Treatment for mom or dad may be important for the kids, too. “We know ADHD is highly familial,” explains Mark Stein, a clinical psychologist and director of the ADHD and Related Disorders Program (PEARL Clinic) at Seattle Children’s Hospital. “That means 25 percent of the parents of kids we diagnose are going to have it.”
Most kids get angry sometimes. It’s a natural reaction when life feels hard or unfair. It’s also natural for the adults in charge to feel conflicted when it happens. They can feel irritated and want to help at the same time.
Anger is often a sign that kids are struggling with or frustrated about things beyond their control. They don’t react this way on purpose. It happens because they don’t yet have the skills to identify and cope with strong emotions.
Many people have anxiety at some point in their lives — including kids. But people who learn and think differently are more likely to have anxiety than other people.
There are different reasons for that. First, the stress of facing ongoing challenges can lead to anxiety. But there may also be a genetic link between certain learning and thinking differences and anxiety.
For example, many people with ADHD also have anxiety. In fact, kids with ADHD are up to three times more likely to have anxiety than kids who don’t have ADHD. Anxiety also often occurs with dyslexia, slow processing speed, and sensory processing issues.
For many kids, adjusting to social situations — whether it is a birthday party or a play date — can be challenging, even if they want to be there. Big groups of kids can be intimidating for even the most outgoing child, so for those who are sensitive or prone to anxiety it can make for a rocky transition.
Friendships are one of the biggest sources of fun in a kid’s life, which is reason enough to value them. But they are also critical to development. They lay the groundwork for lifelong skills like listening to others, solving problems and self-expression. They are also an important source of confidence. As kids get older their friendships start playing an even bigger role in their emotional and personal lives.
Summer means a much-needed break for kids, but it can also mean a break in learning and, in many cases, a regrettable loss of newly developed reading skills.
The so-called “summer slide” is particularly problematic for kids who are already struggling with reading. If you don’t want to risk a child losing ground over the summer, it’s important to make sure he has opportunities to practice his growing reading skills. Summer doesn’t need to stall your child’s progress, and it can even be an opportunity to gain reading fluency and enthusiasm.
There are lots of reasons kids talk too much. They may just be passionate about a topic and want to share every single detail about it. But there are many other reasons, too. Check out this article on Understood.org to learn more.
It’s not always easy to spot ADHD symptoms. That’s partly because everyone acts in ways that can look like ADHD from time to time. But kids and adults with ADHD (also known as ADD) struggle a lot more with these behaviors than other people their age. Here’s an article from Understood.org about those ADHD signs can play out at different ages.
From starting a piggy bank to sending your kid off to collegewith a credit card, helping kids learn healthy habits around money can take a lot of work — and patience.
But teaching children to be financially responsible early on will help them cope with challenges like setting limits, planning a budget and resisting impulse buys. There are a lot of different ways to help kids get smart about spending, but we’ve put together some basics to help parents get started.
Whether they see it on the news or in their own communities, kids across the United States are aware of the violent acts of racism that our country continues to confront. Many children of color have experienced such racism themselves, or seen it affect their loved ones. From police brutality against Black people to attacks on Asian American people during the coronavirus crisis, there’s a lot going on that can be scary and confusing for kids to deal with.
How can parents, many of whom are struggling themselves, help children process what they’re seeing and manage their feelings?
Self-care isn’t something most kids think about. But just like the adults in their lives, kids can get stressed. In fact, with the pandemic, some kids are more anxious than ever. They don’t always have strategies to help them self-regulate.
Self-regulation is about having ways to calm down in the face of stress and anxiety. It’s a skill that develops over time and with practice. And being able to soothe yourself is an important step to being more resilient.
By this point in the pandemic, setting rules around screen time may feel impossible. How much is too much? Does remote learning count? What about gaming with friends? And what if you (like many parents right now!) are just too exhausted to fight about it? There’s no one right answer when it comes to managing screen time during this ongoing crisis.
By Thomas E. Brown, PhD, from Understood.org
Kids with ADHD have trouble with focus, impulsivity and, in some cases, hyperactivity. But for many kids with ADHD (also known as ADD), there’s another symptom that often isn’t mentioned — trouble managing emotions.
Researchers and professionals who treat kids with ADHD often report that emotions play a big role in the daily difficulties kids face. Kids with ADHD don’t have different emotions than other kids. They feel hurt, anger, sadness, discouragement, and worry just like everyone else does.
What’s different for many kids with ADHD is that these feelings seem to be more frequent and intense. They also seem to last longer and get in the way of everyday life.
