Three Strategies for Supporting a Teen with ADHD

Supporting a child who struggles with ADHD is hard, too. When these two hards meet, you may feel like millions of other parents — exhausted and alone, constantly losing your patience, and grappling with the feeling that nothing you do ever seems to make a difference. And don’t forget the guilt you experience from all of it.

As adulthood looms, you may also find yourself growing increasingly concerned about your child’s ability to manage their own life without assistance.

Know that there are millions of individuals in the exact same situation, and that there are abundant books, videos, and workshops available to help you navigate the many challenges you face. For now, though, here are three simple ways that you can better support your child.

1. Remember What It’s Like to Be a Teen

Remember that teens aren’t…well…fully formed people yet. Even without ADHD to deal with, impulse control, responsibility, and attention can be challenging. So, in many ways, they’re already facing ADHD with a disadvantage.

Teens with ADHD have it rough. Our understanding of the disorder and its management has evolved in recent years. Medication and therapy have changed lives but haven’t solved a fundamental problem: Having ADHD doesn’t absolve you of the responsibilities that increase with age. Teens with ADHD still have to show up to class on time. They still need to remember to do their chores and feed the fish. They need to keep track of sports schedules. And it’s simply more difficult for them than it is for their neurotypical counterparts.

ADHD is true disability and is recognized by the United States Social Security Administration and American Psychiatric Association among many worldwide authorities. Unlike other disabilities (such as motor impairments), ADHD isn’t obvious and outwardly visible, so it can be a challenge to consistently remember that many of your child’s more frustrating attributes aren’t malicious, ignorant, or lazy.

So stop and try to remember what it was like to be a teen. If you’re like most, it was bedlam — a frothing pit of insecurity, relationships, newfound independence, and anxiety. Keep that recollection in mind as often as you can when you find yourself saying, “We just talked about this,” “Calm down,” or something that begins with, "Why can’t you just…”

2. Familiarize Yourself with ADHD’s Challenge Domains

While the medical community’s understanding of ADHD continues to change, the spectrum of behavioral symptoms that tend to accompany it are in many ways well-understood and agreed upon.

You could spend weeks learning about every one of these symptoms, but for the sake of supporting your teen in a practical way, it can be helpful to familiarize yourself with a summarized list of broad “challenge domains.”

1. Personal Organization (Including Time Management)

2. Intention Drift (Lack of Follow-Through)

3. Avoidance (and Procrastination)

4. “Hyperfixation”

5. Motivational Deficit

6. Distraction

7. Impulse Control

Note: If your teen seems to struggle with a few of these “challenge domains,” then they likely struggle with most or all of them to some degree.

Becoming familiar with these challenges better equips you to understand why your teen behaved the way that they did in specific situations — what they did or failed to do.

3. Let Them Get Creative with Strategies

If your teen asks you to “hang their field hockey gear on the door handle so that they don’t leave the house without them,” it can be easy to roll your eyes, make a dismissive comment, or flat-out refuse. This can leave your teen feeling disempowered. The fact is, many teen with ADHD enter adulthood having never developed coping strategies that work for them; when they do, it’s a wonderful thing, and you should encourage it through tolerance. Doing so may require you to compromise a bit. Hanging field hockey gear on the door handle and “cluttering up the house” is less stressful than feeling unsure whether or not your teen will remember it.