Knowing how to discipline a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can be confusing – here’s how you can overcome this.

From the outside, children with ADHD may seem lazy, unmotivated, or willful.  Some can be aggressive, demanding, or appear hard-headed. These unattractive behaviors can provoke our desire to punish and overcorrect our children, especially when we believe the myth that their behaviors are deliberate – making it hard to discipline a child with ADHD.

Research shows parenting a child with ADHD requires more skills and patience. In this blog, we will define ADHD and discuss discipline techniques that hinder a child with ADHD from regulating and behaving better. Then we will outline several ways Mindful-Ish^™ Parenting can help you discipline your child more effectively. 

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder.  A person with ADHD has differences in brain development and brain activity. There are three types of ADHD:

• Predominantly Inattentive Presentation
• Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsive Presentation
• Combined Presentation: Symptoms of the above two types are equally present in the person.

(Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021)

A 2017 study by researchers at Ohio State University confirms that cutting back on yelling, criticism, and punishment can lead to biological changes that make it easier for a child to regulate their emotions and behavior. (Beauchaine, 2018)

The researchers studied family relations among preschool children with ADHD and their parents. They found that parents who received as little as 10 to 20 weeks of parent coaching showed significant improvement in positive parenting skills such as responding instead of reacting, encouraging, and problem-solving with their child. (Bell et al., 2018)

As harsh parent-child interactions decreased, the children in the study were able to calm down, demonstrated by less abnormal heart activity and greater impulse control.

Having a child with ADHD is challenging, but you can learn to discipline more effectively. Consider these ideas to help create a calmer and happier home life for you and your family.

Prevention is more effective than discipline. 

Create conditions that make it easier for your child to use their strengths and meet your expectations. Most “bad behavior” results from what Dr. Ross Greene, creator of Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS), calls an incompatibility episode. An incompatibility episode is when the demand being placed on the child (the expectation) outweighs their ability to meet it (cognitive capabilities). The adult insists that the child performs (meets the expectation), and the escalation increases until the adult, the child, or both negatively act out. Prevent these unnecessary, damaging situations by doing these four things:  

Understand ADHD.

People with ADHD have difficulties with a group of critical cognitive capabilities called Executive Function Skills. These skills include:

• Emotional Control – The ability to manage emotions in order to achieve goals, complete tasks, or control and direct behavior. 
• Flexibility – The ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setbacks, new information, or mistakes. It relates to the ability to adapt to changing conditions.
• Goal-Directed Persistence –  The capacity to have a goal, follow through to its completion, and not be put off by or distracted by competing interests. 
• Metacognition – The ability to stand back and take a birds-eye view of oneself in a situation. It is an ability to observe how you problem solve. It also includes self-monitoring and self-evaluative skills (e.g., asking yourself, “How am I doing? or How did I do?”). 
• Organization – The ability to create and maintain systems to keep track of information or materials. 
• Planning/Prioritization –  The ability to create a roadmap to reach a goal or to complete a task. It also involves being able to make decisions about what’s important to focus on and what’s not. 
• Response Inhibition – The capacity to think before you act – this ability to resist the urge to say or do something allows us the time to evaluate a situation and how our behavior might impact it. 
• Stress Tolerance – The ability to thrive in stressful situations and to cope with uncertainty, change, and performance demands. 
• Sustained Attention – The capacity to maintain attention to a situation or task despite distractibility, fatigue, or boredom.
• Task Initiation – The ability to begin projects without undue procrastination in an efficient or timely fashion. 
• Time Management – The capacity to estimate how much time one has, how to allocate it, and how to stay within time limits and deadlines. It also involves an ability to plan for the future. 
• Working Memory – The ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks. It incorporates the ability to draw on past learning or experience to apply to the situation at hand or to project into the future.

(Dawson, P. & Guare, R., 2018)

Punishing children for lagging skills harms self-image and self-esteem and strains your relationship with them. 

Take inventory of which skills are more difficult for your child. 

When the going gets tough, coach yourself by remembering, “If they could, they would.” A beautiful and eye-opening concept from Dr. Greene’s work is, “All children do well if they can” and, “Doing well is preferable to not doing well.” The same is true of parents.  

Enjoy one-on-one time. 

Your child is less likely to act out if they feel secure and accepted. Try to carve out a little time each day when you do something pleasant together. It could be bedtime rituals, chatting in the car, or playing a game.

Be specific. 

Make it easier for your child to meet your expectations by spelling out each step. Cleaning a bedroom is one overarching goal with several expectations, such as making your bed, putting dirty clothes in the hamper, and putting shoes away in the closet. 

• Use a visual support to show each step because many children with ADHD understand images better than words.
• Make sure your expectations are reasonable for where your child is developmentally rather than chronologically. 
• Teach your child how to meet each expectation by demonstrating or doing the task together.   

Maintaining Effective Discipline Through Mindful-Ish™ Parenting Strategies.

Mindful-Ish^™ Parenting is a responsive and holistic approach that has helped many families grow into problem-solving teams, building confidence and skills for the entire family. 

There will sometimes be lapses in our ability to be the parent we know we want to be to our children with ADHD, but a Mindful-Ish™ approach gives parents grace to mess up without giving up.  Be prepared to discipline in a way that works better than nagging, shaming, and other adversarial practices by using these Mindful-Ish^™ Parenting strategies:  

Focus on learning. Discipline means training rather than punishment. 

When your child slips up, show them what they need to do to succeed next time.

Establish priorities. 

Trying to resolve too many issues at once can backfire. Deal with one unsolved problem at a time. Work with your child to handle one situation before you tackle the next. This will create stability.

Stay calm. 

Children with ADHD may be even more sensitive than the average child and can be strongly influenced by a parent’s mood. If you can remain composed even when your child hits a sibling or keeps losing their glasses, you’ll be in a better position to work together towards lasting solutions.

Parenting a child with ADHD is similar to raising any child but requires more skills and patience. You and your child can have a loving relationship.  Believe that your child’s abilities will develop with support and your understanding of their needs. Stay positive and seek the help you need to discipline a child with ADHD. 

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Works Cited

Beauchaine, T. (2018, July 12). Keeping harsh punishment in check helps kids with ADHD, study finds. Retrieved July 31, 2022, from News.OSU.Edu

Bell, Z., Shader, T., Webster-Stratton, C., Beauchaine, T., & Reid, M. J. (n.d.). Improvements in negative parenting mediate changes in children’s … Retrieved July 31, 2022, from ResearchGate.net

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, September 23). What is ADHD? Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved July 31, 2022, from CDC.gov

Dawson, P., & Guare, R. (2018, February 28). Definition of terms. Smart But Scattered Kids. Retrieved July 31, 2022, from SmartButScatteredKids.com

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