You’ve just received (or maybe are still processing) an ADHD diagnosis for your child—and now you’re wondering, Am I doing everything I should be doing? In this episode, Dr. Tish Taylor walks you through the key areas of intervention to consider so you can move forward with clarity and confidence.
You’ll learn:
✔ The importance of parent education and training—and where to start
✔ When therapy may be helpful, and what type to consider
✔ How to think about medication as part of a treatment plan
✔ What kinds of school supports and accommodations can make a difference
✔ Additional supports like ADHD coaching, sleep routines, nutrition, and more
Helpful Resources
- Dr. Tish’s ADHD Store – Parent tools, trainings, and printables
- CHADD.org – Trusted ADHD education and advocacy
- Beyond BookSmart – Executive Function Coaching
Visual Summary
Episode 15 Transcript:
Hi. This is Tish Taylor, and welcome to this episode of ADHD Connect, my podcast where I discuss all things children and adolescents with ADHD.
So in this episode, I wanted to talk about so your child has maybe a new diagnosis, or maybe they’ve had a diagnosis of ADHD, and you’re thinking, Am I doing all that I’m supposed to be doing? So if I have this diagnosis, what’s next? What should I be doing? Because there’s no one specific thing necessarily to do for ADHD. So what I want to do in this podcast is talk about what the main areas of intervention and treatment are that we consider viable for ADHD.
So you can feel like, you know, have I covered what I need to cover? Is there anything else I should be doing? So let’s start here. Let’s say you have a younger child who has been diagnosed with ADHD, maybe as early as preschool, kindergarten, first, or second grade. So, for younger children, especially, one of the main recommendations is parent education and training. So, important areas of what I want to say, research-based intervention in terms of parent training would be parent management training.
So you could certainly Google parent management training, and you know, see what you have in your area for providers who provide that. But you could also look online or access books; people like Alan Kasden, K, a, z, d, I N, Russell Barkley, provide a lot of those skills and basic behavioral management training skills. You can also look for people who provide parent-child interaction therapy. So PCIT, there’s some of that parent management training within PCIT as well.
Or, like I said, you could look at parent management training and they will address things such as reinforcement, differential, differential, differential reinforcement. So easy for you to say, Tish, differentiating reinforcement. So, in other words, can I ignore certain behaviors while recognizing and praising others? So, you know, how do I direct my attention? For example, that is one skill taught in parent management training. How do I direct my attention to reinforce the behaviors I’m trying to reinforce and target some of those more positive behaviors and decrease some of the negative behaviors?
So that’s one area in parent management training and PCI and PCIT, you will get, so you might also get training on collaborative problem solving, right? What do I do? My child is argumentative, or they’re refusing to do certain things at times. How do I set up motivation systems? A lot of those things are encompassed in parent management training. So you can seek private providers who provide that, or, as I said, you can certainly find books or resources online. But I think it does help to work with somebody, especially if there are some challenging behaviors in the home, and along with that, you may likely have other children. And so there are other variables or caveats that may be happening as well, and how do you manage all of that with everyone, or every child in your home?
So the parent education and training is an important piece if you haven’t done that, or if you feel like you haven’t explored that fully. There are also things on my website, in my ADHD store, or some of my previous podcasts that may help with the second thing you would want to do, a lot of parents think, you know, is there something I can do for my child? What can they do to, you know, get better, especially, essentially. And so what I would recommend is that some people seek out, you know, should we do therapy? And in instances when a child has trouble with emotional regulation, so they have big emotions, they may overreact to situations, or have big reactions to situations.
Stress levels higher their their mood tends to fluctuate more than than most, and trouble kind of regulating that those are that would be a good example of where therapy could come in and be helpful in helping a child be more emotionally self aware and develop some coping skills around that cognitive behavior therapy has shown some efficacy, and so a lot of those skills can be pared down for some younger children, but certainly older children and teens can definitely benefit from cognitive behavior therapy, especially if there’s challenges with emotional regulation, anger management, anxiety and stress and even some depression, some depressive related symptoms. So in all of those instances, therapy could be a helpful tool. It could also be a helpful tool. If there are just environmental circumstances that are more challenging, for example, a recent family divorce, or something like that, that’s causing more stress and strain. Medication.
