How to help when parents aren't the adults in charge
TL;DR: My 7yo son (recently diagnosed with ADHD) struggles with frustration and outbursts when he doesn’t master new skills immediately. working on this at home but looking for advice on how to support him in extracurriculars like gymnastics where I’m not the one coaching. How do you help your kids in these situations?
Our 7yo son was recently diagnosed with ADHD. We are still in the phase of trying to figure out what medications are best for him. Not seeking advice on that necessarily.
Our son gets extremely angry when he doesn't master something new immediately. I understand this has to do with low frustration tolerance and lacking emotional regulation skills and we work with him where and how we can. What I need help with is how to handle situations we (his parents) are not in control? Specifically, he does multiple extra curricular activities.
He's in taekwondo and gymnastics currently. He's been in TKD since he was 3 and the outbursts were overlooked as age appropriate behavior. Over the last 4 year he has improved greatly at TKD and has gotten used to learning new things in that particular setting so there aren't really so many outbursts there anymore (plus he is very naturaly gifted at the skills involved and generally gets most of it first time anyways, avoiding the issue).
Gymnastics is still pretty new. He's been doing it for about two months. At first the frustration was all bottled up and only release on us when he got out of class, but lately he either hasn't been able to contain it any more or simply is comfortable enough with the new setting to not let the fear of embarrassment restrain him. He is constantly getting very angry and stomping and yelling and scowling the whole class. I can tell the teachers and other students are uncomfortable with the situation. The teacher did talk to me after class one time and I said i'd talk with him without going into the details of what he's going through.
I don't expect this high school aged coach to be equipped to navigate a student with ADHD. Heck, I'm not nearly as equipped as I would like to be. I don't want to take my son out of gymnastics and any other extra curriculars. I think it's good for him to build the skills to manage these situations he finds challenging. I also don't want him to deal with the judgement from the other students and the coaches. I can't use the parenting skills I'm learning such as breaking the tasks down into smaller manageable chunks and focusing on praise etc because I'm not the one in control. I am just at a loss for how to help my son here. He's obviously having such negative times (even though he is still very excited to go every week).
How do other parents handle these situations?