For parents

Getting your child evaluated

Start with your pediatrician, a child psychologist, or a developmental pediatrician, and ask specifically about ADHD assessment. A quick office visit isn’t enough on its own. A real evaluation looks at your child across settings and pulls a few things together:

1. 1Input from you. Parent rating scales and a history of what you see at home, going back over time.
2. 2Input from school. Teacher questionnaires, since focus and behavior often show up differently in the classroom than they do at home.
3. 3The whole picture. How your child is doing socially, emotionally, and academically, not just whether they can sit still.
4. 4Ruling other things out. Sleep, anxiety, learning differences, even hearing or vision can all look like ADHD. A good clinician checks first.

School support: 504 vs. IEP

Your child’s evaluation report is the key that unlocks formal support at school. There are two kinds, and knowing the difference saves you months.

What helps at home

You can’t out-organize ADHD for your child, but you can build a home that works with their wiring instead of against it.

• ·Make the invisible visible. Shared calendars, checklists, and visual routines beat verbal reminders that evaporate.
• ·Break big tasks into the next small step, and body-double the hard ones by sitting alongside your child while they do them.
• ·Praise effort and specifics, not just results. Kids with ADHD hear a lot of correction, so balance it on purpose.
• ·Protect sleep, movement, and food. They move focus and mood more than most parents expect.

The questions parents ask

One diagnosis, sometimes two

Resources for parents