r/ADHDparenting

Is there a book, a guide, a class or anything that can help me with teaching my son executive functioning skills? We’re on waitlists left and right for therapeutic support, but they literally have waitlists of over a year for just an evaluation and then longer waitlists after that to actually get therapy. 😭. So I’m trying to do what I can to help my child but I’m struggling because I’m kind of doing this blind (actually with a few workbooks from Amazon). Any recommendations would be appreciated.

My son is 5 years old and I am 99% sure that he has ADHD like his momma. I’d love to get him evaluated, but most psychiatrists have on their websites that they start evaluations at age 6. We are having problems with big emotions.

We had his 2nd preschool parent/teacher conference and his teachers let us know that he gets very emotional over little things and starts to cry. They say they’re working on it, but Idk how they work on it lol?

We signed him up for a parkour class thinking he’d love it, but he is running to us crying every five minutes. Whether someone slightly bumped him or the other kids are “too loud” (even though he’s being louder than them.) It’s immediate crying and him wanting to go home.

I don’t know what to do. I want him to have fun. He does have fun with the actual parkour, but as soon as someone slightly bumps him it’s a big deal. He’s missing so much class with the amount of times he comes crying to us.

What has worked for you to help combat the big feelings and, sort of, sensitiveness with your kids?

Today has been really hard and I can really use support from this group. My son is almost 14 with inattentive/impulsive ADHD and also some social anxiety and depression.

The social anxiety is 75% better with medication. The depression is new within the last year and oddly not helped by his SSRI, so we added a second medication which has helped him feel much better. He still has days he feels sad, but most days goes through the motions of daily life and says he’s fine and feels good. I challenge him on that sometimes and he really means it when he says he’s good.

The trouble is that he makes stupid, impulsive decisions and then goes into a very intense spiral of shame, regret and self hatred. It’s scary and when this has happened, he’s hurt himself a handful of times. The harm has been minor (compared to what a lot of other struggling teens self-inflict. Nothing about this is at all ok and we know that). Mainly scratching his arm with a sharp object, but not ever actually cutting himself. He admitted doing this back in the fall and it has improved a lot, only happening twice since then.

He got in trouble at school today for stealing something from another students locker. We are of course unbelievably upset he did this, but first and foremost knew we needed to support his safety and put our anger to the side. He told us he didn’t know why he did it, he did it without thinking and that he was feeling sad yesterday. When school confronted him about it, he completely fell apart and asked to go to the bathroom where he texted me saying he didn’t feel safe with himself. I told him to go to the nurse right away (in his safety plan) and we called school to make sure they could find him so he’s not left alone and got there as fast as we could. He had scratched him arm up with a pencil while he was writing the apology letter they asked him to write to the other student in the principals office. School did a safety evaluation and let him come home with us.

Now we’re home and while what happened is new and obviously extremely upsetting, I’m just trying to figure out where to go from here and if anyone else’s ADHD child gets completely buried in a shame spiral after making a really bad decision. How do you help them move past the worst of it and once they are stable, help them realize how wrong the action was? We can’t do that right now as he comes out of this terrible place. In that moment he felt he ruined everything forever for himself. The school counselor talked to him about how this one mistake doesn’t define who he is but I don’t think he can see that when he spirals.

How do we help him navigate this and do our job as parents to make sure he knows what he did was very wrong? Thank you for any thoughts you can offer.

are pediatric psychiatrist has prescribed us liquid clondine in today. it's for our six-year-old autistic and ADHD child. he is usually very hyperactive but, guanfacine has reduced the hyperactivity. she took him off the guanfacine because it was very difficult to get him to take the table every evening and because his blood pressure was a little bit low. we plan on giving it to him today, but I've been doing a little bit of Reading, and I see that clondine can also lower blood pressure, in fact from what I'm reading is more likely to lower blood pressure. I just wanted to ask the community did anybody move their child off guanfacine to clondine and what was the benefits if any?

My son has really large amounts of rage. and is very hyper. He doent always snap but when he doesnt get his way it turns into begging and crying and then anger. I think if I attack the hyper activity that will calm the anger. Hes a clone of me. I am the exact same way . Does anyone know of any legit holistic things I can give him that actually work ? I try to just let him play outside and and take him places. When he find something he likes, like a video game or something hes very concentrated , unless he loses.

This is a space for students and teenagers dealing with focus challenges, ADHD traits, and academic anxiety.

Whether you’re diagnosed or just struggling with focus, you’re welcome here.

This is a peer discussion space — not medical advice.

💬 Feel free to:

• Share study strategies
• Talk about struggles
• Ask questions
• Celebrate small wins

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?

My 6 year old has been medicated for a year now with good results. He has been taking the Adderall XR 15mg. We experience stock issues from time to time, and did so the last time we had to refill, so the pharmacy asked if we wanted to talk to the doctor about switching to IR, as for some reason they dont have as many stock issues.

We started the IR (10mg) on Easter Sunday, and we only did the first (AM) dose. Seemed to do well. I wrote an email to his teacher, informing her of the med change, and to ask her to keep an eye out on whether or not they notice a difference. Today I get an email from them saying he had more difficulties with math and writing this week. At first, I assumed it was because he wasnt getting a second dose at lunch as is typical with IR, and figured the AM dose cleared out by then.

However, my son told me that reading and writing were *before* lunch. Lunch is at 12:30, so the meds would only have been in his system for 3/3.5 hours at that point. I need to confirm with the teacher tomorrow as he sometimes gets the schedule mixed up, but is it possible to need a second dose after only 3ish hours? Or is it more likely the IR just doesnt work for him?

Hi, I’m a mom to a 6-year-old with ADHD, and I’m considering switching him to virtual school for 1st grade.

He completed kindergarten in public school, but since I work from home, I’m wondering if virtual learning might be a better fit for him. I’d love to hear from other parents who have made this switch with a child around this age. How did your child adjust to virtual learning? Did it help or hurt their focus and behavior? and what challenges did you run into?

I have suspected adhd and I think my son has it as well. He loves screentime and so do I because it makes things so much calmer and easier. I try to set limits but I suck at routines habits and consistency. Without the screen he’s so much needier which I find exhausting. He also has visual processing that we have homework for and he’s way behind in reading. Trying to do even 15 min of practice or activities like mazes or puzzles is a massive fight.

Does anyone have any advice about screen time or parenting consistently? I feel like such a failure most of the time.