What to Expect When You're Not Expecting ADHD by Penny Williams

This was especially true when parents of ADHD kids had mental health problems of their own or more family burdens in general. Parental stress did indeed fluctuate with the child's self-reported bad behavior, the researchers found. Using PDAs with built-in reminder alarms, the children also filled out surveys about their own moods and behaviors.

Led by UC Irvine psychologist Carol Whalen, the researchers asked 51 moms of kids with ADHD and a control group of moms with kids without special needs to answer surveys about their child's behaviors and their own moods every 30 minutes while their kids were at home for a week. In order to develop better support for these parents, Odgers and her colleagues wanted to understand how parental stress rises and falls in real time. Those sorts of barriers add to the challenges that ADHD already brings to parents: A higher-than-usual risk of divorce, increased stress levels and a decreased sense of their own competence. 'Due to cuts in the schools, parents are desperately trying to get resources that are not there,' Honos-Webb told LiveScience. There are not yet any studies on the effect of state budget cuts on special needs children, but California psychologist Lara Honos-Webb, author of 'The Gift of ADHD: How to Transform Your Child's Problems Into Strengths' (New Harbinger Publications, 2005), said families are feeling the pinch. The emotional cost of parenting a child with ADHD may be getting steeper thanks to widespread budget cuts that are limiting school resources in several states.

What to Expect When You're Not Expecting ADHD by Penny Williams