Mindful parenting: Mindfulness treatment for children with ADHD

Children and youngsters with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) often display behaviour that is inattentive, impulsive and hyperactive. The most widely used treatments are medication and behavioral treatments (2).
However, in the latest years, interest for other non-medical therapies have created interest for the effects of meditation and mindfulness.

Stress and ADHD

An alarming finding show that the risk for suicide in youngsters with ADHD is nearly three times higher than in controls. Indicating the severe need to develop and investigate new treatments for people with ADHD. Mindfulness-based interventions have shown positive effects on adults suffering from depression, stress, pain and illness (1), supporting the assumption that same results could be found for children and youngsters.

Children with ADHD show a dysfunction of the right frontal side of the brain, in the regions of the brain responsible for the development of coping strategies, which affects the ability to handle stress (3). Furthermore, children with ADHD have high cortisol levels (stress hormone) and studies have shown that stress interferes with executive functions associated with working memory, impulse control and coping strategies as well as behaviour regulations. Stress also compromises selective attention as well as the ability to sustain attention (3). Making stress a negative factor as is reinforces the symptoms of ADHD, which often causes trouble or challenging situations for the individual with ADHD.

Meditation and ADHD

Meditation and mindfulness training could prove to be an effective treatment for ADHD, as mindfulness meditation reduces stress, and focuses on increasing the individual’s ability to control attention, and reduce automatic responses.

What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness training is an intervention based on eastern meditation techniques, that helps increasing awareness of the present moment, enhances non-judgmental observation, and reduces automatic responding (2).

In a study of 6-week Sahaja yoga meditation training for 4 to 12-year-old children and their parents, parents reported significantly improved symptoms such as improvements of anxiety and self-esteem, and reduction of parent-child conflict. Another study with 11 to 15-year-old boys and girls, showed a reduction of externalizing, internalizing and attention problems, while executive functioning improved on self-report measures. The reports were also confirmed by enhanced performance on computerized attention tests (1).

Several other studies show an increase in happiness, improvements of youngsters’ self-control, reductions of attention problems, and overall reductions of ADHD symptoms (see table 1 blow (4)).

The studies show promising results of the effects of meditation and mindfulness training on children and youngsters. The studies have though also found that the effect of meditation and mindfulness training disappears after a few weeks. The training should, therefore, be done regularly.

Parents and ADHD

ADHD is highly genetic why parents of children with ADHD also might display ADHD symptoms (2). In many of the studies, parents of the children with ADHD, was offered to participate in mindful parenting training, where the parents was taught to pay attention in the present moment, as well as observing their child in a non-judgmental manner and respond calmly, rather than react, to their child’s difficult behaviour (4).

"Mindful parenting is a form of mindfulness training and is defined as: ‘‘paying attention to your child and your parenting in a particular way: intentionally, here and now, and non-judgmentally"" (2).

The studies where parents participated in mindful training showed a significant reduction of parental stress and parental overreactivity* as well a decreasing parents' own inattention and hyperactivity symptoms (2).

The studies mentioned above have found preliminary results that could indicate that meditation and mindfulness training could improve mental health and feeling of happiness. But more studies are still needed in order to understand and treat the alarming rate of depression and suicide in both children and adults with ADHD.

*”Due to the ADHD behavior of the child, parents can become less patient, pay more attention to disruptive behavior and act more impulsively. This is called ‘‘parental overreactivity’’”(2).