chapter10

Undoubtedly you already know how stressful it can be to raise a child with ADHD. These children require a lot more monitoring and supervision than other children as they launch headlong into life with all its hazards. They can be demanding, defiant, loud, selfish, and aggressive; even their more benign incessant talking takes its toll. One recent study showed that parents of children with ADHD, especially those of preschool/kindergarten age, suffer higher levels of stress, depression, and self-blame than parents of children without ADHD. Another study showed, in fact, that parents of children with ADHD endure the same stress levels as parents of children with severe developmental disabilities, such as mental retardation and autism. To make matters worse, many parents also end up socially isolated as relatives, friends, and neighbors try to avoid contact with the family.

As I’ve seen all too often, this pattern can carry parents along on a downward spiral that leaves them drained and exhausted, demoralized and in despair. Taking care of their child has left them nothing for themselves, and ultimately this leaves them with no resources to care for the child either. Obviously, that’s a situation that serves no one.

I can’t pretend to give you a panacea for all of the ills that can strike a family struggling with ADHD. A certain amount of stress is inevitable. It does not, however, have to destroy you or anyone else in your family. So this chapter is just for you: some specific tips and general suggestions for preventing stressful events, minimizing the impact of the unavoidable ones, and giving yourself the break that you richly deserve.

The first thing you need to do to reduce the number of stressful events that you have to cope with is identify the exact sources of your stress. Many parents I’ve worked with seem to focus on their emotional reactions to stress, rather than on the sources of that stress. They in fact mistake one for the other and believe they need to eliminate the feelings of tension, irritability, depression and sadness, the fatigue, and the headaches, rather than the events that are precipitating them. Granted, there are stressful events that can’t be avoided—more of them for you than for parents of children without ADHD. For these you will have to resort to stress reduction techniques such as formal relaxation methods, meditation, exercise, perhaps even medication in extreme cases. But in other cases—and you might be surprised by how many—you can identify and avoid or at least reduce the source of the stress and head it off. Try this simple method:

1. When you have some quiet time, sit down with paper and pencil and think back over the times in the last few weeks when you felt stress reactions: irritability, anger, hostility, anxiety, or depression. Then list the stressors—not how you felt, but the events that immediately preceded each stress reaction. What was it about that situation that you think may have precipitated your stress response? What did your child or someone else do that elicited this negative reaction from you? What did others do to your child? What might your spouse have done? What event came up that made you feel this way? Leave a few blank lines after each stressor you identify.

2. Now look closely at the first event. What could you have done to avoid or eliminate that event or problem? Did your reaction worsen the situation? Would any of Dr. Covey’s seven principles (see the Introduction) have helped you eliminate the stressor? Or would any of the 14 principles for raising a child with ADHD (see Chapter 9) have helped you avoid the situation? Can you see how any of these principles might help you eliminate or avoid this stressor the next time around? Or can you simply plan to avoid the stressful event or person altogether? Write down at least one coping method after each of the stress events listed.

3. Now focus on one (or at most two) of these stressors and resolve either to avoid the stressor in the future or, if it is unavoidable, to use your coping method the next time the event arises. Close your eyes and visualize yourself responding differently and more effectively in just that situation.

4. Remind yourself of your plan by posting small notes to yourself around your home and work space.

5. Take a few minutes each day to practice visualizing your use of this new action plan. This practice will fortify your confidence that you can in fact head off the source of stress when it threatens to rise again.

6. Once your confidence has been built up or you have actually tried the new plan, move on to another stressor or two. Work on only one or two stressors at a time until you’ve mastered or eliminated them; then move on to one or two more. Success here comes in small steps as you deal with just one or two stressors at a time, not by trying to deal with all of them at once.

Because stress seems to be a part of life for everyone these days, many effective techniques have been devised for reducing its negative impact. Any professional you’re working with can steer you to sources of more information on the subject, but so can the Internet, your local librarian, or a bookseller. You can even find audio recordings and videos that will teach some of the best-known methods. Space limitations make it impossible to go into depth here, so only a few brief suggestions follow.

Most of us respond quickly and impulsively to a stressful event. When we’re emotionally aroused—angry or anxious—we get physically aroused as well: our pulse quickens, we may feel flushed, and adrenaline readies us for “fight or flight.” Unfortunately, none of this contributes to mental sharpness. In fact, it’s those impulsive responses that we usually end up regretting. So sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. If the only way to delay your response is to get away, just leave the room for a brief time or send your child away with a calm “I’ll discuss this with you in a few minutes.”

When you’re confronting a stressful encounter with your child, try simply waiting to let your mind play on the situation and its possibilities. This doesn’t mean filling your mind with thoughts like “Oh, what will I do? What will I do?” or “I know I can’t handle this” or “This won’t work, I have no options, and I don’t know what to do.” Rather, try to remain calm and let your mind engage the problem. That’s the wonderful thing about the human mind: the only thing you have to do to help it come up with ideas is not interfere with its natural problem-solving ability. Just give it a little time.

