Need advice badly!!! ADHD child

There are a lot of different ways to handle morning routines. It would help if you specified exactly what the issues are so that more specific help could be given.

Some general things that might help would be picking clothes out the night before, filling backpack the night before, choosing a breakfast, having a “check off” chart. There are many more things you can do but it would depend on what you need. :)

I agree with scifinut about being a bit more specific about what is going wrong. For example, does your child get distracted or is your child more defiant?

Also, along with the list scifinut gave, I would add, getting a good night’s sleep and eating a healthy diet (reduce sugar and processed foods, up protein and eat better carbs). The diet alone did wonders for my child.

Alot of what is going on is just melt-downs. He is also very defiant and just does not want to get moving. Am I not giving him enough time to get himself together? Things are pretty rushed around our home when getting ready for school. I try to get as much together the night before as I can. He has some problems with going to sleep and I try to make sure that he does avoid sugar especially right after school. When it comes to his med, he use to always take it with no fuss. Now he is starting to hold it in his mouth until he makes himself gag on it. It is just a major struggle between me and him just about every morning. I am constantly sayin “I need for you to eat your breakfast” and “_____ I need for you to put your shoes on.” I find myself repeating myself a dozen times over. I know that his medi has not kicked in at this point and problems are to be expected. I was just wondering if any of the parents had found a system that worked well for them that I could try when it comes to mornings and school.

A friend of mine with a difficult son found that if she woke up a little early and gave her son his pill 20 minutes before it was time for him to get up then his med had time to kick in and he was better able to get ready in the morning.

You may also want to talk with his doctor about the sleep issue. If he is having difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep, that will contribute to difficulties in the morning. Missing sleep can also cause more severe ADHD symptoms. A sleep study might be helpful to see what is going on with his sleep habits.

A friend of mine with a difficult son found that if she woke up a little early and gave her son his pill 20 minutes before it was time for him to get up then his med had time to kick in and he was better able to get ready in the morning.

You may also want to talk with his doctor about the sleep issue. If he is having difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep, that will contribute to difficulties in the morning. Missing sleep can also cause more severe ADHD symptoms. A sleep study might be helpful to see what is going on with his sleep habits.

Okay, this is going to sound off the wall but, the best advice I got from a doctor concerning the sleep issue was to give my son a half a cup of hot coffee half hour before bedtime (little creamer is okay). It has something to do with the fact that a little bit of caffeine has an actual calming affect but you have to make sure that he doesn’t get too much of it during the day.
As for the mornings, my son is extremely distractable and yes, we had to slow our mornings way down in order for him to stay caught. He gets up at 5:30 and his morning is on a time table. Half an hour to eat his breakfast, half hour to get dressed aned half hour to get his stuff together and brush his teeth. If and only if he gets done sooner, he gets to watch his favorite cartoons or shows til the bus comes. You will be surprised how many days a week he gets a full half an hour of his tv before school.
Barbara

I was so in your shoes a couple of years ago. My son would take [b]forever [/b]just to do the simplest things. What finally worked for us was: 1. Stop yelling, I had to reallize that it was not working for either one of us, just made things worse. 2. I actually asked what he needed to help get him going in the mornings. He told me more time to sleep. I began putting him to bed earlier. 3. Wake him up 30 min. early to shower. We got his clothes and back pack out and ready the night before, all he had to do was get up and get into the shower that I had waiting for him. This was our routine from 1st grade all the way through 2nd grade. He was happy and so was I. These days he does much better just waking up, sometimes we still need the morning shower, but just occasionally. I wish you the best of luck! Hang in there!
Steph