20 Tips To Help You Successfully Parent A Child With ADD and/or OCD

If you don't know much about ADD or OCD but would like to learn, I have linked to different sources of information where the acronym for each appears in the text.  So be sure to check more than one highlighted link.  If you know people or have family members with any  mental disorder it shows a great respect to them to educate yourself on their disorder as it will help you understand their peculiar challenges and help bring mental health issues into the light where they can be addressed by everyone together.



In the 9 years I've been parenting Max I've learned a lot of hard lessons about raising a child with ADD and OCD.  Even though he wasn't officially diagnosed until last winter, we always knew he was different and had challenges that most of the other kids we knew didn't have.  I have been run ragged and claimed to be through with this lousy parenting job many times.  I am one of the most tired people I know.  Getting help from a professional was one of the best things we've done and though we can't afford to keep going right now, we will definitely be returning Max to therapy as soon as we can afford to.

In the meantime, I was realizing that we've collected a lot of valuable pointers on raising a kid with ADD and OCD both from tedious painful personal experience and from the psychologist we've been seeing this year who really knows his stuff and has given us a lot of encouragement, tools, and ideas for not ruining our whip-smart amazing kid.

So while we are trying to find a way to afford all the things we need (like sudden dentistry for the kid), I want to present to other parents what I consider the most valuable collection of advice and guidelines for smoothing out the decidedly rough path of raising a child with ADD and OCD*.  While writing all these tips out I realize that each one needs its own long paragraph explaining how to use them- so this is just a brief list of all the tips and later I'll write separate articles addressing the details about how to use each of these pointers in your own family.



Plan Ahead:  spontaneity is  great for families who don't have clinical anxiety or routinely panic over surprises.  The idea of spontaneity is one I always feel pressure to aspire to- as though being spontaneous is a gift of nature that all the best people have.  If it weren't for those of us boringly planned-out people holding up the rigid structure of life, the spontaneous people would not have the freedom to gallivant around the world like aimless fairies.

Anticipate Calamity:  in our experience there is always calamity to anticipate.  This might simply mean bringing extra shoes for you kid, or making sure you have everything you will need to keep your ADD/OCD child alive and occupied in a bomb shelter type situation.  We have an arsenal of items we carry around with us at all times "just in case" the kid freaks out about something random while we're out in the world like a rogue sock that's gone twisty on his feet.

Choose Your Battles Carefully: there will be many battles.  Many.  You will not only have the usual parenting battles that all parents get to arm wrestle with, you'll also have a whole bunch of special battles that only parents like you will have to face like withering your child with eyes of fire when he asks you if your hands are clean before touching his food or the fight that ensues when his agoraphobic tendencies are encouraged by things like vacations and all you want him to do is step outside for five minutes and he would rather die than oblige.  You've got to do your best to not make everything a battle. 

Be Firm In Your Flexibility:  I have found that it's essential to appear inflexible to my kid in order for him to take me seriously but if I want things to run smoothly, I need to be willing to bend as though I'm giving something away to him.  This makes him feel he's winning sometimes in a negotiation but allows me to remain in control.  The trick is to know ahead of time how far you're willing to bend, then stick to it no matter what and don't let the kid know you're going to bend at all or how far until you do it.

Schedule Everything:  don't leave gaps and holes in your day.  Structure is very important to people with ADD and for people with OCD.  When you get the two together everything can go haywire in a matter of seconds if you haven't scheduled into your day everything you need them (and yourself) to accomplish.  If you want teeth to be brushed and meals to be eaten you need to set a specific time in which it needs to be done.  Winging it leads to chaos which leads to panic and pandemonium.

Set Firm Boundaries:  you need to set boundaries for your child and you will need to reinforce them in a pretty much non-stop barrage of challenges from your child of those very boundaries.  In our kid it is as much a ritual to test all the boundaries of his universe as it is to never brush his teeth at night before he has his pyjamas on.  All children do this whether they have mental disorders or not, but when your kid has a mental disorder like ours has, it is virtually nonstop.  No breaks.  You must never be off your guard, which is impossible, of course, and therefore intensely frustrating and exhausting.

