How To Maintain Family Relationships Despite ADHD

Children with ADHD often react without thinking, tend to be defiant, attempt to damage things, and seem to not heeding to what is being said. They do feel disturbed after hurting or damaging, but again repeat the same behavior. Further, these children often scatter things here and there and remain unclean. This is mostly intolerable for most of the people outside home, such as neighbors, pupils, and teachers; but if your child is lucky enough, some may be have an understanding nature. Do you know that ADHD can further affect your relationship with other members of the family, relatives, and friends? Yes, it is a fact! If these people close to you are not willing to take your child as he/she is and deal accordingly, this can strain your relationships with them and also with your own child having ADHD.

Not only your child becomes away from their family members and relatives, but he/she also becomes away from other children, friends, and teachers. Following problems might arise with family and friends.

• Parents can be weighed down and feel unable to tackle their child’s behavior.
• Parents may not attend social events in an attempt to avoid problematic behavior that might impart a feeling of isolation.
• Friends, relatives, and neighbors feel free to pass negative judgments, which can hurt relationships.
• The destructive behavior of your child might hurt other family members to such an extent that those relationships are no longer there.

So, let’s understand how to retain the relationships keeping in mind the goal of overcoming ADHD.

Problems with the Siblings

Following problems might arise with the siblings.

• The other children, who are not suffering from ADHD, at home fight feel envious, as a child with ADHD needs special care, attention, treatment, and support.
• The other children at home may dislike the lack of attention and feel that their parents are least bothered for them, as the focus of attention is now the child with ADHD.
• The siblings might replicate the bad behavior the child having ADHD.
• The other children might not be very much dissatisfied with the life at home, as they feel that there are many conflicts.
• Siblings might also have a feeling that their brother/s or sister/s having ADHD is/are interfering in their life.
• The other children at home might have a feel that their sibling is given more privileges. “I never get that”, “You never talk to me like that” is a common complaints of other children.

Problems between the Partners

If there is a difference of opinion between you and your partner and think differently on maintaining discipline and on parenting styles with regards to ADHD, your relationship is likely to become sour. For example, the mother might feel that it is better to stop working and spend all the time to deal with the child’s behavior, attend medical counseling, get the child to the therapist, and attend meetings for the statementing process. This would actually inflict a financial burden due to increase the family budget. Further, if too much time is given to the child without spending any time with your partner, there are full chances that you relationship might suffer.

Sometimes, it might so happen that there is only one parent to take the care of the child, while the other shows no interest or is away from home. This even makes it more difficult for the left parent to deal with ADHD. This results is subsequent bitterness in the relationship.

Adjusting the Child with ADHD into the Family

• Provide short and clear instructions to your child. Discuss with the child and make him/her understand how he/she should behave in varied situations and tell how to handle a troublesome situation.
• Observe the situations that can force a child for bad behavior and enter into the matter prior to the starting of any problem due to disliked behavior.
• Explain all the rules with your older children.
• Never criticize the child, rather criticize the behavior. For example, say, “It makes me feel very sad when you shout at your brother”; instead of saying, “You are a nut and don’t know how to behave with anyone.”
• Try to calm down everyone at home in problematic situations. Avoid any arguments or any thought of agitating them.
• Try to convince other members in the family not to take it personally to their mind, when the situation is beyond the control or when your child has crossed all limits.
• Be positive all the time. Avoid too much scolding to your child with ADHD, which can result in low self-esteem.
• Make your relatives and friends understand that it is seriously necessary for them to accept your child. One way to look positively is that older relatives tend to have less patience with a busy child, which can results in only brief visits.

Tackling Uncaring Relatives or Friends

Listed below are the problems of unsympathetic relatives and friends.

• They have a wrong belief that there is no such medical condition as ADHD. Mostly, they are of the opinion that your child is naughty and does all this intentionally. Further, they will comment you as a bad parent and will advise you to spank your child.
• Some friends and relatives might have an over confidence that they know everything about ADHD, as they might be reading about it frequently in a newspaper or might have viewed about it on TV. So, based on this, they will rebuke you for not putting any extra efforts, such as opting for complementary medical therapies or an exclusion diet.
• Sometimes, according to their belief, they can also rebuke you for opting for medication or not opting for medication.
• Some of them might ignore or drop you. This might pinch you, but just remember that you and your child are not responsible for this. This is because it is their weakness that and their problem. True friends are the ones who will understand your state and problems. So, a friend who does not want you is not worth to be concerned about.

Listed below are the options that you have to deal with such relatives or friends.

• If you feel your relatives and friends are open-minded, try to educate them, as they will listen. Sometimes, it might happen that due to their over confidence, if you show them some reports of an expert, they might say that the expert does not know anything.
• Give them a polite smile always.
• Say ‘Thank You’ after listening to their advice.
• Inform them that you have taken your doctor’s advice and are acting accordingly.
• Just put them out of your mind once you reach home.

Sources of More Help

If you feel that you are not able to deal with the relationships, see if you can discuss with someone about it. This is because, when the problem has just begun, it is easy to manage and solve it; rather than waiting for the problem to grow and then finding a solution of uprooting it.

You can contact the following sources in the above case.

• Your GP
• Counselors, such as Parentline Plus
• Family negotiation, wherein a trained counselor aids you to view the problem objectively and help you all come to a solution
• Support groups, such as Adders or ADDISS. Such groups have such members already who have faced such situations in life and therefore, are in a better position to help you too.

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