“If you continue like this you will end up in the college!”
This phrase often occurs in childhood of people with ADHD (attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity) and in the experience of Parents in difficulty With the disruptive, impulsive and confusing manifestations of some symptoms of this neurosviluppo disorder.
Disorder, difficulty in staying still, continuous calls and notes at school, provocative attitudes and difficulty in maintaining concentration are some of the common experiences to families who face this neurodactance (Bullegas et al., 2023).
Discussions, frictions, frictions between children, teachers and adults often lead to experimenting with experiences of helplessness, anger and frustration. We will try to provide some Strategies to promote psychological well -being within the family environments that meet in their experience the deficit of attention and hyperactivity deficit.
ADHD: How to behave at home?
Often ADHD and disorder at home they go hand in hand. Motor acceleration and impulsiveness lead children to launch objects, create chaos in the school material that is lost or damaged and agitated, quickly passing from one activity to another.
The external chaos It can be considered a metaphorical expression of the internal pressure that children live due to the ADHD. In fact, frequently, in therapeutic paths, they come to identify a sort of internal force that pushes them to implement behaviors whose motivation do not know how to explain.
All this acceleration, cognitive and emotional, leads to parents to experiment with sensations of exhaustion, tiredness And concern for family problems. Contacting professionals (childhood neuropsychiatrists, psychologists, educators) can be useful.
ADHD and advice for parents
In families where there is a child with ADHD, it is fundamental respect the indications provided by professionals. In particular, if drug therapy has been decided, it is important to respect the indications for administration.
The suggestions that are provided at a behavioral level, of strategies of containment and emotional regulation, of environmental hygiene (noisy and bright stimuli) and sleep, are very useful to follow to promote a peaceful environment.
Parents can also:
- build routines that allow to make the environment predictable
- reduce excessive stimulation By limiting, for example, the prolonged use of screens and video games
- encourage reflection on yourself with containing interventionshow: “Help me understand how you feel”
- give defined times in which to carry out a certain task, alternating activities that require concentration with others that allow also motor detachment from what has been done previously
- establish clear rulesnot very numerous and simple, providing for congruous consequences in the event of an infringement (cost) and any prizes in case of achievement of the objective (reinforcement)
- create spaces of emotional containment Through game or activities such as drawing, the choice of images, the writing of how you feel. In this regard, the box of emotions may be useful, a container designed to collect illustrations and thoughts about their emotions
- Promote sports and motor activity useful to allow the unloading of motor device
- favor the emotional regulation By taking care of the expression of emotions by all family members trying to explain and verbalize what is felt.
In facing the complexity of the different profiles of ADHD (unattaining, hyperactive-impulsive and combined), parents and families can often experience solitude, frustration and impotence.
For this reason, contact the health service, build an adequate network with services and schools, count on the professionalism of specialist figures They can be important strategies in reducing stress.
Another precious step is that relating to sharing of experiencesdifficulties and resources with other families who live daily the relationship with neurodactance (Mura & Bullegas, 2023). From this point of view, the Italian ADHD Families Association promotes solidarity, education and training activities in the field of disorder. The association, without profit, also promotes parent training useful to face the manifestations of the ADHD in different stages of development.
ADHD and homework at home
The homework and the study at home (Daffi & Pandolini, 2013), with their load of attention, concentration and time to spend still on the books, often become a real ordeal for children and families.
Here are some tips to try to make this moment more peaceful:
- favor the collaboration with the school and teachers in order to set common teaching methods in an atmosphere of dialogue and collaboration
- prepare a environment without excessive stimulation during the task of the tasks
- use IT tools or didactic video games that can encourage concentration and attention
- create short work sessions interspersed with moments of detachment preferably with motor activation
- Organize material and subjects so as not to create confusion
- possibly predict some positive reinforcements who go to reward the work sessions carried out with commitment.
Testimonies and experiences of other parents
The testimony and listening to experiences of parents with children with ADHD can be precious in facing difficulties by breaking the feeling of helplessness and solitude.
They should be favored meeting opportunities between parents to share critical issues, but also and above all resources and solutions. Training and psychoeducation become indispensable tools in providing useful strategies to deal with critical issues related to neurodactiveness.
Here are some useful readings:
- 50 games and activities for children with ADHDby Patricia O. Quinn, Judith M. Stern, Erikson Trento
- Inattentive and hyperactive children: parent training. Training and support of parents of preschool childrenby Claudio Vio, Maria Stella Spagnoletti, Erikson Trento
- My son is without brakes. Survival guide for parents of hyperactive children, by Martin L. Kutscher, Erikson Trento
ADHD AND DISORDERS IN THE HOME: Signals to be interpreted
What distinguishes a child disordered by a possible case of ADHD?
The level of disorder of a person with ADHD concerns the following characteristic aspects:
- Inability to organize times and spaces
- tendency to lose objects and materials
- Difficulty managing sequential tasks
- inability to respect deadlines
- Difficulty in completing the tasks and respecting the instructions.
The pattern is pervasive and concerns all areas of everyday life from the game to the school.
To facilitate people with this type of neurodactiveness it can be useful:
- organize adequately spacesIft
- Reduce excessive stimulation sources (bright, noisy, presence of games or materials in great abundance)
- prepare the materials by promoting a sort of chronological organization (on the left side the tasks that are still carried out, on the right side materials and activities that have already been tackled)
- create clear environments Where the materials can be easily and visually visually favoring the progressive autonomization of the activities, such as the preparation of the folder.
The importance of the family context
To better face the challenge of this neurosviluppo disorder, it is important to create a welcoming and conscious family environment through:
- Training and psychoeducation on issues relating to ADHD (Vio et al., 1999)
- Support and psychological support for all family members in order to encourage the emotional elaboration of experiences and experiences, the identification of individual and familiar strategies and resources in facing everyday life
- comparison with teachers and specialists in order to create an environment of comparison, dialogue and collaboration
- Sharing experiences with networks of families and parents of children with ADHD.
Discovering that it is not alone is a fundamental step in contrast prejudice, frustration and impotence deriving from confronting a stressful situation such as that relating to the management of a child with neurosviluppo disorder. Strengthened by this network it can be easier to identify personal, family and community resources essential to promote psychological well -being.
