Parenting a child with ADHD

Why I work with these families

I am a Registered Behavior Technician and a former preschool educator. I am also the mother of children with ADHD and impulsivity.

I remember dreading birthday parties and family gatherings — the looks, the comments, the feeling that everyone was waiting for my child to do something wrong. I remember the phone calls from school. And I remember the moment I realised that I had started seeing my own children through their difficulties.

That is where my question changed. Instead of "how do I make this behavior stop?" I started asking "who is the child behind the behavior, and what do they need to learn right now?"

Everything on this page comes from working that question with real families — and living it at home.

What ADHD actually makes hard

The name is misleading. ADHD is not a shortage of attention — it is difficulty regulating attention, effort and impulse. That is why the same child can lose forty minutes to a worksheet and stay locked into Lego for three hours. Both are the same brain.

In daily life it usually shows up as some combination of:

• Starting — the gap between knowing what to do and beginning it
• Holding a sequence — instructions that evaporate somewhere between the kitchen and the bedroom
• Stopping — leaving something enjoyable, or catching a word before it is said
• Feeling time — "ten minutes" and "an hour" landing much the same
• Emotional intensity — the feeling arriving at full volume with almost no gap before the reaction

Once you see the pattern this way, "he could do it if he tried harder" stops making sense — and you stop asking a child for something he cannot yet deliver on demand.

What I do not do

I do not diagnose, I do not prescribe, and I do not advise on medication. Those belong to your paediatrician or a qualified assessor. What I do is help you understand the pattern in your own home and build something that works in it. See the disclaimer for the full picture.