that he remembered all by himself to feed the dog, even sitting nice and quiet watching tv.. anything.. because I can't watch his self-esteem go down any more.