That’s a lot of families that need to make extra preparations for their kids during the summer months.

Parents of a child with ADHD can help their child thrive this summer by anticipating challenges, easing into the transition, and setting a schedule.

“Transitions are hard for kids with ADHD,” says O’Grady.

“The transition from school to summer is difficult because there is a lack of structure. The structure is still needed even if your kids are not in the classroom and there are no assignments to be done. Some of the issues that can arise are kids becoming obstinate when asked to do simple chores like loading the dishwasher. Kids and teens with ADHD can hyperfocus on gaming, social media, and TV all day long. And when you tell them to get off the screens, they can go ballistic. Without structure, they can lack the motivation to do anything.” The older your child, the more issues you might encounter.

“Without structure, the ADHD teen can stay up later and later till they get their night and days mixed up,” says O’Grady.

“These issues typically happen because the parents haven’t prepared their kids and teens beforehand,” says O’Grady.

“The gift of summer is being able to slow down the pace of the busy school year. So, let’s say the school year pace is at a 10 for being busy, and you want to slow down the pace to at least to 7. But you don’t want to go from 10 to 0. You want to have some space in the routine, some downtime. The unfortunate thing is that today, downtime has become synonymous for screens. I would suggest that only part of downtime is screens, and the other part of downtime is doing anything else in the real world. And yes, your ADHD kid will complain, but if they get bored enough they just might pick up the dusty guitar in the corner of the room.”

This summary was generated by Smmry