Many people use relaxation techniques on a regular basis to lower their overall stress level. Because these techniques can have a considerable preventive effect, they’ll serve you well when you’re facing an upcoming stress event that can’t be avoided. For example, say the school has called to say your child is being sent home for starting a fight with another child and you must meet with the principal the next day. Stress is likely to build before the meeting as you ponder the possible repercussions. Practicing techniques like progressive muscle relaxation can keep you from blowing the situation way out of proportion. There are many books that sum up this method and others. Progressive muscle relaxation involves deep breathing and relaxing of each muscle group in turn, followed by mental imagery of yourself in a relaxing, beautiful place. It’s easy to learn but is most effective when you’ve had some practice, so anticipate stress and start practicing ahead of time.

Another way to avoid blowing things out of proportion is to broaden your focus when you are involved in a stressful situation. Try to avoid zeroing in on the small details and instead focus on the entire situation from the perspective of your own or your child’s lifetime. This can often help you realize that the stressful event is not as important as you are making it out to be, that it can be managed, and that even if it does not go well, it is not as big a deal as you may think. At the school meeting in our earlier example, you could listen to the details of what the principal is saying while concentrating on the fact that this is just one school meeting, that the opinions expressed are not final and will not cause havoc in your life or your child’s, and that as an executive parent you are ultimately in charge of this meeting and of what happens to your child.

Before and throughout a stressful situation, visualize how you want the situation to turn out for your child. Keeping your positive goals in mind can lessen the impact of negative remarks, decrease the intensity of your own reactions, and thus avoid heightening the conflict and worsening its outcome.

Raising a child with ADHD places huge demands on the mind, body, heart, and spirit. To replenish yourself emotionally, feel more in control of your life, and better equip yourself to handle unexpected stressful events, consider the following suggestions. You’ve heard many of them before, but there’s bound to be something new as well. You deserve to take as good care of yourself as you do your child, and that means setting aside some time for yourself. If you’re tempted to protest that you have no time, see the suggestions in the sidebar (One Key to Survival: Time Management).

Sometimes the only way to renew your energies is to get away. Don’t hesitate to do this. Go by yourself and have your spouse/partner look after your child. Visit a friend, go to a spa, loll on the beach with a good book, or do something that appeals uniquely to you. Recharging your emotional batteries and catching up on your sleep are well worth the trouble of arranging this getaway. If there’s someone you trust to care for your child, try to get away with your spouse/partner now and then as well—adult relationships need renewal too.

One Key to Survival: Time Management

Time management does not come naturally to most people because it is not really time management at all. Time cannot be manipulated or managed; it just is and seems to flow along. Time management is self-management to the passage of time, a skill to be acquired. It takes practice and effort, but its rewards can be enormous—especially in families affected by ADHD, where parents have so many demands on them.

There are many excellent books in libraries and bookstores that can give full details on how to manage your time effectively. Most of them begin by explaining that your first step must be to set specific, well-defined, reasonable goals for both the long and short terms. When you do this you end up with a plan for each day, each week, each month—a plan that you can follow realistically, giving you the sense of satisfaction that you have achieved what you set out to do. A child with ADHD, by nature disorganized and disruptive, can make you feel as if your life has no order whatsoever, so getting this sense of accomplishment is particularly important to you.

Experts on time management divide time use into five categories: important and urgent, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, neither urgent nor important (busy work), and wasted time. Knowing the difference can help you identify where your work usually falls, and can perhaps show you how to alter the nature of your current home or job activities to achieve your goals.

1. Important and urgent. Tasks that must be done immediately or in the very near future. Because they are urgent and important, they often get done. Usually this is not where time gets wasted.

2. Important but not urgent. It is here that effective parents can be readily distinguished from ineffective ones. These are tasks that you or others consider important for you to do, but they are not urgent. Most of the time you simply never get around to doing them. Time management can help elevate these personal priorities to a more urgent status so that you do get them done. Taking time for personal renewal, for exercise, for connecting with close friends, or for your intimate relationship with your partner often falls into this category and gets neglected to your longer term detriment.

3. Urgent but not important. Often minor or trivial stuff that others make urgent with their deadlines but that, if thought about, are of only modest importance. Yet because they are urgent (immediate) you may give more attention to these than to your more important but less urgent goals. Returning e-mails, text messages, postings on Facebook, and answering requests through the mail can fall into this category because we feel as if we must respond to them as quickly as we can or as requested by others. The vast majority, however, are not important.

4. Busy work. This can involve tasks of marginal importance, such as housework, returning unsolicited telephone calls, running errands, reviewing junk mail, yard work, and the like. You may do them before the important ones because they are brief and diversionary or give you a feeling of productivity, but they rarely contribute to your real goals for yourself or your child with ADHD.

5. Wasted time. Whether it’s watching lousy TV shows or 24-hour cable news networks, sitting through a bad movie, or attending an unnecessary committee meeting, this type of activity usually makes you feel you could have spent the time better doing something else. Most people think this is the cause of their poor time management, but usually, experts say, the real cause is allocating too much time to categories 3 and 4 and not enough to category 2. Take a look at how you spend your time. Could this be true of you?

Watch out for the real time wasters too: indecision, blaming others for your lack of time, pursuing perfection instead of excellence, getting off-track because of distracting stimuli, trivial social networking (e-mail, instant messaging, texting, Facebook posting, etc.), and letting those little tidbits of time spent waiting go unfilled.

10

Just for Parents

HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF