Parenting Your Child with ADHD by Craig Wiener

Author:Craig Wiener
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781608823987
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2012-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

Promoting Self-Management

If your child is going to care for her personal belongings, she must give up the luxury of having someone else put things away for her. She must give up the benefit of having others scurry around trying to find what she cannot locate. And she must figure out what to do when she stops an activity that is not yet completed. Sometimes it’s not worthwhile to put things away when there is a good reason to keep them handy—we all feel this way at one time or another.

Those who like things exceptionally neat and clean lean toward putting things away even if they might use them again soon. They do not mind the extra work, because they do not like the mess, and they are super-protective of their belongings. Your child, however, may prefer the opposite. She might avoid the extra work, live with the mess, and take the chance that items will get lost or damaged. Both extremes have their merits, and as is true in almost any aspect of life, a middle ground usually has the fewest drawbacks.

A person’s organizing behavior may also vary depending on the importance of protecting a specific item, the difficulty of the cleanup, and the consequences of living with the mess. For example, a disheveled bedroom or playroom has different repercussions than the same untidiness in the middle of the kitchen floor. All of this may sound complicated, but it means that your child must learn different behaviors in different circumstances.

Set firm limits. I guarantee that your child will be careless with her belongings if she has too many. She will less likely protect her belongings if you replace them too easily. She will not care where she puts them if you retrieve what she forgets. And she will have no trouble with the mess she creates if you pick up for her.

While some children are too harried or troubled to exert the energy and spend the time to be conscientious with personal belongings, many expect their parents to pick things up for them. They also assume that their parents will find or replace lost articles. Often weakness in discipline allows the carelessness to continue (see “Accommodation,” in chapter 3).

So if you feel that your child is treating you like a maid or butler, stand tall and remain steadfast. If she does not pick up her candy wrappers, for example, say, “I love you a lot, and I am upset only a little, but I keep finding candy wrappers all over the house.” Ask for her input to solve the problem, but if nothing improves, say, “I don’t know what else to do, except stop buying candy until I see that you are picking up after yourself.”

If your child continues to leave toys on the floor, talk with her about the burden of managing so many belongings at once. You can say: “Let’s put these toys in storage so you’ll have fewer to take care of. We can add more toys when all that stuff won’t be such a hassle for you to deal with.

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