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.

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Cynthia Hammer, MSW

Cynthia Hammer, MSW, was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD in 1992 when she was 49 years old. The following year she created the non-profit organization, ADD Resources, with a mission to educate adults and helping professionals about ADHD in adults. She ran the organization for 15 years before retiring.

During the Covid isolation she wrote a book about her life with inattentive ADHD which should be published by the end of this year. In writing the book, she was dismayed to learn that children with inattentive ADHD continue to be under-diagnosed and adults with inattentive ADHD often are incorrectly diagnosed with depression or anxiety.

She created a new non-profit in 2021, the Inattentive ADHD Coalition (www.iadhd.org), to create more awareness about inattentive ADHD and the need for early diagnosis and treatment.

https://www.iadhd.org
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