5 Ways to Raise a Tween with ADHD

Many parents of kids with ADHD will find that their child is diagnosed when they are in the elementary school years.

When kids grow up and become tweens (8-12) and teenagers (>13), it can bring about new challenges that you didn’t know you would encounter.

Raising a tween with ADHD isn’t always easy, but there are strategies that can make it feel a bit more manageable. In this blog post, you’ll learn quick strategies that can help your tween with ADHD thrive. 

5 Tips for Raising a Tween with ADHD:

1. Promote involvement in extracurricular activities

As kids grow up and get older, they tend to rely on their peers more than their parents in their life. By helping kids with ADHD be involved in extracurricular activities, you can help boost their self-esteem and form positive friendships. 

2. Help them prioritize tasks

Prioritization of tasks is something that parents typically manage for kids who are younger. You might be directing your child to do certain homework or chores first. As kids grow into being teens, you can help them prioritize different tasks by helping them make a list of tasks and understanding which are the most important to do first.

This handout is also helpful for kids to learn how to prioritize tasks themselves.

3. Continue to share quality time

Just because your child has more reliance on friendships doesn’t mean that they don’t want to spend time with you. I always recommend that parents find 5 minutes of quality time to spend with their tween or teenager.

This may include just talking about how their day was or playing a video game together. Try to find something that your child enjoys doing and engage with them in it. This will build trust with them and strengthen your relationship.

4. Ask them about their independence

It’s normal for kids to want more independence as they get older, and for each kid, it looks different. For some kids, they may want less reminders from their parents about doing homework.

At the same time, they may still appreciate one check-in about homework in the car. Ask how they would like you to help them build their independence around homework, chores, and friendships.

5. Monitoring screentime and setting healthy habits.

Using screens becomes much more common as kids and tweens grow up. It isn’t always a negative to use screen time; however, it is important to set some guidelines around its use.

To set up guidelines, I recommend families go through this Family Media Plan agreement together to have a discussion on what to expect.

Summary

Overall, it’s important to focus on supporting your tween with ADHD by continuing to use many of the positive strategies you’ve already learned. When talking with your tween, validate their feelings to try to understand their experience and continue to support them.

These strategies are a good stepping stone to learning how to support your child with ADHD.