When a parent and a child both have ADHD

It is twenty-five to eight. In the hallway stands a child with one trainer on; the other one is “somewhere”. The packed lunch is still on the kitchen counter. You are looking for the car keys you were holding two minutes ago, and in the meantime you realise that today your child needs the PE plimsolls the teacher wrote about back on Monday. By the time you finally get into the car, you are both angry. Your child, because you are rushing them. You, because it feels like watching yourself at the age of eight.

That last feeling is the reason for this post. When a child has ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), it very often happens that one of the parents recognises themselves in the description too. Sometimes this leads to their own diagnosis in adulthood; sometimes it remains a quiet question nobody says out loud. Either way, something particular happens in the family: two people with a very similar way of functioning have to build an everyday life together that asks of both of them exactly what they find hardest.

Before I go on, one clarification. ADHD is diagnosed by a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist (for children often together with a child psychiatrist), not by a psychotherapist and not by an article online. If reading this raises a question about you or your child, that is a good reason to talk to your doctor — not proof.

Why ADHD rarely appears in a family on its own

ADHD is one of the most heritable psychological traits we know of. In 2019, Stephen Faraone and Henrik Larsson summarised decades of twin research and estimated the heritability of ADHD at around 74 per cent on average. That does not mean that 74 per cent of children of parents with ADHD have ADHD themselves. It means that a large share of the differences between people in these traits is linked to genetic differences — and that the traits often repeat in families.

So it is nothing unusual for a mother, while talking about her child’s difficulties, to fall suddenly silent because she has just described herself at primary school. Or for a father to say: “I was exactly the same, and I turned out all right.” That sentence is both relief and defence. Relief, because the child has living proof that life is possible. Defence, because it sometimes hides how much that “all right” cost.

For many adults, their child’s diagnosis is the first moment they look at their own story with new eyes. That look back often brings two things at once: relief, because so much finally makes sense, and grief for the years when it seemed the problem was their character.

When your child needs exactly what you find hardest

Children with ADHD benefit most from an environment that is predictable, clear and patient. They are helped by routines, visible reminders, short and concrete instructions, consistent consequences and an adult who remembers things for them until they learn to do it themselves. Professionals call this external support for executive functions — for planning, memory, inhibiting impulses and switching from one task to another.

And this is where it gets stuck. A parent with ADHD often struggles in precisely these areas. Not because they do not love their child or are not trying, but because these are the same areas where they have had to invest more energy than others all their life. Keeping up a home routine, remembering the deadline for the school trip, sticking to the same rule for the third week running — these are the tasks that demand the most from executive functions.

In 2012, Charlotte Johnston and colleagues reviewed research on parenting by adults with ADHD. They found that parents with more ADHD symptoms have, on average, more difficulty with consistency in setting boundaries, with monitoring their children’s activities and with calm problem-solving. At the same time, they stressed that the differences between individual families are large and that an average says nothing about what kind of parent you are.

Strengths that get talked about less

If I stopped at the difficulties, I would paint the wrong picture. A parent who knows ADHD from the inside has something no book can give them.

• They know the child is not doing it on purpose. When a child forgets their exercise book for the fifth time, a parent with ADHD often understands that this is not laziness or defiance. They heard “you could if you wanted to” themselves and know how badly that sentence misses the point.
• They can be spontaneous. An afternoon that suddenly turns into an outing, a game invented on the spot, the energy for chasing around the park — these are things that let a child with ADHD breathe.
• They can show the child that life is possible. Not as a story of a hero who overcame everything, but as an everyday example: “I forget things too, so I keep a note on the door.”
• Less shame. In a family where one of the adults has similar experiences, it is easier to name ADHD without feeling that something is wrong with the child.

These strengths are not a given. They come through mainly when the parent is at least partly at peace with their own ADHD. If they still experience it as a personal failure, their child’s difficulties can hit the same wound — and then understanding becomes harder, not easier.

