Why co-regulation isn't enough for your ADHD child.

When your ADHD child has started to lose control of their emotions, begins to shout and cry, this can be a sign that they are experiencing an emotional overload. This can come from something that is immediate or something that has built up during the day. This is something, as a parent, you can connect with your child and ask them about.

Many professionals will advise to co-regulate, but this is a very vague answer to a situation.

• What is meant by co-regulation? It is for you and your child to calm your nervous systems so that you are both settled and able to engage.

For you to be regulated, it takes strength and a lean on your self-awareness as well as emotional control. You need to be aware of how you look, how you are acting, your facial expressions, as well as what you are about to say and how you say it. This is a deficit experienced by individuals with ADHD. As an ADHD parent, this can be something that can be practiced; however, it will not happen overnight.

Regulation, as I said, isn't straightforward. To support your ADHD child, you have to know the deficits to understand what they are experiencing.

• Emotional overwhelm - they have been part of or seen or been affected by something that has made them feel uncomfortable.

• Lack of emotional control - this has started to get worse as they struggle with how they process the event.

• ADHD individuals struggle with self-soothing - the ADHD child will be unable to talk themselves down from the emotional overload. This is because being out of control results in the feelings getting bigger and stronger.

• Lack of logical thinking - their brain has little way of telling them why they are feeling like this, so they struggle to find the source.

• Your ADHD child is having a meltdown.

The advice to co-regulate isn't wrong because if you are calm, it will encourage your child to be calm; however, being calm isn't enough.

As I mentioned earlier, ADHD individuals find it hard to self-soothe, which is the function that parents should be helping with. Calming down is only part of it.

Co-regulating and holding your child until they are calm, then letting them play again, just supports your child to use you as a parent to soothe them. Once this starts, it is hard to undo.

• Sitting with your child and allowing them to just sit with their feelings in a safe space can help them process their feeling.

• Encourage them to name the feeling, this stops the emotion from staying in the emotional brain and allows it to be seen by the logical brain, which is now accessible for reflection.

• Talk through the event, helping them connect the event with the feeling.

This can help them understand what feelings are what, and when you talk them through it, they will start to adopt the questions you ask for themselves, leading them to self-soothe.

I hope this has been helpful,

Until next week,

Tanya