Most parents want their children to be on a successful path and to be happy in high school or middle school before transitioning to high school. If your preteen son or daughter has ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), they are likely to face greater challenges at home and at school. Helping your preteen be happy, healthy, and well-adjusted at home and at school will require you to improve her parenting skills.

Fortunately, all it takes is watching how you interact with your child and you can use the following skills that can and will work for you:

1. Believe in your tween’s potential to be great! It can be hard to accept that your child is different from others in the way they learn, and it can be easy to forget just how important a parent’s role is in being a role model. Any preteen who can sense her parent’s concern or is aware of her concern may experience anxiety about school and develop low self-esteem as they enter adolescence. There is an old quote from the German author Goethe: “If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he should be and could be, he will become what he wants.” should be and could be.” If he treats his tween as if he is already the person he would like him to be, he will see himself capable of becoming that person.
2. Highlight their positive behavior…they’ll repeat it! All parents get mad at their tweens from time to time, and have a hard time moving on or taking impulsive actions, who wouldn’t be frustrated? However, if you find yourself nagging or yelling more, this step is especially important. Many parents easily forget to notice all the positive ways their tween behaves. Whether it’s something small like saying thank you, a random act of kindness, or completing a task. Acknowledging and praising positive actions and choices will not only improve how they see themselves, but it may also make them do it more. They may not admit it, but your attention and recognition as a parent is important even as they get older.
3. Involve them in problem solving, don’t punish them. Have you ever felt like throwing your hands in the air and yelling, “I’ve tried everything and nothing works!” If yelling, lecturing, threatening, and being punished haven’t worked, it’s time to take a different approach to managing problem behaviors. Imagine asking your preteen to do their homework after they get home from school. Now imagine finding them, five minutes later, playing video games. What is the best way to handle this if nothing else works? As frustrating as it may seem, the best approach is to remind your tween what you wanted him to do. Punishing our lost privileges only makes sense if your tween is being defiant. Being distracted is common for any tween, and for a tween with ADHD this is often the norm. Give some more thought to what goals are realistic and achievable for them at home, and reward them for each achievement until the behavior becomes routine. Doing chores can be a way to earn an allowance or privileges. Be sure to bring your tween to the table and be on the same team to discuss what needs to change, and say, “There’s a problem and I need your help to solve it.” The more you involve them and treat them as if they are mature, the better the result will be in reaching a solution.
4. Listen to them before deciding and saying “No” and know when to say “yes.” All tweens and teens should be told “no” to prevent them from making a mistake or when it’s not possible to give them what they want. Keep in mind that if your tween with ADHD senses that she is saying no reflexively, she is more likely to do what you said “no” to her impulsively. Get in the habit of listening to them and saying, “I heard what you said…” or “I know this is important to you.” Before giving them his reasoning for saying no, he models thinking and talking about things. There may be times when you need to take a deep breath, think about it, and say “yes.”
5. Consistency at home matters Whatever you do at home every day, it’s important to be consistent. Breaking routines at home or a last minute change can throw off balance a tween who often feels like they spend most of their time out of balance keeping track of things at home and school. Start actively practicing these strategies at home with your tween, and you’ll start to see a difference in the way she responds to you. Parenting is never easy and it takes patience and love for your children when using approaches to manage bad habits. Being a father is a full-time job, and yet it is the most important role you will have in her life.