Certainly, an intervention that can be very viable. So you know that, you know it could be up to parent choice, of course, but I would say that it is, it is very helpful in many cases. So in most cases, I see you do see some efficacy and some help from medication and so I’m not trying to tread too lightly, but it’s not something I try to force on people in my own practice, but I do talk with with parents if it’s a more moderate to severe case of ADHD, a lot of times, medication is a big help. Are there side effects to medication? There certainly can be, but it might depend on the exact medication and how your child responds to it, and your medical provider or a psychiatrist would have more specific information on that.
However, that certainly can be a viable intervention, and often is a very helpful intervention for many individuals with ADHD in school or another area. So a fourth area would be school supports and accommodations. So it depends on the child, depends on the severity of the ADHD, may depend on, and oftentimes depends on their presentation and their presentation at school. A lot of times, the presentation is very similar at home and school, but sometimes it’s a little different.
So, whatever school supports, and accommodations would help them, and you know, gaining access to what they need to regulate any emotions or behavior in the school setting and manage tasks, work completion, and get the information they need. So a lot of times students with with um, a lot of times, students with ADHD have some kind of accommodation plan, even if it’s, you know, providing smaller accommodations for test taking, or, you know, having assistance getting things turned in, or maybe extended deadlines at times. So it just depends, again, on what the presentation is. If it’s a combined type or hyperactive, impulsive presentation, there may need to be some accommodations or resources or assistance with managing behaviors in the school setting, like some motivation systems, things like that.
And so the best place to start would probably be the school counselor or somebody on that school support team, or maybe even the teacher. So seeing, you know, what can I do in regards to school and and also working with school, if there’s spillover to the home, like they’re having trouble getting things done during the day, now we have some homework, and they’re very challenged in regards to attention and focus after, you know, later in the day, so that may be an issue. So even having that ongoing communication with the teacher or school staff can be very helpful. So those four areas are definitely important, and then the other things that can be helpful would be ADHD coaching for, or I’d say, older children and teens.
So it’s not the same as therapy, but it is. It would be a professional person who works with executive functioning skills, task management skills, and just helps the child develop their own skill set, routines, and schedules that help them do what they need to do in regards to organization, task management, and executive functioning. So you can find that there are different levels of people who do that. You can also find companies such as Beyond Book Smart, which do that really professionally and have locations in different cities, and focus highly on executive functioning coaching. Other things to really, you know, still think about in terms of day-to-day life would be sleep.
So some individuals with ADHD have some real sleep challenges. So whatever you can do to manage Sleep, sleep routines, and if you feel like your child does have a sleep disorder, it would make sense to start with the pediatrician, to talk more about that and see if you need to do more intervention in that area. Meditation and mindfulness are other things to consider. You know, again, this is not at this point; it’s not recommended as an important intervention for ADHD. However, some people do practice that in terms of just kind of regulating themselves and learning some of those basic skills in terms of, you know, stopping, recognizing what’s happening inside of me, breathing, and slowing myself down.
So it can be helpful. I’m not going to say it’s not going to cure ADHD, and it’s not a major intervention recommended from a research point of view for ADHD, but it can certainly be something helpful, diet and eating. So being mindful, and I know there are lots of you know, a lot of children can be picky. They can refuse to eat certain things, and I know that that can be a challenge. I’m not overlooking that, but being mindful.
Of are we getting enough of a balance within our diet, and are we getting enough food and fuel throughout the day so some kids with ADHD can burn those calories quickly, and so making sure they’re fueled up throughout the day at key points before they get really hangry can be important, and making sure they’re sustained with enough protein and those good nutrients through the day would be important.
So hopefully that gives you some kind of checklist about, you know, now my child has ADHD, or my child has ADHD, and what do I do? Am I doing everything I can? And so certainly, you can also access places like chad.org, C, H, A, D, d.org, and they provide just a wealth of information about ADHD in general. So hopefully this has been helpful. Feel free to contact me with any questions, and I hope you have a great one.
