ADHD in your child and parental exhaustion: a tiredness you are allowed to talk about

It is 7.42 am. “Put your shoes on” has been said for the third time. The first time kindly, the second time firmly, the third time in a tone nobody likes hearing from their own mouth. The child is sitting on the hall floor, one shoe in hand, the other hand building something out of bricks that were not there ten minutes ago. He is not being defiant. He did not hear. Or he heard, but somewhere between the word “put” and the word “shoes” he drifted somewhere else.

A parent reading this may know how these mornings end: late, with shouting, with guilt in the car and a message from the teacher at ten. And with a thought that almost nobody says out loud: “I love him. I’m just so tired that some mornings I’m already counting the hours until evening.”

This post is for parents of children with ADHD — or of children you suspect have it and who are waiting for an assessment. It is not about how to “fix” your child. It is about you: about a tiredness that is real, that has reasons, and that you are allowed to talk about.

A tiredness that is awkward to talk about

Parents of children with ADHD often say their tiredness is not like the kind their friends describe. It is not only that the child is lively. It is that the day has no pauses. Every transition — getting up, breakfast, getting dressed, leaving the house, homework, bath, bedtime — is a small mountain that has to be climbed together. And not once, but every day, for years.

On top of that, it is awkward to admit you are tired. It sounds like complaining about your own child. As if you loved them less. So parents often hide their tiredness — from the people around them, from their partner, sometimes from themselves — until it shows up where they least expect it: in outbursts, sleeplessness, numbness, an aching back.

Tiredness is not a verdict on love. It is a verdict on the amount of work. And with ADHD, there really is more of it.

What the research says

ADHD is not rare. A review of more than a hundred studies from around the world, published in 2007 by Guilherme Polanczyk and colleagues, estimated that it affects just over five per cent of children and adolescents. In an average class, that means one or two children — and just as many families spending their mornings much like the one above.

That parents of these children carry more is not just an impression. A 2013 meta-analysis by Jennifer Theule and colleagues pulled together research on parenting stress in families with ADHD and found that stress in these parents is markedly higher than in parents of children without ADHD. It was especially high when behavioural difficulties came alongside the ADHD.

It is equally important what the research does not show. It does not show that these parents are worse, less patient or less capable. It shows that they are doing harder work — in the same number of hours, and often with less understanding from those around them.

Why ADHD in particular is so draining

ADHD is above all a developmental difference in executive functions — the abilities we use to hold an instruction in mind, hold back a first impulse, plan and switch between tasks. These functions mature slowly in all children, but in children with ADHD they often mature noticeably more slowly than in their peers.

What does a parent do when a child cannot yet manage this? They become the child’s external executive function. They remember for them. They hold back for them. They plan for them. They keep an eye on the clock, the school bag, the mood and the distance to the nearest cup that might get knocked over. This is invisible work that does not stop when the child falls asleep — that is often when the preparations for tomorrow begin.

Then there is the emotional side. Many children with ADHD experience emotions quickly and intensely: disappointment becomes a storm, a small injustice a huge one. The parent is the one who has to stay calm when the child cannot — and not once a week, but several times a day. This is called co-regulation: a child calms down alongside a calm adult. It works, but it costs. The nervous system of a parent who has been someone else’s anchor all day does not switch off by itself in the evening.

When others judge

A great deal of the exhaustion comes from outside. “You just need to be a bit stricter.” “That wouldn’t happen in our house.” “He’s perfectly normal when he’s with me.” Looks in the supermarket, messages from school, relatives with advice for everything. Each remark is small, but they pile up — and the parent starts to doubt themselves.

So it is worth saying clearly: ADHD is not caused by bad parenting. The 2021 international consensus statement of the World Federation of ADHD, which summarised hundreds of studies, concluded that it is a developmental condition with a strong biological basis. In a review of twin studies, Stephen Faraone and Henrik Larsson estimated the heritability of ADHD at around 74 per cent — meaning that differences in ADHD symptoms between people can largely be attributed to genes. Parenting can influence how a child lives with their difficulties, but it does not cause them.

That heritability has another side: it is not unusual for one of the parents to share similar traits. Then everyday life is even harder, because a parent who struggles to organise themselves also has to organise their child. What it is like when parent and child both have ADHD is the subject of When a parent and a child both have ADHD.

From stress to burnout

Parenting stress is a normal part of being a parent. But when it lasts a long time without enough resources to recover, it can turn into something else. The researchers Moïra Mikolajczak and Isabelle Roskam and their colleagues have described parental burnout as a state in which the demands of parenting exceed the parent’s resources over a long period. It shows up as deep exhaustion, emotional distance from the child, a sense that you are no longer the parent you used to be, and being fed up with the parenting role.

A child with ADHD does not cause burnout in and of themselves. But they do raise the demands — and if the resources shrink at the same time (a partner who works all day, grandparents far away, little understanding at school, your own exhaustion), the scales tip quickly. I have described in more detail how to recognise parental burnout and what drives it in Parental burnout: always available and never enough; I will not repeat it here.

One thing is worth stressing, though: the emotional distance from your child that comes with burnout is not proof that you do not love them. It is a protective response from an exhausted nervous system. And when the resources return, closeness usually returns too.

