ADD: The Game Plan

Behaviors, relationships, spiritual life

Behaviors
Behavioral areas include the ways parents and children cope and react. These reactions can be divided into reflexive reactions, which usually do not include any thought processes about consequences (impulsivity), and consequential responses, which include some processing before action. The assessment of forecasting and expecting the consequences of his or her behavior is a feature of self-control (impulsive behavior). The child with little awareness often creates more significant consequences out of the frustrated need for impact from external sources, such as teachers, parents, and law enforcement. The general dimension is not necessarily "good" behavior (accommodating to regimens), but appropriate and flexible behavior (behavioral adaptations to conflicts and demands). In the family meeting consider a variety of situations in which the child reacted without regard to the consequences (teacher responses, peer responses, and so forth).

Home Relationships and Harmony
ADD can affect a child's home relationships and family harmony by triggering rebellion by the ADD child toward parental authority or tension with siblings who resent all of the attention demanded by the ADD child.

Social Relationships
How does your ADD child get along with others? This includes friends and siblings, teachers, and other adult authority figures. Does your child make friends easily, or does he tend to be a loner? Does he welcome interaction and human contact, or shy away from it? Do others seek him out, or do they shun him?

Spiritual Life
A child's sense of spirituality may be limited to talk of guardian angels or fairy godmothers, or when faith is more a part of a family's life, it can be well defined in the context of organized religion. In many cases, children who feel disenfranchised because of ADD search for reasons that may lead them to question or refute their spiritual beliefs. Often this is merely an act of anger and frustration rather than a conscious rejection of their spiritual beliefs. They may lack sophisticated philosophies about a supreme being, but that will not stop them from asking questions about why they've been chosen to suffer. Some may embrace their faith and pray for help. Others may question their faith and ask how a loving God could allow them to suffer. Use the 1-10 scale to determine how much ADD has affected your child's spirituality, the sense of specialness and assurance.