You’re not listening. You’re not sitting still. You didn’t finish this assignment. You’re daydreaming again.
If you have a child with ADHD, maybe you’ve found yourself repeating the above or similar statements, or maybe you’re aware that it’s the feedback they’re getting from teachers, caregivers, and other adults in their lives. They’re probably receiving a lot more negative messages than their classmates.
As parents, we must consider whether we’re balancing these messages at home, and how we can do so.
Child Therapist Says Kids With ADHD Recieve Thousands More Negative Messages
Compared to neurotypical kids, kids with ADHD tend to receive about 20,000 more negative messages by the age of 12, according to Dr. Carrie Jackson of SoCal Child Psychology. (If they enter school at age 5, that works out to around 15 extra negative messages per school day.)
She explains that this means that we, as caregivers and parents, need to work really hard on showing our kids the support they need, recognizing and praising their strengths, and making sure to balance those negative messages with positive ones.
Balancing Positive & Negative Feedback Is Important
In corporate life, you may be aware of the “sandwich method” of feedback. It’s the idea that you should ‘sandwich’ negative feedback between positive statements. This isn’t just to avoid hurting feelings (because really, is that your boss’s top concern?) but also about morale and the notion that employees—humans—are more likely to respond in the desired way (improving those skills or behaviors) when feedback is given this way.
An office example might be, “I appreciate that you are always so prompt with your reports. I do want you to run spell check or do a quick re-read before sending them in each week, just to catch some of these errors that are slipping through. Your reports are some of the most thorough in the company, and I would like to be sure they’re not overlooked.”
If adults need this instead of just saying, “Hey, there were five misspellings in last week’s report,” then how much more does it matter to a kid’s psyche?
Implementing Better Practices Throughout Your Child’s Day
Of course, the above is pretty straightforward when you’re planning ahead to have a conversation with an employee, but it’s not so easy when your distracted student is busy rearranging his pencils and has only done two math problems in 20 minutes, and you have 19 other students who also need your attention.
Where possible, we absolutely also want our teachers to give this positive feedback, but knowing that this may or may not happen, as parents, we’re going to have to add the bread to this particular sandwich at home.
That means that when your child is getting ready for school, he needs to hear that praise.
Maybe it’s, “I know you’re going to do great on the math test today. You’ve studied so hard,” or, “I noticed you got all your stuffed animals put away last night. Thanks so much for that; you made your room look so nice,” or just “I appreciate who you are.”
It also means he needs it again after school. “You did a great job getting through a hard day,” or “Congratulations on that spelling test grade! You deserved it!” or “You are such a good friend to those around you.”
Remember How Hard Your Child Is Working
It’s always hard to see when a task is more challenging for someone else than for you or their peers. You might think of the school day as all kids being asked to run a mile, but the kids with neurological differences, like ADHD, are required to run theirs up an incline, and then at the end, everyone is pretending that all students had the same run.
Transitions between classes may be harder for your ADHD kid. Spending twenty minutes taking notes may be harder. Doing classwork while sitting still may be harder. Ignoring the kid at the next desk folding his homework into a paper airplane may be harder.
That means we need to acknowledge how hard they’re working, praise their efforts, and give them the tools to keep mastering these hurdles.
This could mean talking to their teachers and school administration about extra time for lockers and gathering materials, allowing a study carrel, or being a little flexible about other expectations.
Never Overlook The Good
Most importantly, we need to catch kids being good.
If we call them out for being off task, we also need to praise them when they are on task, even if it’s not as long as we might like or as long as we expect from their neurotypical peers. If we’re going to fuss when they forget their books, we need to notice when they remember them. If we’re going to gripe about messes, we need to praise tidying, even on a smaller scale than we think ideal.
All these additional negative messages affect self-esteem, self-image, and what kids believe they are capable of.
We can step in and ensure our babies receive as many positive messages as negative ones, which may make their journey to adulthood just a little smoother.