What to Do if Your Child with ADHD is Rude

Children with ADHD often lack impulse control causing frequent outbursts, interruptions, and other behavioral problems. Many of the impulsive actions of a kid with ADHD appear rude or disrespectful. These behaviors often frustrate parents, especially when their child interacts with those outside the immediate family who may not understand or be aware that the child has ADHD.

The good news is that you can employ several strategies, tricks, and tips with your child to increase their executive function skills, decrease impulsive actions, and help them recognize when their behavior may be rude or inappropriate.

This article examines why your child with ADHD is sometimes rude, provides helpful tips to decrease rude behavior, and gives parents a better understanding of their child's ADHD symptoms so they can employ empathy and appropriately address behaviors.

Struggling to motivate your ADHD child?

 

Download the Joon App and start your free 7-day trial.  

Download App

   

Why Is My Child with ADHD Being Rude?

The essential thing parents of kids with ADHD need to understand is that many of their child's seemingly disrespectful behaviors are not done intentionally. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder impairs an individual's executive function skills and social skills. Children, in particular, struggle with self-regulation, paying attention, and impulsivity.

Kids with ADHD may also exhibit aggression and quickly become angry when frustrated because they lack the skills to handle emotions appropriately. For example, they may push, hit, or grab toys from siblings and friends when upset or angry.

Kids with ADHD may struggle more in school or with homework and have behavior problems at school or home, especially when left untreated or undiagnosed.

Some children with ADHD may also have oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). ODD is characterized by anger, irritability, arguing, and defiance toward parents and other adults.

However, just because your child with ADHD is naturally more inclined to impulsive, rude behavior than other kids, it does not mean that these behaviors should go unchecked. Instead, kids with ADHD should be taught self-regulation strategies and essential social and life skills by adults. Having an understanding of these behaviors is the first step for adults to take to begin helping their children with hyperactivity and impulsivity.

Executive Dysfunction and Disrespectful Behavior

Executive dysfunction isn't synonymous with ADHD, but many kids and adults with ADHD suffer from it on one level or another. Children with executive dysfunction struggle with starting and completing tasks, have time blindness, an inability to plan future events, and struggle to string actions together to complete long-term goals.

Executive dysfunction is not a separate diagnosis recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM-5) because various conditions can cause it. For example, executive dysfunction may result from ADHD, anxiety, autism spectrum disorder, depression, or other learning disorders.

Symptoms of Executive Dysfunction:

• Memory problems
• Poor organization or planning
• Poor time management
• Trouble paying attention or concentrating
• Difficulty handling strong emotions
• Behavioral problems
• Difficulty multitasking
• Challenges problem-solving

If a child has ADHD, they will have some level of executive dysfunction. And by looking at the symptoms above, it is easy to see why these kids often struggle to perform acceptable behaviors.

Handling Rudeness 

All children behave poorly and exhibit rude behavior occasionally. Nearly all kids have temper tantrums, emotional outbursts, argue, and act out when upset. A strong emotional response is often how a child learns, tests boundaries with authority figures, and learns essential social-emotional skills.

Kids with ADHD must learn how to process emotions, behave at school and home, and understand what is considered acceptable or unacceptable; they just need more help learning these skills than other kids.

Rudeness should never be tolerated. However, parents must handle it appropriately by remaining calm yet firm, establishing clear expectations for home and school, and reinforcing the behaviors they want to see with positive reinforcement.

How Joon Can Help when an ADHD Child is Rude

Kids with ADHD face challenges when engaging in appropriate social interactions. Their tendency for aggression and impulsivity often leads to trouble forming meaningful relationships.

Joon helps mitigate these challenges by motivating children with ADHD to focus, rewarding task completion, and building healthy habits and behavior through gamification. In addition, Joon addresses common symptoms in ADHD children by providing instant encouragement for positive behavior when completing tasks, something a child with ADHD consistently needs.

Joon is a parenting aid for kids of every age with ADHD. And with consistent use, Joon leads to enhanced relationships, better behavior, and increased social-emotional skills. Here's how it works: 

Claim your 7-day free trial here.

Talk with your child

Talk with your kid in an age-appropriate manner about expected behavior, manners, and emotions. Avoid the impulse to ignore the behavior, hoping your child will outgrow it in time.

As a parent, you should talk to your child about their ADHD and how the symptoms affect their brain. If a child cannot create a connection between their behavior and why it is occurring, they will have a hard time correcting it.

If your child takes ADHD medication, speak with them about why they take it and its effect on their brain. A conversation about the importance of taking their medication daily, how it will aid their behavior and focus at school, and support their brain is often helpful for a child to hear.

Believe they can do better

Support your child and know they can and will do better; it will simply take time. Set the example of how you'd like them to behave by modeling behavior you'd like them to learn. And remember, Rome wasn't built in a day.

When they act in a way you want to encourage, heap specific praise and reinforcement on them! For example, "I love how you waited your turn to speak during our conversation. I felt really respected" Or "I know you felt angry that I said playtime was over, but you controlled your emotions and followed my directions. That means a lot to me."

Engage with how they feel

Many Children struggle to name their emotions; therefore, parents can put things into perspective by naming feelings for their child when upset. Kids with ADHD may benefit from a feelings chart. Because delayed executive function affects a child's emotional development, kids can use picture charts to point to or help identify their feelings before they have the words to express them adequately.

Participate in Therapy

Children with ADHD can benefit from various therapies to help them process common scenarios and learn to react in more appropriate or acceptable ways. Play therapy and cognitive behavior therapy both are done with a social worker or therapist and using talking or play to explore scenarios that have happened or may commonly happen and help your child navigate their responses and how it affects the situation. Occupational therapy is also useful for children with ADHD and teaches bodily awareness and how to channel impulsivity or stimulation in more appropriate ways. This can also help with your child’s behavior in social situations. 

Takeaway 

Parenting means teaching our kids the appropriate behavior in many different situations. However, being the parent to a kid with ADHD means teaching these essential skills may take more patience and time.

Kids with ADHD often appear rude and impulsive. Their behavior may embarrass us from time to time, and teaching them acceptable behaviors may seem near impossible. However, no matter what age your child is when they receive their ADHD diagnosis teaching them these important skills is possible.

As a parent, you can teach your child to be less rude over time. Learn about ADHD and executive function, develop a deeper understanding of why kids with ADHD engage in rude or impulsive behaviors, and support their learning by showing the behavior you'd like to see and reinforcing it with positive reinforcement.