It certainly can. Parents must work much harder than usual to provide the emotional support that ADHD children need.
A new mother may feel like a failure if she can’t soothe her child, or believe that she’s a bad parent or simply doesn’t know what she’s doing. But research has shown that if a parent can rise to the challenge and see her child as having special needs, she can help that child enormously.
Several important studies have found that parenting problems are most severe when a hyperactive baby is a woman’s first child. She may find it difficult to be with the child, may express anger over his difficult behavior, and may show him less love and affection.
But if a woman’s first child shows normal growth and development, she will be more confident in her parenting skills and realize that her new baby’s behavior problems are not her fault. As a result, she will continue to do all she can to be a good mother and not give up.
Unfortunately, few pediatricians are really attuned to the early signs of ADHD, and that can be a problem for new mothers. Even though we know quite a bit about ADHD in older childhood, little is known about the kinds of support that parents need in order to be the right kind of parent for a very young child with these special demands. I think that this is where parents need the most support. They need to know that this is about their child, not about them failing as new parents. They can’t say, “Oh, I just have a difficult kid” and that’s that. It means they’re going to have to rally around and work extra hard to provide what’s needed so that these problems don’t interfere with their child’s development later on.
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COULD YOU ELABORATE ON HOW THE EARLY SIGNS OF ADHD (ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER) CAN AFFECT A MOTHER’S ABILITY TO PARENT?
Posted: January 3rd, 2011 under Anti-Psychotics.
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