Can I Expect My Child With ADHD to Have Self-Control?
Written by Cynthia Hammer, MSW
Because my husband and I spent countless hours wondering if certain behaviors could be controlled by our son’s with Inattentive ADHD, I found this excerpt from an ADDitude magazine to be essential reading.
All children past two or three years have some small degree of control over their behavior. Behavior is influenced by many factors: a child’s degree of intellectual development, the presence of developmental disorders, such as ADHD, and situations that have some motivating impact on them.
All of this is to say that there is some control that children have over their behaviors based on their age and level of development. This is also true of children diagnosed with ADHD, which is a disorder of self-regulation (and the executive functions that allow for it). This is why clinicians suggest parent training programs and school management strategies in an effort to alter a child’s behavior.
Children with ADHD are well below neurotypical children in their range of self-control and their level of development. They cannot be expected to become like other children simply by arranging additional consequences or training them in self-regulation. They can improve, of course, in terms of controlling their behavior, but they are unlikely to catch up.
ADHD medications can temporarily help with self-control. In half or more of the cases, medications can normalize behavior in those with ADHD while it is working in the brain each day that it is taken. But parents should understand that those behavior changes are not permanent. They last only as long as the medication is active. — Russell Barkley, Ph.D.