Dr G"s ADHD Chat

While punishment is generally ineffective with ADHD, there are those parents who take it to extremes and want to protect their ADHDer from any negative events in his/her life. This is long term disastrous. Your ADHDer is going to have to deal with a society and an educational system that is not designed for his/her brain. Therefore succeeding is going to require the kind of persistence and resilience that comes from succeeding in spite of obstacles like ADHD. They need to know that they can

ADHD looks like a behavior problem, but is a neurotransmitter problem that is genetic. Due to the lowered levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, punishment has no effect on ADHD, but praise is especially effective because it increases dopamine production. ADHDers will make great behavioral changes when praised, so praise is the most powerful tool for parenting ADHD children.

Science has gone from not knowing if ADHD is real, to defining what causes it asa genetic factor that causes chronic low levels of essential neurotransmitters, mainly dopamine. Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that allow brain neurons to communicate.

With so many myths about ADHD still believed by many people, there are major consequences for ADHDers. ADHD children frequently develop anxiety and depression and low self-esteem. If the parenting style is too strict, there is the chance of developing an oppositional personality stance.

We had a previous episode about myths concerning ADHD. This episode goes into even more myths and briefly discusses how, though seemingly harmless, these myths cause a lot of difficulties for ADHD families.

ADHDers have a significant problem. They look normal. This causes people to think that their behavior is a result of a behavior disorder. This leads to trying punishment to change the behavior. ADHD is not a behavior problem, it is a neurologic disorder characterized by insufficient neurotransmitters, particularly dopamine. Punishment is not very effective even with neurotypical children, but it is totally worthless with an ADHDer.

ADHD parents should focus on building confidence in their ADHD children. This, combined with resilience, allows your ADHD child to make mistakes and recover.

While ADHD has only existed as a diagnosis since 1987, symptoms of ADHD have been described in medical literature since at least 1780. In spite of this rich and varied clinical history, a number of myths about ADHD persist. In this episode, we will discuss a number of the major myths that are still believed by many people to this day.