Ask any parent what they want for their child, and most will give the same answer: happiness. But how exactly can you help a child with ADHD grow into a happy, self-sufficient adult?
With personal stories, evidence-based approaches, and recommended skills to implement in your own life, my new book, Our Guide to Navigating ADHD: How to Embrace Challenges, Develop Grit, and Flourish, offers guidance on how to help your child move from floundering to flourishing.
In 2024, the CDC estimated that 7 million children ages 3-17 will be diagnosed with ADHD in childhood.
Although children living with ADHD have very real challenges, it is possible to find ways to address and move past them. Some of the challenges are: decreased life expectancy; illicit drug and alcohol use; sleep disorders; accidental injuries; justice system involvement; low income and unemployment; difficulty finding positive peers; and suffering the judgment of other parents. Each of these challenges has a corresponding “fix”: developing good habits of exercise, healthy eating and getting enough sleep; embrace a course of medication prescribed by a qualified health provider; lock up dangerous things like guns; use the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Family Media Plan to help plan when and what to view; hold your child accountable for infraction of rules; support school personnel in administering consequences; figure out how to cover educational expenses so that students can begin employment debt-free; enroll children in sports; and practice ignoring what others say about you and your child.
There are positive traits associated with ADHD too. People with ADHD often have increased zest and vitality compared with others. They are full of energy and exhibit humor and optimism. Cognitive flexibility, or being able to see a situation from several angles at once, can be useful in addressing difficult logistical problems.
Focusing on strengths is a great place to start. Think about all of the things about your child that are positive in these spheres: individual, family, school, peers, neighborhood community. Now, which can be harder, begin to realize that even when disobeying or not able to control impulses, a child with ADHD can exhibit these strengths. Beginning to focus on the strengths in the presence of other behaviors lays a foundation for helping children with ADHD learn to regulate their behavior.
A 2025 CDC report says that most children (about 61%) ages 6 to 17 years are flourishing. Children with ADHD had been found to be flourishing but at lower rates (about 25%), as reported by caregivers. What does that mean? The National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) includes the following items to define flourishing for children: bounces back quickly when things don’t go their way; shows curiosity in learning new things; stays calm when faced with a challenge; works to finish a task they start. It is easy to see why children with ADHD might not exhibit these behaviors as frequently as other children. Dr. Martin Seligman has proposed the acronym PERMA to describe flourishing: Positive emotions; Engagement; Relationships; Meaning; and Accomplishments. These trends are easier to see in older children or adults, but we can draw the throughline from the NSCH items.
Thinking about how to enhance flourishing among children with ADHD, it can help to think about how to address barriers. These include executive function deficits like working memory; emotional regulation; self-motivation and time management. Fortunately, three developmentally appropriate disciplines can address these: sports, music and nature, which will be discussed more in a future post. Research in each of these areas shows that, when children with ADHD engage in them over a period of time, their symptoms can improve. In addition, they can gain self-efficacy and develop relationships with positive peers who are involved in the same activities.