When emotions flare up at the same time

For many people with ADHD, emotions arrive fast and strong. Anger, disappointment or hurt ignite in a second, while calming down takes longer. When that happens to a child and a parent at the same time, a morning like the one at the start can quickly turn into shouting that both of them later regret.

Young children do not learn to calm down on their own, but alongside an adult who lends them their calm. We call this co-regulation: a child’s nervous system settles next to an adult who stays calm enough. A parent with ADHD has a double task here — first they have to catch themselves, and only then can they help the child. It is hard, but not impossible. It already helps to know where your emotion regulation breaks down first: in the morning when you are in a hurry, in the evening when you are tired, or in a noisy environment.

One more thing matters. Children do not need parents who never get angry. They need parents who come back after an outburst. Research on interactions between parents and infants, first described by Edward Tronick among others, shows that misunderstandings in a relationship are an everyday occurrence and that what matters most for the child is that the relationship is repaired afterwards. I have written more about what repair looks like in Arguing in front of children: when it harms and how to repair it.

What research shows about helping parents

One of the most studied forms of help for families with a child with ADHD is parent training: parents learn clear instructions, praise for desired behaviour, consistent consequences and routines. Something interesting emerged here.

In 2002, Edmund Sonuga-Barke, David Daley and Margaret Thompson published a study of preschool children in which they found that children of mothers with pronounced ADHD symptoms benefited less from such a programme than others. The programme was not bad. It simply demanded exactly what the mothers found hardest — consistent implementation at home, day after day.

From this, researchers drew a simple conclusion: when a parent also has ADHD, it makes sense to help the parent too. Andrea Chronis-Tuscano and colleagues, for example, studied what happens when mothers with ADHD receive treatment for their own symptoms. They saw improvements in symptoms and in some aspects of parenting, but not in all — suggesting that medication alone is not enough and that parents also need concrete skills and support. Whether, and which, medication is appropriate is decided by a doctor — for the child and for the parent.

The message for you is not “fix yourself first, then your child”. It is more: do not forget about yourself. Your own difficulties are not a private matter you have to push aside so you can be a good parent. They are part of the family picture.

A conversation after a bad morning

What can repair look like when you both flare up? Something like this (composed, not a real person):

“I shouted this morning. That wasn’t right.”
“You said I’d forgotten everything again.”
“I did. And you know what? I forgot my keys too. We were both panicking.”
“But why do you forget things? You’re a grown-up.”
“Because my head works a bit like yours. That’s why I have a note on the door. Shall we make one for you too?”

Several things happen at once in this short conversation. The parent takes responsibility for their part without humiliating themselves or asking the child to comfort them. They tell the child that forgetting is not a moral failing. And instead of promising “tomorrow will be different”, they suggest something concrete. If apologising to a child feels foreign or uncomfortable, you may find How to apologise and how to forgive — yourself included helpful.

The other parent and the invisible load

In families where one parent and a child have ADHD, the other parent often becomes the one holding all the threads: the calendar, school obligations, medical appointments, shopping, deadlines. At first this seems practical. Over time, though, it can become a source of quiet resentment — one parent feels like the family’s manager, the other like one more child who needs reminding.

This invisible work, which nobody sees until it is left undone, is called the mental load. With ADHD it often tips onto one partner, and not necessarily because the other is not trying. If you recognise yourself in this, you may also relate to Parental burnout: always available and never enough and ADHD in your child and parental exhaustion: a tiredness you are allowed to talk about.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we understand the family as a system: what happens to one member affects everyone. So the question is not only “how do we help the child with ADHD”, but also “how do we share this family out so that nobody burns out”. The solution rarely lies in the parent with ADHD “trying harder”. More often it lies in dividing responsibilities by strengths — the parent with ADHD might take on what comes easily to them, such as afternoon play or driving to training, while organisational tasks go into a shared, visible system instead of one person’s head.

