Thriving with ADHD’s 5 C’s

 

Thriving with ADHD’s  
5C's Parenting Framework

 

The Thriving with ADHD’s 5C’s Parenting Framework is a parenting guide that helps parents raise well adjusted individuals with ADHD. It does this by assisting parents to:

  • create and maintain a healthy relationship with their child by fostering, supporting and protecting the child-parent bond; maintaining two-way open communication; and promoting a positive, yet realistic sense of self
  • cultivate attachment-driven motivation
  • gently nurture self-awareness, self-acceptance and self-compassion, as well as social and emotional knowledge and skills
  • open up teachable moments – moments in which children with ADHD are more likely to be receptive to participating in self-reflection, collaboration, redirection, and educational and supportive interventions
  • slowly foster problem-solving skills and the development of personalised strategies and tools that they can use to help manage their challenges.

The 5C’s are:

  • Connection
  • Composure
  • Compassion
  • Collaboration
  • Consistency

 

Please note: The skill of listening with empathy must be regularly practiced by parents in order to successfully fulfil each component of the 5C’s parenting framework. 

 

Connection: focus on your relationship with your child; spend one-on-one time with them; give them your full attention; have fun together; enter their world and let them choose and direct play activities; make them feel safe, heard and valued; let them know you love them; focus on the positive; encourage their strengths and interests; show respect and appreciation; honour their boundaries; keep them company during tasks that tax their executive functions; support them to cope with their emotions.

Composure: be patient with your child; manage your own emotions; breathe before responding; remind yourself that ADHD symptoms can manifest as challenging behaviour (and that this behaviour results from your child’s developmental delay and lagging executive function skills and not intentional or purposeful disobedience); give directions in a calm, matter of fact manner; describe don’t judge; be a good role model.

 

Many experts believe children with ADHD may receive 20,000 more negative messages than their neurotypical peers by the age of 12. These messages have a detrimental effect on a child with ADHD’s self-esteem and self-worth, can further exacerbate their emotional regulation challenges, and contribute towards the development of oppositional and defiant behaviour as well as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and drug and alcohol dependence. Therefore please always consider, will your words and actions reduce or increase the number of negative messages your child with ADHD receives?

 

Compassion: accept your child has ADHD and love them regardless; ensure you have an in depth understanding of their disorder; listen and show compassion when they struggle; validate their feelings and experiences even if you find it hard to relate to them; set them up for success and keep them safe by either reducing the expectations placed upon them so they align with their executive function age or by putting in place scaffolding that helps to bridge the gap between their executive function capacity and any expectations placed upon them; honour their individual developmental pace; act as their cheer leader and advocate; offer frequent praise and positive reinforcement.

 

Collaboration: access the teachable moments that open up when the first 3 C’s are in place; use the coach approach to help your child identify both their challenges (lagging skills) and strengths, to gently foster their knowledge and skills, and to assist them to put in place self-determined supportive strategies; and encourage a strength-based approach.

Coach approach: use diplomacy; explore options for resolving problems together; ask them what they think would help them; encourage problem solving; stay open to possibilities; give them a choice; involve them in any rule setting or decision making; provide motivating praise which qualifies the behaviour you are acknowledging and provide rewards as required.

Remember: The aim is to protect your child’s self-esteem, to set them up for success, and to keep them safe while you slowly foster in them the ability to independently manage their challenges using a strength based approach. Therefore, based upon your child’s age and developmental stage, it is important to find the balance between providing parent-initiated protective scaffolding and collaboratively assisting your child to develop and maintain personalised tools and strategies.

When a child is very young, one would expect the amount of parent-initiated scaffolding in place to greatly outweigh the amount of collaboratively developed scaffolding. This parent-initiated scaffolding often needs to be increased, adapted, reduced or maintained depending upon your child’s current needs and circumstances.

However, over time it is hoped that this mix will slowly move towards equilibrium, and that sometime in adulthood the amount of collaboratively developed scaffolding in place will overtake the amount of parent-initiated scaffolding, and be accompanied by independently developed tools and strategies.

 

Consistency: set, maintain and continually role model rules and expectations; be fair but firm; be flexible in your approach but do not break your word or give in to badgering; make clear requests of your child; promote attainable (and possibly scaffolded) responsibility; focus on outcomes; praise and reward positive behaviour; set clear and fair consequences for any negative behaviour that is not symptomatic of their disorder and act swiftly should you need to; avoid punitive punishment.

 

 

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Kids desire to feel loved and appreciated for who they are, and to feel safe and valued. When this need is met, it fosters the motivation required to want to behave in a way that pleases their parents in order to protect their bonded relationship.

 

 

Updated 6th December 2109