Summer Survival Guide for Parents of Extreme Children
written by Brynn Burger, posted on Attitude Magazine
I write a lot about raising a child with extreme behavior disorders. For other special needs parents like myself, the idea of spending two hot months trapped at home with our children and their behaviors incites household-wide panic.
The heat, the lack of schedule, the food, the break from school — it is the stuff of nightmares, my friends. Our supremely awesome kiddos — you know, those with attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD), ASD, GAD, ODD, SPD, and other diagnoses that affect mood, behavior, and sensory needs — thrive on schedules, predictability, and monitored diet and screen time.
By day three, many of us have succumbed to the normality of giving ourselves 15 minutes of peace and quiet, courtesy of kids’ YouTube and the iPad. I mean, for the love of meltdowns, there is no amount of coffee and boxed wine that could get me through this time of year without a few major meltdowns from my child with ADHD (and myself).
Special needs parents know that there is no foolproof, magic solution for chilling out our kiddo, but here are five strategies that have been tested and approved in our own home to preserve what little is left of your sanity bustle (see: completely insane freak-out zone) of the summer season.
Set a Schedule, Even if It’s Vague
We know our kids need the predictability that comes with a schedule. So even if all you do is tell them in the morning three things they will be doing (some kids need times, others need references like, “after lunch we will…”), this will be helpful to prep them for returning to the more strict schedules provided by the public school system and, hopefully, weed out some of their anxiety that comes with their return in August. For our son, schedule is key. So, I used to be super prepared and had a Melissa and Doug Calendar (#CommissionsEarned) that had special pockets for our activities and clocks with the time.
