I Have No Patience For My ADHD Child

“I have no patience for my ADHD child.” Have you ever confessed this out loud? Or is it a secret guilty thought that you wouldn’t even tell a priest in a confessional? Perhaps you have admitted this out loud and inadvertently hurt your child or shocked your partner. Then the guilt sets in. Guilty feelings are prevalent in parenting, as I mentioned in my post How to be at peace with only one child. They appear to come with the territory of parenting.

So, for a moment, forget about your guilty feelings and acknowledge the objective truth: You have no patience for your ADHD child. So, what are you going to do about it? Well, fear not! For in this post, I’ll share some top tips to help you and your ADHD child develop patience with each other, so you can all live in harmony together.

ADHD Children Are Exhausting

Let’s not beat about the bush, ADHD children are exhausting. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is divided into two parts. The first part is Attention Deficit. This means a child with ADD finds it hard to pay attention for extended periods of time. They tend to have poor short-term memories, and they tend to make careless mistakes as they struggle to focus on a given task. If a child also has the hyperactivity component in their diagnosis, they may show signs of emotional disregulation, higher energy levels and an inability to read social cues.

In practical terms, this means that, as a parent, you must be even more organised. You will need to label all of your child’s belongings. And I mean all of them. You will need to remind your child to do tasks over and over again. You will need to listen to the constant chatter, and when your child goes silent for a while, you will probably hate it and worry about them. And you may have to intervene often when your child falls out with their friendship group and doesn’t know how to rectify the situation. Plus, you will frequently be called into your child’s school as they struggle to sit still and focus on their lessons. Having an ADHD child means dealing with heightened drama every single day. It’s exhausting.

Your Child Has No Patience For You Either

Take it from an ADHD adult who remembers my childhood vividly. I had no patience for bossy adults who nagged me all day. I had no patience for myself either. It’s frustrating to be nagged over and over again, and equally frustrating to keep failing to remember tasks. The truth is, children with ADHD want to fit in. They want to remember instructions and be focused. They want to please their parents and teachers, but no matter how hard they try, they cannot succeed. Then they get shouted at for making mistakes, their anxiety levels rise, and soon they give up on you and themselves. It’s much easier for your child to live in their fantasy world where they can simply be their weird and wonderful selves, rather than be in the ‘real world’ that won’t accept them. It is worth bearing this in mind as you consider the struggles your ADHD child is enduring, as much as yourself.

Read on to learn ways to help your child manage their ADHD symptoms without medications.

Make Life Fun

As an Academic Mentor, I used to have a plush doll of Mary Poppins on my desk. She was there to remind students of one of her greatest sayings, “In every job there is to be done, there is an element of fun in it. Find the fun and snap the job’s a game.” This could be any ADHDer’s slogan. If it ain’t fun, they won’t engage in it. So this is where you need to plan ahead and think creatively.

Encourage your child to use their imagination and play games with them as you persuade them to carry out chores and care for themselves. For example, when Sops was young, I would pretend there was a monster who lived in the bath. As soon as I pulled the plug, I would pretend to be the monster and say ‘I will gobble up your toes‘, so she would want to come out sooner. If I cut her toenails, she would pretend to turn into a dragon. Once I had cut her ‘talons’, she would ask where her favourite toys were or even where her dad was, and I would always say that whilst she was a dragon, she ate them. Everything was a story. Everything was a game. Even bedtime was entertaining as we would lie down together and talk about what we would want to dream about that night.

The secret is to maintain this level of fun even as your child is growing up. To help Sops study for her History GCSE we recreated trench warfare with cushions in our house and a Star Wars drone as a first world war tank. Keep it fun people.

Make it into a Song

How did you learn the alphabet? I bet you learnt it in song form, right? What other songs do you remember as a child? There is something about rhymes and rhythm that makes it easier to recall. This may be why Shakespeare wrote many of his plays in Iambic Pentameter. His theatre company would have had to learn several plays a season. It is quicker and easier to learn lines if they are written as a poem or song form. You can create songs by changing the lyrics of a popular song, such as a nursery rhyme. Or create a brand new song using a song creating app such as Soundtrap. You can create songs to help your child remember routines such as cleaning and bedtime routines.

Make the Most of Artificial Intelligence

Unless you have heaps of money to pay for a personal assistant to do all your organising and scheduling for you, then you may need to make use of AI tools to help you stay on top of your work. Your child will be relying on you initially to do this for them, but as they grow up and learn to become independent, they may find certain AI tools helpful to keep them focused and organised. I confess I have become a bit of an AI convert recently. After attending a workshop on how IT tools can help people with ADHD, I have discovered the wonders of AI and how it can keep me focused, speed up my work and help me stay organised.

There is a list of useful AI tools at the end of this post that you may find helpful for your child.

NB: If your child is at Secondary School and preparing for exams, our post, Revision Techniques that Actually Work may help them, there are some useful AI tools they can use in that post.

Use a Smart Speaker

Did you ever watch Star Trek: The Next Generation? Anytime the characters needed information, they would ask the ship’s computer. The closest we have to this technology today is smart speakers. You can ask them anything. Admittedly, they don’t know as much as a starship computer, but they can help people with ADHD to remember things. You can ask them to remind you to do things. Or add things to your shopping list when you have run out of something, such as toilet roll or tomato ketchup.

Your ADHD child can benefit from using the family smart speaker as well. They can ask the speaker to play music for them, or help them meditate if your child is feeling anxious. Or you can both ask it questions at the dinner table for a riveting conversation. (Sops and I have done that often).

I Have No Patience For My ADHD Child as they Talk Too Much

It’s true, people with ADHD talk way too much. Their heads are so full of thoughts that they spill out of their mouth without them realising it. You can be forgiven for ignoring your child when they talk far too much. It is tiring trying to listen to everything they say. However, people with ADHD can experience rejection-sensitive dysphoria, especially if they know you are ignoring them. So how can you ensure your child feels included and valued while asking them to stop talking relentlessly?

Here are a few ideas to try:

• Time Limit: Tell your child they have up to 10 minutes to tell you everything they want to say and set a timer.
• Conversation Games: Play conversation games to teach your child how to think critically and engage with others.
• Write Stories: Encourage your child to write their thoughts down in a story. Or create pictures/comic strips to express their ideas. If you are lucky they will become hyper-focused in the task and spend hours on it. But you will need to read the story afterwards.
• Use a Talking stone: Paint a special ‘talking stone’ to use with your child. Whoever holds the stone can talk and then pass the stone to the other person so they have a chance to talk.
• Praise Them: When your child is showing good listening skills, remember to praise them. This will boost their confidence and remind them of what your expectations are.
• Don’t Criticise Them: Don’t complain or criticise your ADHD child for talking too much. It’s part of who they are, and they will feel uncomfortable and unloved if you do this. You can gently guide them in private, but don’t publicly shame them.

Useful Websites:

Goblin Tools: For breaking down ideas and tasks to help compartmentalise thoughts.
MindMateGPT: An AI tool that can learn your child’s ADHD symptoms and make recommendations to help them navigate their symptoms such as suggesting breaks and offering timers to break down tasks.
6000 Thoughts Helps your child categorize their thoughts when their brain is on overdrive.
ADHD Kids – A great website full of resources and links to help your ADHD child manage through life.

Tell Us Your Story

Be honest, how much patience do you have for your ADHD child? What tools do you use to help engage with your child and help them remain focused? Let us know on our Facebook page.