Your story in your child’s

When you watch a child struggling with the things you struggled with, you are not only reacting to them. You are also reacting to yourself at that age. To the teacher who moved you to the front row. To the parents who said you were “as scatty as a professor”. To the shame when others laughed because you had forgotten your plimsolls again.

This can show up in two opposite ways. Some parents become stricter with their child than they would like, because they are afraid the child will suffer the way they did. Others become lenient, because they cannot bear to watch the child in the same distress. Both are understandable, and both move the child away from what they really need.

The passing of patterns, emotions and expectations from one generation to the next is called transgenerational transmission. It is not only about genes, but also about sentences we heard and unconsciously repeat. The good news is that the transmission can be interrupted — most often precisely when a parent notices they are speaking in their own parents’ voice. There is more on keeping your own doubt from landing on your child in Self-image and parenting: how not to pass your self-doubt on to your child.

A genogram, a drawing of the family across several generations, is one way of making this transmission visible. When you see on a single sheet who in the family was “scatty”, “restless” or “never finished school”, a lot can fall into place. This is what the longer session A Look into the Past is for, where we draw a genogram together. I also work with English-speaking clients.

Exercise: a morning carried by the space, not the head

In families with ADHD, mornings are often the hardest part of the day, because a lot of transitions happen in a short time. This exercise takes one evening and a few minutes each morning.

1. In the evening, write the morning out step by step together with your child. No more than six steps: get up, get dressed, breakfast, teeth, bag, shoes. If your child cannot read yet, draw pictures.
2. Stick the note where the morning happens — on the door, the mirror or the fridge, not in a drawer. Make one for yourself as well, with your own steps.
3. Set up a “launch pad”. One spot by the door where the bag, plimsolls and keys stand in the evening, with a note on the door saying “lunch is in the fridge”. It applies to both of you.
4. In the morning, point to the note instead of reminding. “Where are we on the list?” sounds different from “you didn’t … again” and takes the load off you too, because you do not have to hold everything in your head.
5. After a week, talk about what worked. Nothing has to be perfect. Replace a step that does not work. What matters is that the system is shared, not a punishment for the child.

The exercise is not a miracle. But it is a small example of a principle that people with ADHD often describe as key: things you cannot reliably hold in your head get moved into the space around you. I write more about why classic organisation systems so often fail with ADHD in Organising with ADHD: why classic systems fail.

Where this view falls short

I want to be clear about what this post does not claim, too.

Not every similarity between parent and child is ADHD. Children are distracted because of stress, poor sleep, anxiety, hearing or vision problems, learning difficulties or changes in the family. So are adults. If you recognise yourself in the description, that is a reason to talk to a doctor, not to diagnose yourself — and not to “diagnose” your child either.

Not everything can be solved by understanding. Some children need more than good routines at home: support at school, assessment by a specialist, sometimes medication. That is decided by a doctor together with the parents. Psychotherapy can help the family, but it does not replace medical care.

ADHD is not an excuse for everything. If there is violence, humiliation or neglect in a family, it is not the result of “similar heads”, but something that needs help straight away. The SOS helpline for women and children who are victims of violence in Slovenia is on 080 11 55; in an emergency call 112 or the police on 113.

Your ADHD is not your child’s destiny. Heritability tells us that the traits are more common in families, not how your child’s life will turn out. Much else shapes that — including how ADHD is talked about in the family.

What to remember

• ADHD is highly heritable, so it is not unusual for a parent to recognise themselves in their child’s difficulties. The diagnosis, though, is made by a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist.
• A child with ADHD needs exactly what a parent with ADHD often finds hardest — routine, consistency and an external memory. That is why it makes sense to look after yourself too.
• A parent who knows ADHD from the inside also has strengths: understanding, spontaneity and less shame.
• More important than never getting angry is that you come back and repair after an outburst.
• Whatever does not reliably stay in your head, move into the space around you — into notes, launch pads and shared systems that do not weigh on just one parent.