Effective treatment is available. If your child has ADHD, your pediatrician can offer a long-term treatment plan to help your child lead a happy and healthy life.
With appropriate intervention, children with ADHD can lead normal lives.
A person with ADHD will also become better at self-regulating over time, but will typically remain delayed compared to other people of the same age. For example, a 16-year-old with ADHD will have more self-control than he did when he was 5, but probably won't have as much self-control as the next 16-year-old.
Most parents of children with ADHD worry about their child's potential for success. The truth is there are countless powerful, confident, high-achieving leaders who have managed to capitalize on behaviors associated with ADHD.
While living with ADHD can be challenging, treatment and lifestyle changes can help manage difficult symptoms for overall well-being.
ADHD can leave parents feeling stressed, frustrated, or disrespected. Parents may feel embarrassed about what others think of their child's behavior. They may wonder if they did something to cause it. But for kids with ADHD, the skills that control attention, behavior, and activity don't come naturally.
People with ADHD will have at least two or three of the following challenges: difficulty staying on task, paying attention, daydreaming or tuning out, organizational issues, and hyper-focus, which causes us to lose track of time. ADHD-ers are often highly sensitive and empathic.
ADHD can affect a student's ability to focus, pay attention, listen, or put effort into schoolwork. ADHD also can make a student fidgety, restless, talk too much, or disrupt the class. Kids with ADHD might also have learning disabilities that cause them to have problems in school.
Many children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) struggle with school. Recently, children have faced a variety of changes in the way that they attend school. Some might be attending virtual classes; others might attend school in-person with many new rules.
Truth: Lots of kids with ADHD do well in school, especially in younger grades where there is less homework to complete.
School-age children and adolescents
For children ages 6 years and older, AAP recommends combining medication treatment with behavior therapy.
The symptoms may peak in severity when the child is seven to eight years of age, after which they often begin to decline. By the adolescent years, the hyperactive symptoms may be less noticeable, although ADHD can continue to be present.
If you think you or your child may have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), speak to a GP. If you're worried about your child, it may help to speak to their teachers, before seeing a GP, to find out if they have any concerns about your child's behaviour.
Parents often consider private schools as an option when a child has ADHD. There is a group of private schools designed specifically for students who have ADHD, with or without learning disabilities.
Deciding on a treatment plan
ADHD requires a comprehensive treatment plan that includes: Education on ADHD for parent and child, including learning it is a brain-based condition. Behavioral management strategies and parent training. Academic accommodations and support.
How Do ADHD Children Learn Best? According to Dr. Zentall, children with ADHD seek change/novelty and high-interest activities. They do best with an engaging active curriculum at school and an active home environment.
Children with ADHD exhibit a slew of behaviors that can disrupt family life. They often don't “hear” parental instructions, so they don't obey them. They're disorganized and easily distracted, keeping other family members waiting. Or they start projects and forget to finish them—let alone clean up after them.
Tolerating boring and unstructured situations at home can also be hard for kids with ADHD, and might lead to the kind of disruptive attention-seeking behaviors you're describing.
School avoidance is common among children with ADHD. Bullying, boredom, bad grades, or even an untreated condition may all explain why your child is avoiding school.
Regardless of how well he or she performs in school, a student who has trouble concentrating, reading, thinking, organizing or prioritizing projects, among other important tasks, because of ADHD may have a disability and be protected under Section 504.
ADHD and school failure
For children with ADHD, “school too often starts with failure … and goes downhill from there.”1 With failure rates double to triple those of other children, about 50 percent repeat a grade by adolescence. Thirty-five percent eventually drop out of school and only 5 percent complete college.
People living with ADHD may have a variety of skills and abilities beyond those of their neurotypical counterparts. These may include hyperfocus, resilience, creativity, conversational skills, spontaneity, and abundant energy.
Have difficulty following through on instructions and fail to finish schoolwork or chores. Have trouble organizing tasks and activities. Avoid or dislike tasks that require focused mental effort, such as homework. Lose items needed for tasks or activities, for example, toys, school assignments, pencils.
Living with ADHD may give the person a different perspective on life and encourage them to approach tasks and situations with a thoughtful eye. As a result, some with ADHD may be inventive thinkers. Other words to describe them may be original, artistic, and creative. Being hyperfocused.