• Inattention
• Impulsivity
• Hyperactivity

There are times when parents feel that there is no problem at home due to child because either the ADHD child is their only child and have no other child to compare with, or they have found out ways and means to handle their child’s behavior.

The presence of these symptoms is not enough to diagnose ADHD. In addition, their duration and frequency is also taken into consideration before concluding that the patient has ADHD. Listed below are the conditions that must exist and are necessary for the diagnosis of ADHD. The symptoms

• The symptoms must have been exhibited for six months at its minimum.
• The symptoms must be quite intense than expected according to the child’s age and intelligence (must be more than a busy tot)
• The symptoms have a negatively affect on at least two places, for instance, at home or school.
• The symptoms have been developed before the child is seven.
• The symptoms are not due to other medical conditions such as anxiety, depression, conduct disorder, or autism that overlap the symptoms of ADHD.

Inattention

Inattention refers to lack of concentration and low span of attention that makes it difficult to perform or achieve something. Listed below are the ADHD symptoms placed under this category.

• Paying poor attention to explanations
• Making careless mistakes in homework and daily activities
• Feeling difficult to maintain attention
• Seeming not listening while speaking on a one-to-one basis
• Failing to follow instructions
• Failing to complete an assigned task
• Feeling difficult in organizing tasks and activities
• Disliking tasks wherein sustained mental focus is necessary
• Forgetting things required for tasks or activities
• Getting distracted easily
• Forgetting things while performing a task or activity

Impact on Social Relationships and Self-esteem

The child might make silly mistakes, forget the game rules, answers meaninglessly, and forget what to do next when being in a group with other children. So, other children would ignore such an ADHD child, would never want him/her in their team, and would bully him/her on the ground or in park. Due to this, the child starts feeling that he/she is useless, which in turn, lowers his/her self-esteem. As a result, he/she need lots of support and assurance for boosting self-confidence.

Impact on Parents

Your child might misplace things, forgets things, does not answer, spoil the task; which all can be frustrating. Initially, you yell at your child and even give her negative comments. Afterwards, you end up feeling guilty, as you realize when you cool down that it was not the fault of your child. This is because it was not intentionally done.

Impact on Education

Your child would feel it difficult to remember concepts, principles, and rules. He/She would also feel difficult to write, present properly, confused by different teachers in different lectures, or do two tasks simultaneously. Due to inattention, it is further tough for him/her to organize things and do homework.

Due to the above problems, your child cannot perform up to its fullest and would acquire low marks or grades, might even fail in exams, and might not even like to go to school or spend very less time there.

Impulsivity

Impulsivity refers to the state of being restless and hotheaded. Listed below are the ADHD symptoms placed under this category.

• Bursting out the answers, not even waiting for the question to complete
• Failing to await his/her turn when in group or play
• Interrupts others or interfere with others

Impact on Social Relationships and Self-esteem

If your child is highly impulsive, then he/she might speak without any prior thinking and interfere in the games of others. In addition, the child tends to change moods so frequently that others cannot make out what he/she will do next and burst out if frustrated.

Such behaviors will make her socially inept and therefore, he/she might start to feel rejected. Not only this, others will further take advantage of your child’s aggravated state and ignite him/her by bullying and pushing. This will further make your child aggressive. Repetition of such instances obviously results in low self-esteem of your child.

The worst part of this is that your child can be easily inclined towards alcohol, drugs, and other such addictive substances. This is because your child cannot think before acting and until the time he/she understands, it is already too late.

To overcome all these situations, the only need is of constant monitoring, counseling, and true unconditional love towards your child.

Impact on Parents

Your child tends to speak in such a manner that it might hurt or embarrass you. The fact that he/she is unable to wait for anything will lead into frequent interruption such that it might become intolerable for you. This can strain your relationship.

Calm, steadiness, patience, and true unconditional love are the sweet medicines for your child.

Impact on Education

One common behavior with regards to impulsivity is that your child interrupts frequently when the teacher teaches and tends to burst out with the answers. This applies brakes to his/her knowledge and understanding that results in low marks in tests. This will make her go down the progress line, which can further motivate her to burst with the answers even more.

Hyperactive

Listed below are the ADHD symptoms placed under this category.

• Fidgeting with hands or feet
• Fidgeting on the seat
• Leaving the seat frequently in the classroom
• Runs about excessively
• Feels difficult to playing quietly
• Talks too much

Impact on Social Relationships and Self-esteem

• Goes on and on about a topic
• Takes over a conversation
• Acts silly in a group in desire to obtain attention
• Damages other children’s belongings without any reason
• Hurts other children
• Lacks motor skills (for example, cannot throw a ball)

Following are the effects of the above behaviors.

• Makes him/her bossy, silly, clumsy, and rough to others
• Makes him/her appear the reason due to which the team will loss the game
• Becomes an entity of rejection and ignorance by others
• Reduces self-esteem of the child
• Forces him/her to bully to avoid being bullied

Impact on Parents

It might be wearing for you to keep looking after your child for his/her safety. Further, you might worry that it is my mistake due to which my child’s behavior is not as that of the other children.

If your child hurts you or damage some items, you might be just frustrated and yell at him like anything. Everything is likely to worsen your relationship with the child.

Impact on Education

Due to fidgeting, your child can miss new things and can become impatient to behave with teachers. This would result in stagnant knowledge that can affect the overall growth and development.