Set Only Routines You Want To Keep Forever:  this especially relates to the OCD.  Healthy routines are difficult to start but once started are difficult to break, thankfully.  Unhealthy routines, such as ones in which a specific number of chocolates are expected for desert every night, or having desert every night in the first place, are easy to establish and breaking them is extremely stressful to everyone.  For many years we kept Max from having nightly deserts, even though some of his friends got a nightly treat.  At some point, when our guard was down, we let him have desert a few nights in a row.  It immediately became part of his immutable evening routine, the breaking of which is the breaking of us and therefore we haven't broken it.

Be Compassionate:  kids with ADD and/or OCD are not frustrating you and angering you on purpose.  Their behaviors are not by design but by nature.  It is very important to frequently remind yourself of this and understand that their existence is very stressful.  They live in a loud world compared to mentally average people.  Pain is particularly hurtful, stimulation easily becomes overwhelming and short circuits them, anxieties run high like fevers over things that seem so small to normal people that they will constantly be put under a microscope and judged somewhat harshly.  Seek to understand that they are as tired and as uncomfortable as you are in raising them.  Showing them compassion will also teach them compassion.

Take Good Care Of Yourself:  this is true for all parents regardless of the personality or peculiar challenges of their child.  It is important to eat well, get the best sleep you can, get exercise, and make sure you get breaks.  Every parent needs all of these things.  Parenting is a tough gig for people with kids who don't have mental disorders, so it is exponentially true of those whose children do have them.  The twisted thing is that the bigger your child's challenges, the harder it will likely be to take care of yourself. 

Do What Works For You:  it is easy as a desperate, frustrated parent to want to take advice from parents who have never had your particular difficulties.  This is a mistake.  Universal truths cross all borders, but more often than not the advice of parents who don't have kids with mental disorders aren't going to apply to you specifically.  You have to be willing to go against other people's well meaning advice and do what actually works for you.  Others may think you're a weak or a bad parent, but pay no mind.  They don't live in your world.  Trust yourself first. 

Diffuse, Distract, and Move On Fast:  you must be a quick thinker and be able to change direction quick as lightening if you hope to harness the intense emotional landscape of your brilliant passionate child.  Situations that were under control one minute can deteriorate in a matter of seconds into unbearable messes.  Learning the art of diffusing is essential.  At Max's age a great trick is to use fart or butt humor.  For some reason most boys find this kind of humor irresistible.  When tears threaten to become hyperventilation, bring out the butt humor and then when the tears are momentarily suspended, change the activity, location, or the dynamic of the situation before they have time to return to the work of freaking out.

Organize Your Home:  people with ADD have enormous difficulty remembering where things are and spend an inordinate amount of time blaming others for moving things around to mysterious locations.  It is always my fault when my guys can't find that thing that only they ever touch or use.  They also constantly move my things around and forget where they put them down.  My main job as wife and mother is to find things all day long.  I am dreadfully behind in my organizing efforts but I can tell you from personal experience that every time I create a definitive space for specific things, chaos is kept further at bay.  I am the keeper of all things in my house and it's a tiring and endless duty.

Be Willing To Try Everything:  you can never tell what methods, what ideas, what tools might work to make your every day run a little more smoothly.  If I was determined to stick with a specific parenting "method" I would be dead by now.  I would not have survived 9 years of parenting so far.  What works for me is a little of this, a little of that, and not a single whole parenting philosophy is enough to sustain me.  It's my personal opinion that this is how everyone should be parenting whether they have a special needs kid or not.  Parenting methods are no different to me than religions and I think both are dangerous when taken wholly and literally and adopted singularly without a view to individuals and their delightfully unique needs.

Be Patient With Outsiders:  people who don't have a kid with similar issues as yours don't know what it's like to get through a single day in your life.  When they complain that their kid got picky last week and wouldn't eat his daily sheet of dried seaweed and refuses to eat anything besides kale and wild-caught fish they don't understand why you suddenly looked like you might kill them.  They think you're in the same boat as them where they're so sad that their kid isn't eating everything under the sun and here you are having to make sure every cup of water you give your kid is fresh (no filaments from the air settled on it, or a shift in change or temperature has occurred) and that no droplets are on the outside of the cup or else your child might go into a deeply unshakable panic/anger state.  They don't know.  Don't kill them for their ignorance.  Prison is not the answer***.

