When ADHD is in the family, relationships can be profoundly impacted. Every household has responsibilities like doing the laundry, shopping, cooking, cleaning, yard work or carpooling. Parents have their own daily pressures and responsibilities. When ADHD is present, it can deeply influence family life, adding significant stress.
How ADHD Families are Different
In the article, “Pain Points: Measuring Family Stress When a Child Has ADHD," Alison Escalante, MD states that families experience continual struggle and ongoing stress related to everyday activities. They may experience a lower quality of life compared to those not raising children with ADHD. These pain points, such as home and school, put the well-being of the family at risk over time and can lead to parent burnout.
Challenges Families Face
Household Organization: Every household needs good organization to stay afloat. Many household responsibilities require planning and good time management, both things that are more difficult when a parent has ADHD. Neither structure nor transitions come easily. Your teen may be late to school because he stays up half the night and can’t get up in the morning!
Finding Providers: First and foremost, it can be a challenge to find a provider to treat your child. You many not know what good treatment looks like or the roadmap forward, especially when you are living the symptoms of ADHD.
Managing Medication: Once you receive medical treatment for a young person, you might be monitoring medications for side effects, going for med checks, making sure that your child actually takes their medication and remembering to order and pick it up.
Coexisting conditions and services: We know that good treatment for ADHD is multimodal. Not one thing, but the combination of various modalities depending on the co-existing conditions that present alongside ADHD.
For example, your child may need additional services if they also experience anxiety or depression. You may very well have more visits to providers, such as a psychiatrist, therapist, ADHD coach, Occupational Therapist, etc.
Financial Strain: There can be financial strain in paying for providers as well as medication, even if you do have insurance. This is only exacerbated when more than one person in the family has ADHD.
School Struggles: If your child struggles in school, you may have discovered through educational testing that they have a learning disability. You may be paying for a specialized tutoring service if your child has dyslexia, for example.
Your child may have a 504 plan (for school accommodations) or an IEP (individualized education plan that alters the curriculum). You may have frequent communications with teachers as well as attend yearly meetings with school staff to ensure success for your child.
You may have been called to school due to behavioral issues.
You may spend countless hours helping your child with homework each day, ending in frequent meltdowns.
Bedtime and morning routines can be an uphill battle when your child has trouble pacing themselves.
Emotional Volatility
Most people with ADHD experience issues with emotional regulation. Hyperactivity and impulsivity apply to emotions as well. It can look like undo frustration, meltdowns or emotional reactivity. A problem might feel blown out of proportion when the person with ADHD is flooded with emotion, going quickly from zero to sixty.
Parent Burnout: Parents can easily burn out, especially if they also have ADHD. Finding time for yourself or your spouse is difficult. You experience overwhelm.
The Sibling without ADHD: Sometimes the child or children without ADHD receives less attention simply because they are doing well. The young person with ADHD can feel resentful because school is so much harder for them and they are always being yelled at.
ADHD and Mental Health Stigma: Those around you may not understand ADHD and voice certain beliefs about it. Even extended family members can challenge ADHD, hinting that if you were a better parent these behaviors might not be happening.
Can you feel the frustration?
Psychologist Thomas Phelan, parent of an ADHD child, suggests "5 tips for managing ADHD and reducing stress in the family"
Maximize Medication Benefits
Treat the Directors (Parents)
Behavior Management
Noise Management
Get Lots of Exercise
Medical Treatment is vastly important. Family members may have taken their medication in the morning, but by the time the family is together at the end of the day it has worn off. Medication is not only important for the cognitive tasks required at school and on the job, but also for regulation on the home-front. High emotion can lead to negative family interactions!
Parents being diagnosed and treated is essential as they are managing everyone else. This is not a “luxury” but a necessity, as they have to organize the family and co-regulate the family members with ADHD.
Behavior management goes a long way in dealing with the volatility of ADHD emotions. Understanding ADHD is vital to parenting, especially when it comes to discipline. Learning what ADHD is and having tools to manage outbursts and pushback is essential to parenting.
Noise management helps to dial down excess stimulation and therefore stress levels. Acknowledging sensory preferences and input can go a long way. It might look like wearing headphones or earbuds when doing schoolwork or paperwork.
Getting exercise can reduce stress greatly. It is a tremendous transitional activity after school or work. It might look like doing homework on an exercise bike with a desktop feature, or the family meeting at the gym before heading home at the end of a school or workday. According to psychiatrist John Ratey, MD, “twenty minutes of aerobic activity equals an hour and a half of a stimulant medication.”
What else helps?
Make family time active and fun: You can walk and talk, ride bikes or go to a play emporium where both kids can play and adults can sit and talk. Consider a day trip that takes you away from the house. When you are out of the house you are not thinking and seeing everything you have to do. It is dedicated time that is containerized.
Make time for you and your spouse: It is easy to put your primary relationship on the back burner. Children usually get their needs met and you are likely spending a fair bit of time with the child who is struggling.
Subtract before you add: Keep things simple as much as you can. It may mean saying no to certain activities or sports if it means too much stress and stretches you too thin.
As you advocate for yourself and your family, life gets better. There is hope! Reducing family stress due to ADHD leads to better relationships!
Resources:
Parent to Parent Training: www.chadd.org
Impact Parents - Parent support, training and online parenting groups: www.impactparents.com
Online virtual conference with experts focusing on parenting, usually held in the summer: adhdpalooza.com
ADHD advocacy website with great user-friendly information on ADHD that you can trust: Adhdawarenessmonth.org
Ready to get support parenting a child or young adult who has ADHD? Schedule a free consultation with an ADHD coach!
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