Leanne Tran Psychology
Many parents ask this question – so if you’re asking it, you’re not alone. It’s common for parents to ask either if they’ve passed down ADHD, or whether their parenting style has caused their child to develop ADHD. These are nerve-wracking questions to ask, so let’s set the record straight on the top five questions asked right here.
Firstly – what is ADHD?
ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It’s a mouthful of a name, but it gets longer! ADHD can be Predominantly inattentive Type, Predominately Hyperactive-Impulsive Type, or Combined Type. That’s why most people just shorten it to say ADHD. ADHD refers to children who are more inattentive than other kids, more hyperactive or impulsive than other kids, or who have a combination of both. It’s easier to think of ADHD as difficulty regulating – either turning attention on or filtering out the need to move, look at new things and do the first thing that pops into your head. ADHD is mostly biological. That means it’s genetic (60 – 90% of the time it’s passed down genetically), or in a small number of cases caused by other physical differences.
So which parent passed it down?
This one’s tricky to answer, as sometimes it’s unclear. What’s important is to see if any of the difficulties you see your child facing, you also faced as a child. Or maybe even still do now? The reason this is important is that parenting children with ADHD can be hard, and having ADHD yourself can make it harder. Understanding yourself will put you in a better position to help your child. The silver lining is that any parent with ADHD is going to have great insight into how their child feels and use this as a super way to be empathetic.
Was it my parenting that caused ADHD?
Some studies show that family dynamics play a role in children having ADHD, but there’s a problem with these studies. They are usually focused on children who have lots of challenges, so it’s not easy to determine if any of those had an impact. The other thing we know is that ADHD changes the way parents do parenting – so these studies can’t account for whether ADHD or different parenting came first. Having a child with ADHD affects parents’ stress levels, impacts family and relationships, and the traditional parenting methods are often less effective. So it’s not so much that parenting causes ADHD, rather that ADHD alters parenting.
How is ADHD assessed?
ADHD can be assessed by a Paediatrician or Psychologist, or a combination of the two. It will involve behaviour observations, and collecting information from you and also your child’s educators. This can be through questionnaires or observations. Sometimes there are other reasons underlying a child’s behaviour, and these are considered and ruled out along the way.
So, my child has ADHD – what can I do?
Intervention for ADHD is pretty standard, and the goal is to support your child to be best placed to learn, have relationships with others, and to proect from any risks like school suspensions. It will include:
- Education – finding out about ADHD, how your child ticks and what is shown to help.
- Medication – this is because doing everything else right all of the time accounts for only about a 10% improvement
- Parent support to help encourage positive behaviour at home
- School support – to put in place breaks and other strategies that will make it easier to get through the day
- Helping your child develop skills that will help (like using a diary)
- Considering diet to make sure your child’s growing
Large-scale research is the best kind to listen to, and about ADHD it shows:
- Programs designed to train working memory don’t work
- Increasing omega 3 can help
- Reducing food colourings can help, especially if your child has food allergies
- Rewards work much better than punishments for ADHD brains, and changing the rewards can stop them from becoming boring and unmotivating
- Visual Supports are helpful for kids with ADHD (and parents with ADHD too!). I have a guide for how to create your own in my last Kiddipaedia post:
https://kiddipedia.com.au/practical-guide-to-visual-supports-for-parents/
Books to read that parents have found helpful include:
- 12 Principles for Raising a Child with ADHD by Russell Barkley
For further information talk to your local Psychologist, or a GP can help with a referral to a Paediatrican. Or for more information, check out my webinars here: https://www.leannetran.com.au/webinars
