Children With ADHD Benefit From Positive Parenting and Proactive Clinical Approach

Greg Mattingly, MD, Midwest Research Group, St Charles, Missouri, explains positive parenting techniques, the importance of academic recovery, and ways clinicians can create successful treatment plans alongside parents.

In the previous Part 1, Dr Mattingly discusses creating a structured routine for children with ADHD and how those routines will differ between summer vacation and the school year.

Read the transcript:

As we think about this next school year, a lot of our families have been stressed. The good news is a lot of parents have gotten to see, as they're at-home educators with their children, some of their children's struggles: struggles academically, struggles with organization, struggles with time management.

Parents now, in a lot of ways, have become more observant of some of the struggles with their children. Some of these parents are very stressed. Instead of resorting to positive parenting, many of them have fallen back on what we call negative parenting: scolding, discipline, getting frustrated.

As we shift into next year, we need to shift into how we shift into a positive parenting model. I want you to talk to your kids with encouragement about the school year. Share something each day that was something cool they learned in a positive way, and then complement them for sharing that fact back with you.

When you sit down to study together, make it fun. Quiz them. Make it a game. Give them a lot of praise and a lot of love. Positive parenting's going to be the rule this next year, more important than ever.

Finally, I want to talk to you about something that we all know, but it's something that we're going to struggle with over the next year. Children with ADHD and children that have learning differences has had a widening achievement gap over the past year.

Numerous studies from the Fairfax School District, the Center of Disease Control (CDC), and studies around the world have shown that children with ADHD have struggled with virtual and hybrid learning.
We see, when we look at their achievement scores, unfortunately, children with ADHD and especially children with ADHD who have any type of an individualized education plan. Those children have fallen behind academically over the past year. We've seen a widening achievement gap between children with ADHD and children without ADHD.

This next year needs to be a year of academic recovery. When we think about academic recovery, once again it's going to be planning over the summer to optimize our entrance into school, making sure the medicine is optimized, making sure daily structure is optimized, making sure positive parenting is optimized in the lives of our children.

Next year as kids go into school, I'm going to encourage all the clinicians out there to have a proactive approach to the school year.

Think about now having a back-to-school visit with your kids between now and before they start school to make sure medicine's right, but then have a visit 2 to 4 weeks into the school year to make sure your kids with ADHD are launching into the school year in a positive way.

That launch has never been more important. We're going to have to overcome hurdles. We're going to have to overcome some of the achievement gaps that have built up with our kids with ADHD, so proactive planning in the summer with proactive planning as we start the school year for our children.

We know our children with ADHD; they're filled with love, they're filled with energy. They can be filled with joy. They can also be filled with frustration. Keeping things positive, being proactive, thinking through the treatment plan with our children and their parents, has never been more important.

Thank you for joining me for this section on back-to-school and some of the challenges of ADHD.

Greg Mattingly, MD, is a physician and principal investigator in clinical trials for Midwest Research Group, St Charles, Missouri and a founding partner of St. Charles Psychiatric Associates, St Charles, Missouri. He earned his medical degree at Washington University, St Louis, Missouri. Dr Mattingly is board certified in adult and adolescent psychiatry and is a Diplomat of the National Board of Medical Examiners. He is an Associate Clinical Professor at Washington and has been a principal investigator in over 200 clinical trials focusing on ADHD, anxiety disorders, major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.