Grandparents can provide consistent boundaries as well as gentle guidance with lots of patience.

It is important for grandparents to follow the treatment plan decided by parents and not interfere unless asked to. Grandparents can provide a much-needed break for parents who are constantly dealing with the demands of an ADHD child.

Grandparents Don’t Believe in ADHD

Grandparents can sometimes think that their ADHD grandchildren are being willfully disobedient, acting out or that they lack discipline. Without knowledge of ADHD, grandparents might even say inappropriate things about the child’s behavior. Grandparents may claim that in their day there was no such thing as ADHD; they may suggest some miracle cure or they may blame their adult children for bad parenting. The only real solution is to provide grandparents with educational material so that they can learn about ADHD. It may be a good idea to even demonstrate how strategies can be used to manage ADHD symptoms or to show the grandparent how the child behaves with and without medication. If the grandparents cannot be convinced that ADHD is a disorder then the best you can do is ask them to give their grandkids lots of love and positive feedback and to leave the disciplining and teaching up to the parents.

 ADHD Information for Grandparents

You can find a lot of useful information about ADHD on this website. Try to get your kids’ grandparents to read some of this information and educate themselves about ADHD. Most importantly grandparents should know that ADHD is a neurological disorder; they should know the symptoms and the strategies that the parents have chosen to use in coping with their child’s ADHD symptoms.