What happens to the couple

When two people are raising a child, ADHD often tests their relationship too. Parents can have very different thresholds of patience, different views on rules and different ideas about “how much is normal”. One becomes the one who reminds and keeps order, the other the one who gives way and has fun with the child. The roles harden, and resentment hardens with them.

Many people will recognise a conversation like this at the end of the day (composite, not a real person):

“The teacher called again today.”
“What was it this time?”
“What was it? It was the whole day. You get home at seven, when it’s all over.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t hard. I was only asking.”
“I know.” Silence. “It’s just that sometimes I feel I’m doing this alone.”
“Then tell me what I can take on. But not everything at once, because I don’t know where to start either.”

Something important happens in this conversation: instead of arguing about who is right about the child, they both say how they are. That is the point at which a couple can stand on the same side again. There is more on how children experience tension between their parents, and how to repair it, in Arguing in front of children: when it harms and how to repair it.

Where to start: diagnosis, school, help

If you suspect ADHD in your child, the first step is a conversation with your child’s paediatrician, who can refer them on if needed. ADHD in a child is diagnosed by a child psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist — not a nursery teacher, not a schoolteacher, not a therapist, and not a parent on the basis of an online questionnaire. I do not diagnose children either. But I can stand alongside parents who are carrying everything that comes before a diagnosis, with it and after it.

Once there is a diagnosis, treatment is something to discuss with a doctor. Some children are prescribed medication; whether it is appropriate is decided by the doctor together with the parents. For a general overview of what medication does and does not do, see ADHD medication.

Research particularly supports one other form of help: parent programmes, in which parents learn concrete ways to give a child clear instructions, to praise them so that the praise works, and to handle outbursts. A 2014 meta-analysis by David Daley and colleagues showed that such programmes improve parenting and reduce behavioural difficulties, even when outcomes were rated by people who did not know which families had taken part. The effects on ADHD symptoms themselves were less clear — which is actually an important message: the aim is not to “cure” the child, but to make family life easier.

At school, the first point of contact is usually the school counselling service. It is worth involving them early, before messages from school turn into a daily source of tension.

Exercise: a one-week inventory

This exercise does not ask you to become more patient. It only asks you to look, for one week, at where your strength goes.

1. Every evening, write down three moments of the day when things were hardest. Do not explain them, just note them: “getting dressed in the morning”, “homework”, “call from school”.
2. Next to each, write a number from 1 to 10 — how much it cost you. Not how much it should have cost you, but how much it did.
3. At the end of the week, find two that keep recurring and cost the most. That is where most of your strength drains away.
4. For one of them, choose one change that reduces your work, not your child’s behaviour. Clothes laid out the night before. Homework at a different time or with a different adult. Fewer words, a single picture checklist on the door.
5. Write down who could help you with it — a partner, a relative, a friend, the school. Don’t ask yet, just write the name. Simply seeing that you are not the only option changes something.

The exercise is small on purpose. An exhausted parent does not need a new project. They need one place in the week where things are a little easier — and the sense that they are allowed to look for it without guilt. Self-compassion helps here too: saying to yourself at least what you would say to a friend in the same position.

Where this story is not the whole story

I want to be honest here about the limits of what I have written.

Not every lively or inattentive child has ADHD. Restlessness, distractibility and outbursts can also come with anxiety, distress at home, poor sleep, hearing or vision problems, learning difficulties or big changes in a child’s life. That is exactly why diagnosis is a job for specialists who know how to tell these possibilities apart. If your child shows fear and worry more than restlessness, the post Anxiety in children may help.

Not every parent’s tiredness comes from the child. Sometimes the child is just the last drop: tiredness also comes from work, from the relationship, from your own history, from a depression that has not yet been given a name. If you feel your exhaustion has had hold of you for a long time and no circumstance explains it, talk to your doctor about it.

If exhaustion brings you to thoughts that you might do something terrible to your child or to yourself, this is no longer a matter for exercises. In Slovenia, call the crisis line Klic v duševni stiski on 01 520 99 00 (7 pm to 7 am), the Samaritans helpline on 116 123 (24 hours a day) or, in an emergency, 112. If there is violence in the family, the SOS helpline for women and children who are victims of violence is available in Slovenia on 080 11 55. Seeking help at a moment like that is not a sign that you are a bad parent. It is a sign that you care.

What therapy can offer

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we see the family as a whole, in which everyone affects everyone else. When a child has ADHD, the whole family rearranges itself around them: who is patient and who is strict, who “copes” and who “can’t any more”, which brother or sister has become invisible because all the attention is elsewhere. Therapy can help you look at these roles and loosen them a little.

Often a parent’s own stories open up along the way — how they were treated when they themselves were “too much”, what they heard about themselves. I have written about how patterns from our own childhood carry over into parenting in Attachment and parenting. A parent who has room for their own story later has more room for their child too. If English is the language you feel most at home in, you are welcome to write to me in English.

What to remember

• The exhaustion of parents of children with ADHD is real and well researched — parenting stress is markedly higher in these families.
• Tiredness says nothing about how much you love your child, but a great deal about how much invisible work you are doing.
• ADHD is not caused by bad parenting; parenting influences how a child lives with their difficulties, not whether they have them.
• A child psychiatrist or clinical psychologist makes the diagnosis; parent programmes and working with the school are supported by research.
• The first step is not more patience, but one thing less and one more ally.