Leadership Parenting: The Gift of ADHD

If you or your child have been diagnosed with ADHD you may be wondering why I’m saying it can be a gift. Let me start with a bit of my personal story and then talk about what you can do.

As as I discuss in my first book “The ADHD Fix” I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until middle age. Until then I had been told that I was lazy in school, not achieving to my potential and was just not trying hard enough to focus on boring things. The diagnosis I received was not only liberating but necessary to set me on a path to fix this.

When I started to understand how to harness this ADHD energy things got better very quickly. My ADHD is in the more moderate range and although I am very oppositional I can tone it down enough to not get into too much trouble with authority figures-unless they are politicians.

When I looked for strategies I found a number of them and started to incorporate them into my life. As I write this column I am guided by my whiteboard that has all of the different things I’m working on written in bold print. I also use a software tool I created www.goaltracker.ca that is very helpful in letting me dump my brain when I have too many ideas to be effective. I can also write in long term goals and link them to daily tasks I must accomplish. It gives me structure when I have an unstructured day. Of all the strategies I explain in the online training program www.adhdsuccessu.com the Prescriptive Exercise and the Box strategy are the most effective for me. They allow me to focus on many different projects during the day, but while I am focused on one, able to totally immerse myself into that experience ignoring all others.

If you or your child have been diagnosed with ADHD remember that better days are ahead. You certainly can’t be responsible for having the diagnosed condition but it is your responsibility to do something about it. Get started today.

Dr. Henry J. Svec is the author of Don’t be a Wimp Raise a Strong Leader: Parenting Strategies from Conception to Late Adulthood and is a Clinical Psychologist in Private Practice at osrclinics.com He is also the author of The ADHD Fix and the online training tool www.adhdsuccessu.com