Never a bad idea to review some salient points...
PARENTING A CHILD WITH ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER
Issue: 
Parenting a child who has ADD can be an exhausting and, at times, 
frustrating experience. Parents play a key role in managing the 
disability. They usually need specialized training in behavior 
management and benefit greatly from parent support groups. 
Background:
Parents often find that approaches to parenting that work well with 
children who do not have ADD, do not work as well -- or at all -- with 
children who have ADD. Parents often feel helpless, frustrated and 
exhausted. Too often, family members become angry and withdraw from each 
other. If untreated, the situation only worsens.
Children with ADD often need their parents to identify their areas of 
strength. By focusing on these areas, children can develop the 
confidence and skills to tackle other, difficult situations. Parents of 
children who have ADD must work on the task of not overreacting to their 
children's mistakes.
Parents of children with ADD often find parent support groups, such as 
those offered by local CH.A.D.D. chapters, an invaluable aid.
Parent Training:
Parent training can be one of the most important and effective 
interventions for a child with ADD. Effective training will teach 
parents how to apply strategies to manage their child's behavior and 
improve their relationship with their child.
Without consistent structure and clearly defined expectations and 
limits, children with ADD can become quite confused about the behaviors 
that are expected of them. 
A technique called "charting" is often the first step in any behavior 
modification program. It requires that parents specifically define the 
behavior they are concerned about so that it can be observed and 
counted. Charting makes parents more aware of their own behavior and 
children more aware of a problem behavior.
Parents are encouraged to designate 10 to 15 minutes of each day as 
"very special time." Parents use this time to focus on being with the 
child, attending to what he is doing, listening to the child, and 
providing occasional positive feedback.
Parents are taught how to effectively use positive reinforcement by 
attending to their child's positive behavior while ignoring, as much as 
possible, negative behavior. 
Parents are also taught how to decrease inappropriate behavior through a 
series of progressively more active responses -- ignoring behavior; 
natural consequences, such as not replacing a toy left out in the rain; 
logical consequences, such as loss of television time if the child 
leaves the room without turning the television off; and time-out. Time-
out involves having the child sit quietly in a designated place for a 
specific time after he has misbehaved. 
Parents learn to give commands and directions that can be understood and 
attended to by the child with ADD.
Peer Relations:
Making and keeping friends is a difficult task for children with ADD. A 
variety of behavioral excesses and deficits common to these children get 
in the way of friendships. They may talk too much, dominate activities, 
intrude in others' games, or quit a game before its done. They may be 
unable to pay attention to what another child is saying, not respond 
when someone else tries to initiate an activity, or exhibit 
inappropriate behavior. 
Parents of a child with ADD need to be concerned about their child's 
peer relations. Problems in this area can lead to loneliness, low self-
esteem, depressed mood, and increased risk for anti-social behavior.
Parents can help provide opportunities for their child to have positive 
interactions with peers. There are a number of concrete steps parents 
can take: 
	 >>setting up a home reward program that focuses on one or two 
important social  behaviors;
	 >>observing the child in peer interactions to discover good 
behaviors and poor, or absent, behaviors;
	 >>directly coaching, modeling and role-playing important 
behaviors;
	 >>"catching the child" at good behavior so as to provide praise 
and rewards ; 
Other strategies include structuring initial activities for the child 
and a friend that are not highly interactive, such as trips to the 
library or playground; using short breaks from peer interactions when 
the arousal level becomes high; and working to reduce aggressive 
behavior in the home. 
Copyright  1995, CH.A.D.D.
(Continued next message...)
                ===>The Voice of Reason<===
                     mark.probert@juno.com
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 * CMPQwk #1.4 * UNREGISTERED EVALUATION COPY
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