Adults with ADHD have difficulty staying on top of life’s demands before having children, and things often get worse as the family grows. Children add a great deal of complication to what can feel like an already hectic life. Compared to work and school, parenting can be quite unstructured. The parent needs to be the one to provide the structure of what happens, when and how.
As many couples discover, differences between the romantic partners that are easy to ignore before children arrive may become a bigger deal when a child’s welfare is involved. So a tendency toward disorganization may be annoying but tolerable until the couple has a toddler getting into everything. In addition, any imbalances in the workload may only become more pronounced as the workload increases. This may push the non-ADHD parent past the breaking point when she just can’t do any more and is desperate for assistance.
When it comes to discipline, parents with ADHD may have difficulty setting limits consistently and effectively. This may be partly because they have difficulty being consistent themselves and forget the consequences they are suppose to enforce.
In addition, after a lifetime of being punished for their misdeeds, they may hate doing that to their kids. Predictably, the price paid or not setting consistent limits is doing that children are more likely to act out, thus making the ADHD parent more prone to emotional outbursts. Contributing to this short fuse, the parent my feel overwhelmed trying to manage children’s complicated schedules of after-school activities and ensuring that everyone gets everywhere on time and with all the necessary belongings, a task that sometimes requires the skills of a professional events planner. So the parents race through their days, trying to hold it all together.
Less tangibly, distractibility and forgetfulness may be interpreted by children as a lack of interest in them. Alternatively, parents may miss the subtle and fleeting opportunities to really connect with their children. Hyperactive parents may have greater difficulties enjoying the quiet time that children need or the repetitive play that young children engage in. As a client with four children described it, that it is an agony of playing simple little games with her youngest because she felt she had done it a million times already. Another client spoke of the guilt she felt when she repeatedly brought her son to school late, since he was paying the price for her time-management difficulties. More traumatic are the late pick-ups after school or the times when the parent completely forgets to pick up the child. Finally, growing up in a messy, disorganized household doesn’t provide any of the children with a good role model or teach any organizational skills, even if the children themselves don’t have ADHD.
The effect of ADHD on a family depends on who in the family has it, how many people have it, how severely they have it, and whether the non-ADHD members have other difficulties. It also depends on what other stressors the family is facing and what strengths and support the family members can use. Parents with ADH are sometimes told to take parenting classes or read books on how to be better parents. Of course, the implications of these suggestions are usually pretty clear. Unfortunately, these parenting resources usually don’t help, since the ADHD parents already know what they’re supposed to do but can’t maintain the consistency to keep the good habit going, as with so many other demands.
Given the continued struggles of the ADHD parent, it isn’t surprising that the non-ADHD parent often becomes the overfunctioner. Attempts to shift some of the load to others can result in unsatisfactory performances, or it takes more time to teach and monitor than to do it oneself, so the pattern continues. This dynamic will persist until the non-ADHD parent becomes overloaded, burned out, and resentful.
Parenting a Child Who Also Has ADHD
As with everything else, there are both advantages and disadvantages to ADHD kids having a parent with ADHD. On the positive side, an ADHD parent can relate to the struggles that his child’s going through and can offer examples from his own life. He can also serve as a role model for dealing with adversity gracefully and persisting in the face of setbacks. This requires that the parent mostly has his act together. Ironically, some parent who suffered through their own ADHD may be even less tolerant of it in their children, because it brings up too many of their own painful memories. In addition ADHD children are better at pushing their parents to their limits, so there may be more conflict if the parents are less able to disengage.