Healthcare practitioners tend to look at ADHD as a deficit that needs to be fixed through medication or long-term therapy. What gets lost is the emotional burden that children with ADHD take on. They’re desperate for tools to self-regulate.
In my more than 20 years of mental health training and practice, I have yet to meet a child diagnosed with ADHD who doesn’t feel bad about him or herself from time to time. In addition to, children with ADHD struggle with an underlying belief that they are broken — that something’s wrong with them and they cannot control it.
Parents whose children have ADHD know the scenario all too well: Your child gets overly excited at an inopportune moment. You see him try to control himself, but he can’t. You or someone else tells him to calm down or stop. Your child does the exact opposite. Your patience diminishes and yourincreases; maybe you scold him more harshly than you mean to or maybe he feels the shame coming and act out even more.
Deep breathing. Taking a big, deep belly breath teaches kids that they can stop themselves and regroup. And, even better, they often feel calmer afterwards.. Children can learn body control and gain another tool for self-calming by practicing tightening and relaxing different muscle groups. In my own daily life, I have found that I can stop myself from saying or doing something I may otherwise regret by shrugging my shoulders in an exaggerated way and then dropping them back down.
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