• Impression of the self on others
• Physical development
• Difference of opinions with parents about decisions (specifically with the mother)
• Exams’ tension
• Career decisions
• Mixing up with friends and peers (problems related to clothes, behavior, mood)

Teens without ADHD suffer from low self-esteem, which is not a problem for the teens without ADHD. According to a research, conflicts tend to occur more frequently between the teen with ADHD and his/her mother, as compared with the teens without ADHD.

Let’s help our teens to cope up with ADHD by going through some common issues and some guidelines.

Medication

Medication has the power to control the symptoms of ADHD to a great extent. The problem with the medication is that your teen might not be taking it, forget to take it, or feel embarrassed to take it at school.

• Ask him the reason for not taking the medicine and sort out the problem with an appropriate solution. For example, if your teen does not like the taste at all, talk to the GP of other ways of giving the medicine that can mask the taste such as giving it with the teen’s favorite drink.
• If your teen is forgetful, find out a way to remind him/her. For example, ask your teen to set an alarm in the wristwatch.
• If your teen is embarrassed to take the medication at school due to the presence of his/her peers/friends and the fear of them coming to know about the medication, ask GP about a sustained-release form. This will result in only one time taking of the medicine in the morning and will prevent your teen to the medication at school.

Behavior Management

Behavior management techniques do not work that well for teenagers as they work for children. This is because teenagers feel bored using common behavior techniques such as star charts and reward systems. Further, they tend to fight back for any technique, which according to them involves intentional manipulation.

Enforcing rules is one of the best ways in children to control behavior. However, in teens, it is not that good, as they are likely to rebel if there is a huge list of home rules. Therefore, the ideal way is to explain things to them and negotiate with them to make them accept the rules spontaneously to avoid any break up later. If you are able to do so, your teen will also learn how to cooperate and compromise. Listed below are certain guidelines to control unexpected behavior from teens.

• Avoid concentrating only on the negative behavior. Find out what he/she is good at and praise such behavior.
• Try implementing humor in your speech and actions.
• Explain your teen about the consequences of bad behavior so he/she understands the effect of it and decides what to do and what not to do.
• Avoid battlefields between you and your teen by ignoring small issues and focusing only on big issues. Otherwise, you will argue constantly that will make him/her violent towards you.
• Provide him/her with different options. This will give him/her a feeling of being an adult and will be inclined to do what is expected.
• Check your expectations to confirm that they are they reasonable in nature. Avoid any perfection demanding ones.
• Judge your own opinions and assumptions. Never think that the teen is doing something intentionally to irritate you for fun. Never assume that he/she will do this or behave negatively, as in the long run, this will only invite negative expectations.
• Be calm and discuss the problems together. Negotiate and look for a set of solutions that is applicable for everybody at home. This should also include what will happen if the decided solutions are not followed or implemented. It would be ideal if this results in a rational consequence such as turning the music player off while studying.
• Communicate with your teen as frequently as possible. In this, always listen to him/her, do not enforce your ideas, keep eye contact, and express anger without the use of any harsh or rude words.
• Take the help of GP if any of you are having problems with managing temper.

Friends and Peers

If your teen is impulsive and has a habit of speaking without thinking about how others will feel or react, he/she gets socially isolated, rejected, and bullied by other teens and their parents. This is because other parents feel that teens with ADHD cannot make and sustain friendship and want to avoid their children to get into problems.

ADHD teens act as if they are perfect in certain matters that are interesting, which can make their peers frustrating, tiresome, or bore.

Due to your teen’s silly actions to gain others’ attention, other teens might bully them, make fun of them, or consider him/her as mad. For example, this happens when your teen acts as a joker to gain focus. Listed below are certain guidelines to control overcome these problems.

• Ask your teen to invite friends at home frequently to encourage friendships.
• Impart social skills in your teen such as reading what is going in the front person’s mind by its body language. This will aid your teen to determine what went wrong by asking why to his/her friends.
• Ask your teen to think about others feelings and reactions before he/she acts or speaks. Tell him/her to do so by taking a long deep breath before responding/acting.
• Admire your teen for his/her good behavior frequently and especially, to increase his/her confidence and improve self-esteem.

Drugs and Alcohol

According to a research, teens with ADHD are more vulnerable to drug and alcohol addiction at an early age. Friends who use drugs and alcohol and aggressiveness can initiate addiction and can spoil your teen’s rest of the life. Listed below are certain guidelines to control overcome these problems.

• Obtain thorough basic knowledge about your teen’s friends and encourage friendship with those who like staying away from alcohol or drugs.
• Control your teen’s aggressive behavior with the advice and help of GP, if required.
• Track the signals of substance abuse. These include spending more amount of money, lying, secretive behavior, abrupt mood changes, loss of hunger, and lack of interest in school or work.
• Educate your teen about substance misuse, but do not scare them.
• Implement the following actions if you come to know that your teen has started using drugs or alcohol:
  • Avoid pestering or panic.
  • Tell him/her that you still love him/her and are worried about him/her. It’s just the behavior that you want him/her to get rid of.
  • Obtain professional help to do away with addiction.

Relationships

Talk with your teen frankly about the relationship with the opposite gender. Explain him/her about the necessary precautions to be taken while being with the partner. For example, he/she should not hurt him/her or become so impulsive that it leads to a force on him/her to accept or do something. This is because this might put a strain on the relationship.

Other Help Sources

Listed below are some sources of help for you and your teens.

• Parentlineplus
  A national charity group that extends help on variety of issues to parents
• Frank
  A government Website for children, teens, and parents on drugs
• Adfam
  A charity group to extend help to those having drug and alcohol issues