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Children With ADHD: Struggle, Stress, and Frustration Don’t Just Happen
By Rory Stern | January 29, 2009
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I know it can feel like it, but we don’t just wake up one day and find ourselves suddenly surrounded by struggle – stress – and frustration in any part of our lives. Quite to the contrary, getting to these point starts with a chain of events that quite carefully lead up to the point where the straw finally breaks the camels back.
When parenting children with ADHD, many of my clients describe all the bad that happens…all the struggle, stress, and frustration that marks the day.
Part of what I do is to step away from that and look at:
What is it that your child does really well?
What does your child do that makes you happy?
If all we see is the negative, then we will never be able to get back to focusing on the positive, or effectively working on change towards the positive.
No Overnight Success
Because so many of us don’t seek help until we have reached a boiling point, it’s easy to forget that we cannot fix things overnight. There is no magic button, even with medication, that quickly erases all the stress, frustration, overwhelm, and everything else that comes with parenting children with ADHD.
Even my clients whose children are on medication still report many of the same struggles with behavior. They still see a lot of unwanted (and often times unappreciated) behaviors often associated with ADHD.
Here’s what I tell them every single time.
It took an awful lot to get to where things are today. Habits have been developed. Behaviors and expectations have been reinforced.
It’s going to take time to undue these things.
Yes, it can be done, but it won’t happen overnight. We need to start small, and work backwards. Think about the end result – the good that you have – and what it will take to get there.
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Topics: ADD, ADHD, Children | No Comments »