Many grandparents may find modern childcare practices and diagnoses, like ADHD, confusing or unfamiliar. It’s natural for them to feel unsure or even helpless when trying to understand ADHD, especially if it's not something they encountered when raising their own children. While the diagnosis may be new to them, grandparents often want to support their grandkids in any way they can—they just need the right tools and information to help.
Parenting a child with ADHD is challenging, exhausting, frustrating, and isolating. But a grandparent occupies a crucial role in the family and can provide tremendous support for a grandchild with ADHD — or become a heart-wrenching part of the problem.
Learning how to help a grandchild with ADHD establishes you as a bastion of calm, strength, and support for your grandchild, their siblings, and their parents. In short — it makes you a superhero.
Our ADHD guide for grandparents will empower you in helping your grandchild with ADHD, thereby contributing to the entire family’s well-being.
The Grandparent's Role: A Special Connection
The grandparent-grandchild bond is like no other. It's forged in love and sweet memories, free from the daily strains of parenting and schedules. This bond can be especially significant for a child with ADHD.
While parents struggle with chores, homework, bath time, and the morning routine, grandparents have the freedom to take things slower. You can offer a calming, non-judgmental space where your grandchild feels truly heard and understood.
The most fundamental way of supporting a grandchild with ADHD is being a consistent, loving, and accepting presence in the child’s life. Kids with ADHD and their parents get judged a great deal by each other, other kids, other parents, and the school personnel. Therefore, a grandparent who offers non-judgemental support and encouragement is an enormous blessing.
Next, educate yourself on ADHD and what it means. Learn to recognize the signs of ADHD and how your grandchild expresses them. Accept that your grandchild is struggling and isn’t just misbehaving. Their parents, too, may be doing the best they can.
Your patience and compassion are your superpowers.
Emotional Support Strategies for ADHD
Now for the practical part of our ADHD guide for grandparents — what you can do:
- Learn about any treatment plan. Back up the parents in their decisions, and follow their guide on discipline and boundaries.
- Provide constant positive reinforcement. Even when your grandchild becomes frustrated over a failure, praise their effort. Demonstrating unshakeable love and acceptance supports your grandchild with ADHD.
- Provide needed breaks for the parents. Babysitting for a date night, or even just taking your grandchild for an outing, gives the parents some relief from the pressures they experience. Abiding by the parents’ guidelines while you are in charge provides your grandchild with crucial consistency.
- Respond to anger with empathy. Children with ADHD struggle to regulate their emotions and may become angry or frustrated frequently. Responding to anger with empathy rather than severity can diffuse tensions and open a dialogue.
- Help with emotional regulation. One crucial way to help your grandson with ADHD when he is upset is to listen. Ask him to tell you how he feels. If he can’t explain, would he draw you a picture of how he feels? Maybe his stuffed animal feels the same way he does — and together, you can help the animal. In these ways, you can help your grandchild learn to understand and regulate their emotions.
- Encourage your grandchild’s interests. All day, every day, your grandchild is faced with struggles. Parents and teachers often focus on the child’s failings and shortcomings. Be the person who celebrates your grandchild’s interests and dreams; bask in their light.
- Banish criticism from your vocabulary. The best way to help your grandchild with ADHD is with loving acceptance. Learn what not to say to a child with ADHD.
Emotional support is the most important way to support your grandchild with ADHD. Next, our ADHD guide for grandparents looks at fun activities for kids with ADHD.
Engaging Activities for Quality Time Together
Spending quality time together is a beautiful way to help your grandson with ADHD. Consider these suggestions:
- Get moving together. A great way to help a child with ADHD is to encourage physical exertion. Go for a walk together and go biking, horseback riding, or skating. Or go to a park where you can watch them run, jump, and play. Encourage your grandchild to jump rope while you call out the jump rope rhymes.
- Get creative together. Whether you’re painting, drawing, coloring, or working with modeling clay, being creative together helps your grandchild express themself in a welcoming environment.
- Tell stories together. Sharing your memories lets your grandchild get to know you more intimately. Encourage them to share stories of their own. Share LeDerick Horne’s inspiring Dare to Dream poem and challenge them to write their own story or poem of personal empowerment.
- Cook together. Cooking involves many smells, sights, textures, and tastes. It’s a wonderful activity to share with your grandchild. Make sugar cookies and decorate them with funny faces, or knead bread dough together for individual pizzas.
- Play games together. Board games, card games, and word games — essentially find ways to play together. You can even make up your own games to play together.
- Explore nature together. Consider stargazing at night or hiking during the day. Or maybe go for a paddle boat ride on a lake. Nature can have a calming and inspiring effect.
When it comes to supporting your grandchild with ADHD, sharing your time, loving acceptance, and attention are often the best ways.
Sources
https://www.2badhd.com/adhd-information-for-grandparents/
https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/parenting-kid-adhd.html#:~:text=ADHD%20can%20leave%20parents%20feeling,activity%20don't%20come%20naturally https://www.familyeducation.com/kids/neurodiversity/adhd/how-handle-grandchild-adhd
https://www.ldonline.org/ld-topics/behavior-social-skills/10-ways-support-social-and-emotional-learning-students-ld-and-adhd
https://www.verywellmind.com/fun-activities-for-kids-with-adhd-5235327
