To take good care of your child, first take good care of yourself.

If you are a mother with ADD, your first step should be to get treatment for yourself. A mother’s usual tendency is to focus on her child’s difficulties while neglecting her own. Just as the airline flight attendant instructs you to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting your child, you must first get help for your own ADD before you can effectively deal with your child’s problems.

A recent study suggests that parent training programs are not very helpful when the mother has untreated ADD, lending even more weight to the importance of treatment for women with ADD.

For more information about ADD in women, check out the following:

• Understanding Women with AD/HD by Kathleen Nadeau and Patricia Quinn
• Gender Issues and AD/HD by Patricia Quinn and Kathleen Nadeau
• Women with ADD by Sari Solden

…