ADHD by Mark Selikowitz

Author:Mark Selikowitz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Medical, Health & Well Being, Health, Nonfiction, Health Care Issues
ISBN: 9780199565030
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2009-07-08T21:00:00+00:00

Section 5

Multi-modal

treatment

93

12

Home management

06 Key points

◆ No plan of management can ever be successful if it is not based on a comprehensive assessment of the child’s particular strengths and diffi culties.

◆ Look upon the child with ADHD as someone whose behaviour and learning inadequacies are due to a hidden disability that are not of his, or his parents’, making.

◆ Before looking at ways of helping your child, it is essential to look at your own needs and concerns.

Children with ADHD are very challenging to bring up. No parent of a child with ADHD will be able to respond to every diffi culty that arises in a text-book manner. Children with ADHD often bring out the worst in their parents, and even the most patient and understanding parent is likely to make many mistakes.

All that a parent of a child with ADHD should hope to achieve is to be a ‘good enough’ parent—a parent who tries to do his or her best, who learns from his or her mistakes, and who provides support for the child through all the diffi culties that life presents.

Understanding—the fi rst step in management

No plan of management can ever be successful if it is not based on a comprehensive assessment of the child’s particular strengths and diffi culties, as described in the previous chapter, and a careful explanation to both the parents, and the child, of the nature of the condition.

Unfortunately, there is a great tendency to blame any behavioural or learning diffi culty on inadequacy on the part of the parents or an intentional failure on the part of the child. This belief is deeply rooted in the way in which we interpret children’s behaviour. Understanding ADHD requires a shift in our way of thinking about and perceiving children’s actions.

We are almost unable to think of the brain as an organ, just like the lungs or the heart, and to realize that its primary function is to control behaviour and learning.

All behaviour is controlled by the brain.

94

Chapter 12 · Home management

One often hears comments such as ‘His poor concentration is not due to ADHD, it is behavioural!’. However, to say that a behaviour is or is not ‘behavioural’ is in reality meaningless. A behaviour has to be ‘behavioural’—that is what that adjective means. What the person probably means by the word ‘behavioural’

is that the behaviour is in some way due to inadequate child-rearing, or some vague notion of ‘naughtiness’ on the part of the child. That the word ‘behavioural’ has become almost synonymous with such causation tells us a great deal about how lopsided our view of the causes of children’s behaviour has become.

There is no doubt that a child can behave in an unwanted way because of poor child-rearing experiences, but this is not the only, or necessarily the most common, cause of behavioural diffi culties.

All unwanted behaviours in children should be looked at objectively to determine causation. Some will be due to an inadequacy in the way in which the child has been reared,

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