Children with ADHD can be a parenting nightmare. They can be disruptive and destructive and do not respond to guidance like other children. Medication may reduce symptoms, but disruptive behaviour often persists. Is there anything that the parent can do to create change? Based on ten years' experience working with families and their children with ADHD, this book explores the dilemmas facing parents with an ADD child. About two per cent of children in the developed world are currently receiving the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder and diagnosis rates are increasing. The true incidence may be as high as five per cent. This would mean that up to 30,000 children a year in the UK alone may have ADHD. Aimed at reducing the conflicts and friction that are often a part of home and school life, the author introduces the ADDapt approach to solving behaviour problems. Addapt stands for ADD alternative parenting techniques: it is a complete, practical, easy-to-follow programme to enable parents working on their own to ameliorate disruptive behaviour patterns common to ADD. This step-by-step approach has been piloted with over 150 families and has proved to be very helpful in bringing harmony back into the parents' relationship with their child. This work brings together for the first time a variety of tried and tested methods in a comprehensive and accessible format, and goes beyond the identification of the symptoms to tackle the changes parents can make, to ensure that behaviour problems associated with ADHD are managed and reduced.
Part 1 Has your child got ADHD? why write this book? why not just take pills? what does ADDapt do? don't beat yourself up; be prepared to change; stick with it, be patient; be consistent; the ADDapt programme - step 1 keeping on task - powerful motivators; step 2 who's the boss? special time - a new approach; step 3 the home points system; step 4 tackling attention seeking ; step 5 getting your act together; step 6 task wars; step 7 the secret of commands; step 8 mastering ''things to do''; step 9 home points system. Part 2: step 10 time out for difficult behaviours; step 11 bringing it all together. Appendices: working together in partnership; special time and older children. Further reading.
In this book there are good strategies for any parent in the way we speak to our children, and he emphasises how seldom we are crystal-clear about what we really want from them. He also urges every parent to spell out that there will be a comeback for bad behaviour, which you must follow through. Pentecost points out that when it is matter of bad behaviour in ADD children, there is a great deal that boils down to bad habits. And that they find it harder to learn the rules for getting along with people. So help your child to pick up new ways of doing things, which will mean you have to learn new ways too.
If you are a parent of an ADD or ADHD child and you are flagging, read this book. You will get a lot of additional help from the list of resources.
