31/07/2025
Love this approach to challenges experienced with your child with ADHD ~ wisdom from parenting coach & author, Marko Juhant Strategic Parenting.....
For a child with ADHD, initiating a task is often harder than the task itself.
It’s not that they don’t want to do it. It’s that there’s a moment between intention and action where their entire system stalls.
Their brain hesitates. Their body doesn’t move. Their will is there, but the bridge to action isn’t.
This is called a physiological delay. And the more we understand it, the more we can stop the cycle of frustration and actually help.
Here’s what you can do (not to force action, but to make it possible in the first place):
1) Shrink the entry point
❌ Don’t say: “Go get ready for school.”
✅ Say: “Stand up.” Wait. Then: “Now walk to your room.” Then: “Pick up your socks.”
This is called task activation. You’re doing what their prefrontal cortex can’t do efficiently: starting.
2) Anchor the task in the room, not in their head
Forget charts and lists (for now). They might work eventually, but what helps most in the moment is anchoring the next step in something physical.
Point to the object
Tap the chair
Hand them the shirt
The more the task lives in front of them instead of inside their memory, the more likely it is to happen.
3) Acknowledge motion, not perfection
Don’t wait for the job to be done before you notice. Catch the first movement: “There you go. You started.” 🎉
It sounds small, but for a child used to hearing what they’ve missed, being noticed for what they’ve started feels like a breath of fresh air.
It says, “I see your effort.” And effort (not outcome) is what rewires the brain for follow-through.
Where most parents slip (and this is entirely human) is assuming their child is choosing delay.
We assume they’re being lazy, or oppositional, or that we haven’t been strict enough.
So we raise our voice, take away privileges, try to light a fire under them.
❌ But punishment doesn’t build a bridge.
❌ And shame doesn’t spark action, it shuts it down.
The child doesn’t move faster, they just feel worse. And over time, they stop believing they can begin. That’s the real risk. ⚠️
So instead, imagine their nervous system like an old engine on a cold day.
You don’t fix it by yelling at it. You warm it up gently. You support the ignition, again and again, until one day they can turn the key themselves.
If you begin to see their delays not as character flaws, but as missing infrastructure, you’ll approach everything differently.
You’ll intervene sooner, not louder.
You’ll adjust the task, not your temper.
You’ll stop interpreting their stuckness as refusal, and start offering them ways to get unstuck.
And what happens then?
They start to move, slowly… then more often.
They start to believe that motion is possible, even when it’s hard.
And you start to experience something that had felt so out of reach: mornings that work and evenings that don’t end in tension.
You experience a relationship that isn’t built on reminders and resentment.
Because when a child finally learns to begin on their own, it’s not just a task they’ve completed…
It’s a belief they’ve reclaimed.
Keep going. You're doing more right than you think.....
