24. How can I better cope with the stress encountered in managing the ADHD child?

24.1. Ten (10) Tips for "Surviving" your ADHD/ADD child are:

• Have realistic expectations on what your can or cannot do
  
• Have routines that helps the child get his work done
  
• Simplify your life - your ADHD/ADD child needs more of your time, energy and attention than other normal child
  
• Accept your child's situation and focus on his strengths and interests
  
• Be fair, firm and consistent with your discipline
  
• Teach to incompetent behaviour and counsel/punish rebellious behaviour - need to know / distinguish the difference between incompetent or rebellious behaviour by looking at his intention, rather than what he has done
  
• Avoid allowing either you or your child to become fatigued
  
• Only take your child to places where he has a chance to be successful (e.g. open park or carpeted floor where he can run around and fall, etc.)
  
• Watch less TV, not more
  
• Take good care of yourself too (e.g. enjoy sunsets, go for walks, etc.); Otherwise you may not have the energy or patience to properly guide and teach your ADHD/ADD child when he need you to do so.
  

24.2. Realise that raising a ADHD child is going to be much more difficult than raising a normal child:

• You will find that raising a normal child is a breeze if you have the experience of raising a ADHD child
  
• You will find that raising a ADHD child is a breeze, if you have experience raising an autistic child
  
• We should learn techniques that are used to handle more difficult children such as autistic children; these techniques should also prove useful for us in handling ADHD children
  
• If you need to compare your life with others, always compare your life with someone less fortunate; Then you will feel grateful that your current problem is not as bad.
  
  • For almost everyone of us, there is always someone else who is less fortunate than us as there are literally billions of people to compare with (Unless you are so unfortunate to have worst situation out of a few billion people, which is less probable than winning the S$2 million Big Sweep for a few consecutive years)
    

24.3. Realise that you cannot resolve all the different problems that the ADHD child has at the same time:

• Need to prioritise on a few weak areas to work on at any point of time
  
• Move on to the next few weak areas when the problems on the current areas have been reduced (or you have reached a stage of accepting the behaviour as it is).