Helping Your Child With ADHD Make Friends and Thrive
Guest post by Caroline Maguire, ACCG, PCC, M.Ed.
You watch your child with ADHD tell jokes until they are no longer funny, ignore his peer when he is bored, or talk at his play mate when clearly the play mate is not interested. As a parent this makes you wonder if children with ADHD will always struggle with friendships. Some children have a hard time making and keeping friends. While your child has many strengths, often, weak executive functions—the management system of the brain—can affect children’s social skills. All these brain-based processes directly affect how your child behaves in social situations.
When feeling bored, overwhelmed, hungry, tired or face a self-regulating challenge, children with ADHD can unintentionally forget social guidelines and make the wrong impression. The good news is that like any skill, these skills can be taught and improved.
Here are 5 Tips to Help Your Child With ADHD Make Friends:
1. Teach your child to walk in someone else’s shoes
Being able to consider their point of view is called “learning to walk in someone else’s shoes.” To help your child think about how other people feel, ask your child, how do you think other people feel when you don’t show interest? What do you think is going on in your friend’s life? What did you notice about her reaction to the situation? This will help your child develop the empathy and consideration that are essential to friendship.
2. Teach your child to engage in a “polite pretend”
The ability to fake interest or happiness and to be polite even when your child is hungry, tired or bored is what I call a polite pretend. Begin by asking him some open-ended questions, what do you think your friend felt about your behavior? How do other people feel about how you treated them? What behavior does the situation call for? This will help your child think about his actions and why performing a polite pretend may be necessary rather than hurting other people’s feelings.
3. Help your child become a social observer
Build your child’s awareness by teaching your child to be a social spy. The concept is that the child can to go into public with a mission to be a social spy where she will obtain specific social information. You will rehearse with your child ahead of time, so she learns to watch other people in a subtle, covert way and to listen without looking like she is listening. The idea is to observe a specific behavior so she can learn crucial information about her peers such as how they dress, what they talk about at lunch as well as teach to teach her how to observe and notice other people’s behavior, mood, energy and to scan and read the room.
4. Help your child learn to read the room
Help your child learn to clue into social cues by playing a game with your child, prompt your child to pick out two people in her family to observe and then to report back what their facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice are when they are angry, frustrated, nervous or frightened.
5. Help your child improve his self-regulation
Help your child learn what makes him become too excited, lose control of his body or become flooded with emotions. Help your child learn in the moment, ask your child Is there a particular topic that makes my child experience a reaction? What happened before you got excited, or felt big emotions? Arm your child with calming strategies that you design with him collaboratively, so he is prepared in the heat of the moment to head off any signs of losing control.
Caroline Maguire, ACCG, PCC, M.Ed. is a personal coach who works with children who struggle socially and the families who support them. She is a former coach for the Hallowell Center in Sudbury, MA. While with the Hallowell Center, Caroline was the main coach for children and teenagers. Her groundbreaking book Why Will No One Play With Me? teaches parents how to coach their child to develop improved social skills.
You can find her at caroinemaguireauthor.com