When kids have trouble managing their emotions, it can show up in different ways. Some might have trouble putting the brakes on their feelings when they’re angry or stressed about something. Others might struggle to get revved up to do something when they’re feeling bored.
Kids with ADHD, more than most kids their age, might also:
Be quick to get frustrated by minor annoyances
Worry too much or too long about even small things
Have trouble calming down when they’re annoyed or angry
Feel wounded or take offense at even gentle criticism
Feel excessive urgency to get something they want now
Picture this scenario:
You hear your 11-year-old screaming at her younger brother. She comes running to find you and shouts about what he’s done. It turns out he’s made some comment about her hair. She wants you to punish him, and she gets mad when you don’t react. Then she complains all night long about how unfair that is.
Here’s another scenario:
Your 15-year-old has a ton of homework. But he doesn’t sit down to do it. Instead, he spends the afternoon texting with friends. You’ve already tried using consequences to try to motivate him to do his work. He just says it’s boring and acts like he doesn’t care. Nothing makes him stop what he’s doing and get moving on the homework.
The basic temperaments people have at birth influence how they behave from the start. Temperaments may change quite a bit — or not that much — as kids grow up.
Like other kids, kids with ADHD aren’t all alike in their temperaments. Some are more laid-back or timid. Others are more reactive, outspoken, and sometimes even aggressive.
But often, they don’t have the same capacity to manage their emotions as other kids their age. They have less ability to react to their own emotions using their brain’s reasoning powers.
Kids with ADHD typically have trouble with working memory. And that makes it very hard for them to keep the bigger picture in mind. They tend to get stuck in whatever they’re feeling in that moment.
As they grow up, most kids who don’t have ADHD learn how to manage their emotions so they don’t get too caught up in them. When they begin to feel too angry or hurt, they learn to say to themselves, “Calm down, chill out — this doesn’t have to be such a big deal.”
If they’re getting too discouraged trying to do something, they might be able to tell themselves, “OK, that doesn’t look like it’s going to work. I’ll try again, or I’ll try to find a better way to deal with it.”
Kids with ADHD are slower to develop on that front. It takes longer for them to gain the ability to calm down and get perspective. So they’re more likely to get too wrapped up in their own emotions.
As a result, they may:
Be overwhelmed with discouragement, frustration, or anger
Give up too quickly on whatever they’re doing
Be reluctant to get started on something they should be doing
Avoid interacting with others
In other words, their emotion of the moment can take over all of their thinking.
When kids are struggling with their feelings, it may seem like there’s no way to get through to them or to stop negative behaviors. But there are things you can do to help kids get control of and manage their emotions.
Start by acknowledging how they seem to be feeling. “I can see how disappointed you are about coming in second in the science fair.” Don’t argue about whether they should be feeling this way. That usually just escalates the problem.
Once kids are calm, offer to help them figure out some better way to deal with that emotion — one that might help switch their thinking. For example, you could say:
“I know you’re upset and just want to leave the science fair and go home. But I’m proud of what you did.”
“I know you worked hard on it and a lot of the people who looked at it seemed impressed. Even though you feel really disappointed about getting second place rather than first, you still have good reason to be proud of what you did.”
If your child often struggles with managing emotions, talk to your child’s doctor. You can talk about ADHD treatment that could help. You can also talk about whether counseling would help.
Read more about the relationship between ADHD and specific emotions and difficulties, including:
Managing emotions can be harder for kids with ADHD than for other kids.
Kids with ADHD can get stuck in whatever they’re feeling in the moment.
Acknowledging what kids are feeling — rather than what they should be feeling — can help them get better at managing emotions.
The first thing we have to do to manage tantrums is to understand them. That is not always as easy as it sounds, since tantrums and meltdowns are generated by a lot of different things: fear, frustration, anger, sensory overload, to name a few. And since a tantrum isn’t a very clear way to communicate (even though it may be a powerful way to get attention), parents are often in the dark about what’s driving the behavior.
Some kids (and adults) have trouble accepting other people’s point of view. They think they’re always right, and everyone else is wrong. That’s especially true for kids who struggle with flexible thinking.
Flexible thinking lets people see things from different angles. Kids who struggle with it have trouble understanding that people don’t all think alike. And that can cause problems during election season, when they hear people at home, at school, on the news, or on social media disagreeing and arguing.
We know we’re not supposed to yell at our children. But parents are very stressed at the moment, and frustration and anger are inevitable. Overwhelmed with everything you’ve been asked to do, you find yourself losing your temper at kids who aren’t on their best behavior either. But when your circumstances aren’t normal, your parenting won’t be normal.
Search for specific Tags or Categories by typing a descriptor here.
