‘Lots of children with ADHD are incredibly creative, but they get perceived as very bold’

Parenting a child with ADHD can be challenging, Dr John Sharry, clinical director of the charity Parents Plus says, but “small changes in how you manage a child with ADHD can make a big difference to their wellbeing and your wellbeing as a parent”.

“One of the long-lasting legacies of ADHD is that children as they grow up, internalise a sort of negative self-esteem as people are always saying to them: ‘Why can’t you just sit down?’, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ ‘Why would you do that?’ They get this sort of constant reaction from adults and teachers, and the truth is they can’t help themselves doing whatever the behaviour is.

It’s not only children with ADHD who have to absorb negative feedback and commentary about behavioural challenges that may develop. Parents are also blamed for their child’s ‘behaviour’

“Lots of children with ADHD have incredible strengths of creativity and thinking outside the box and go on to make great contributions in a whole range of areas as adults, but they also get perceived as... very bold. Girls don’t get picked up [often]. They display a little bit differently. They might be the child who struggles to settle in school, is a bit lost in their focus, but they mightn’t have the identifiable behavioural problems that draw attention to them.”

It’s not only children with ADHD – attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – who have to absorb negative feedback and commentary about behavioural challenges that may develop. Parents are also blamed for their child’s “behaviour”. Attitudes of “that’s just the parents” and “if I had him at home, I can tell you...” are very unhelpful responses to the situation, Sharry says. “Both the parents and children need compassion.”

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Parents Plus has developed a new training course for professionals who support children with ADHD. The programme trains psychologists, occupational therapists, and speech and language therapists to deliver the course to parents so they can compassionately and more effectively parent their child.

The programme is delivered in partnership with ADHD Ireland and seeks to support children who are “languishing for a long period of time” on waiting lists. Parents who suspect their children may have ADHD but don’t have a formal diagnosis can attend the services of ADHD Ireland. This means less time is lost in helping parents to support their child, Dr Sharry explains.

Claire McKenna suspects her seven-year-old twin boys, Daire and Fiachra, both have ADHD. They’re on a waiting list for CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services), but she sought training support in the interim. “We’ve always had problems... but it was probably last year in school, that it came to a head,” Claire explains.

“One of them in particular, he was a flight risk in school. He has huge difficulty controlling his emotions, so a lot of problems with fights in school are just him flying off the handle with people, and then also... hyperfocus. We’ve huge problems trying to transition both of them off any activity. They’ll become so engrossed in what they’re doing, getting them to change and do something else, no matter what it is, is a real problem. And then also problems getting them to sleep at night.”

‘Really stressful’

Claire says it was very stressful. “I think, to be honest, it affected my older boy more because there’s been so much time spent in looking after the twins that he got a bit sidelined for a long time. It was really stressful last year – not a week went by that I didn’t have a phone call from the school about some problem to do with one of them. There were days we had to go and pick them up from school early and bring them home.”

After-school activities weren’t an option for the boys, either. “It’s been very difficult for people to manage them and I don’t have any childcare any more, but the school are brilliant,” Claire says.

Attending a course to help parents manage the symptoms of ADHD in their children was very helpful, Claire says. Not least because she met other parents who were dealing with the same issues. “I didn’t know much about ADHD before this. I was even afraid to say it to people that I thought that’s what they had. It’s made me a much stronger advocate for the boys now that I know what I’m dealing with. I’ve just learned to accept that I can’t just expect them to be perfect when we’re out and about.”

Claire also learned about the importance of routine for her twins. “We’ve become much stricter in our routine, and that’s helpful. If they know what’s expected of them it just makes life easier for everybody.”

Claire O’Looney’s son Oliver is nine. He was almost five when he was diagnosed with ADHD. He was assessed privately. “It was no surprise, really, when she said he had ADHD,” Claire says. “We had suspected it for quite a long time at that point.

‘...the extremes of the emotion can be one of the most difficult things to deal with. There’s no middle ground – it’s complete happiness or complete anger’

“His engine was always on. It was go, go, go, non-stop. I can particularly see it now that I have a second boy, the difference between the levels of energy that we experienced. We also picked up very quickly, as a toddler, the sensory side to ADHD as well. He did struggle with noise. He struggles with crowds. He needs a lot of sensory input.

“Now as he’s slightly older... we can see a lot of issues in terms of his concentration. Homework is quite difficult. Actually making it through one day of homework can be quite difficult. Sometimes, emotional regulation, the extremes of the emotion, can be one of the most difficult things to deal with. There’s no middle ground – it’s complete happiness or complete anger. Oliver would struggle, in comparison to his peers, with his reactions in social situations.”

Claire says she and her husband had a complete lack of understanding before Oliver’s diagnosis. “ADHD is very misunderstood and our own perception was ‘bold child. It’s down to parenting. It’s down to discipline.’ And no matter what avenue we went down we found it very, very difficult to get any support. Now I think we have a very competent understanding of ADHD. It’s difficult. It can be very difficult at times to manage, but we’ve figured out our rhythm as a family and it’s made things a lot better. We don’t necessarily see ADHD as a negative thing. It’s very much seen in our family as just part of Oliver.”

Subsequent to Oliver’s diagnosis, Claire’s husband sought an assessment himself for ADHD as he recognised similarities in his son’s challenges to his own childhood experiences.

‘It hurts when people downplay what you’re going through and what your child might be experiencing as well’

‘Self-conscious’

Undertaking the parenting course helped Claire and her husband to appreciate the importance of parental self-care. It also helped them to understand that Oliver’s challenges were not down to their parenting.

“We felt very self-conscious that the behaviours that were presenting, initially, were down to how we had raised Oliver or that we had done something wrong, or that maybe we weren’t cut out for being parents. It really knocked our confidence. People say, ‘He’s just a boisterous boy.’ They downplay what you’re feeling as a parent, even though in your heart you’re very sure that something is different. But it hurts when people downplay what you’re going through and what your child might be experiencing as well.”

Parents Plus ADHD Programme for Professionals launches on October 20th.