Exercise Is Essential:  you need it, the kid needs it.  Everyone needs it.  But no one needs it more than a person who collects tension as rapidly as the local landfill collects human trash.  That tension won't relieve itself.  Kids in general and ADD kids in particular aren't capable of mastering their own stress yet.  Sometimes medication may be a necessary tool but there is no question at all that with or without meds, your ADD child needs vigorous exercise.  We have struggled with this for years.  Things are much improved (as we knew they would be) now that we have got Max doing Kung Fu- he hates sports but martial arts is fun for him and gives him a proper place to use and release his tension, his aggression, and his warrior spirit.

Don't Abuse Your Child:  our psychologist told us that kids with ADD are much more likely to be abused than other kids because it is so challenging to parent them and many people think kids with ADD have control over things they don't actually have control over and so believe that they are deliberately being disruptive, forgetful, or hurtful.  Abuse will only compound their anxieties and increase their frustration and make everything much worse.  Seek help immediately if you are in actual danger of hurting your own child.  I say this to all parents, but I put it here because if you have a kid with ADD and/or OCD you are going to experience a higher degree of parental frustration and exhaustion than the average parent.

Set Very Small Goals:  because the ADD mind has enormous difficulty sustaining activities or goals, make everything shorter, quicker, and more doable.  Setting specific goals, such as getting home work done, or changing negative habits is important in developing your child's ability to see things through, but make sure to set micro goals first.  Every small goal met will increase their confidence and teach them what they're capable of rather than what they're not.  In time and with great practice and confidence a person with ADD can overcome this challenge to a great extent. 

Put It In Writing:  because of the ease with which people with ADD forget things you tell them, warnings you give them, and tasks you've asked them to do, it helps a great deal to write it all down in a notebook or binder.  If necessary, have them sign what you've just said or asked them to do.  This accomplishes two things: it abbreviates the arguments that follow about how you "never told them..." whatever it is you really did tell them, but the very act of getting them to sign a piece of paper can help them actually remember what you talked about.  You can also take little videos on your camera to punctuate a discussion.  This tip came straight from our psychologist who says that making a bit of an official deal out of an agreement about something can really help the ADD mind recall the event. 

Endeavor To Have Fun:  your life with a child (and in our case a whole family) with a mental disorder is not going to be a carefree love-fest in which everything is soul satisfying and life enriching.  In the long run it will reap rewards not possible with more balanced children (just the incredible brilliance and passion with which my child lives is pretty breathtaking), but in the short haul it is often simply exhausting and the rewards feel pretty microscopic.  Make sure you find things all of you enjoy doing together that cause the least amount of anxiety and try to do them as often as life allows.  We're really still working on this one.  Walks in the woods are proving to be a truly wonderful family activity for us but it's taken a long time to find a way to make them satisfying to all of us.  Seek fun, you really need it.

Get Help:  don't wait until you're already an alcoholic.  Get help now.  Your kid needs help and you need help to help your kid.  You might think you don't need anyone but you do.  You really do.  You need to spend time with other parents who have the same parenting challenges to help put yours into perspective.  You need to talk with professionals because they have tools to give you very specific to your individual child and family dynamic.  You need support from family and friends because other wise you are going to live in a lonely dark little universe.  You all need help.  We took a long time getting it and I don't believe in regrets so I'm not flogging myself with hemp rope over it, but I highly encourage you to seek help as soon as you know that your child is different.  As soon as you feel damaged by frustration.  As soon as you observe that your parenting challenges appear to be much more severe than those of all your peers.  They probably are.  Get help.

Bonus Tip:  All children need to know their parents value and love them.  Tell them every single day whether they have special challenges or not.  Kids with ADD generally spend a lot of time hearing from people about their deficiencies and I believe it's doubly important to remind them of their unique gifts and of the love you have cherish for them.



*I include both diagnosis here because for us they each present their own unique challenges and then together they form a formidable wall between me and my own personal quest for equilibrium.  It is impossible to say if the OCD is largely an effect of the anxiety of having ADD, as happens with many people with ADD**, or if it is its own independent issue.  Considering that both Philip and I have mild OCD ourselves, and it runs in our family beyond just us, it is very possible that Max was wired that way to begin with.  It doesn't entirely matter either way.  What does matter is that separately these issues can be difficult.  Together they can make a parent like me fall completely apart in about 5 minutes flat.

**Because it is important to understand how stressful it is to HAVE ADD.  It often causes anxiety issues for people who have it because navigating the world with this particular challenge is a constant struggle and however hard everyone else is working to get through each day, people with ADD have to work even harder.

***Or is it?!