Have you ever been in a
situation in public where your ADHD child continues to annoy others (or you)
with their inappropriate behavior, even though you’ve given them every cue
that they should stop? A recent study* conducted by The University of
Western Australia found that ADHD boys had a hard time correctly identifying
the emotions of facial expressions in drawings they were shown.
So if you’re the parent of
an ADHD kid, be aware of the fact that your child might not be picking up on
a lot of non-verbal cues that most of us take for granted. He or she could
be reading something entirely different into a facial expression–or perhaps
not reading anything into it at all! One way to tackle this problem with
your child is by using drawings and photos of people or characters. Ask your
child what emotion the person is displaying in the photo, and talk about it
together. This can be done while reading a picture book or magazine, or
looking through a family photo album. Point out the expressions of the
people you see, and ask your child how you think that person is feeling.
There are other resources for this activity as well. For example, the
pbskids.org
website has a
game in its “Arthur” section
that gives younger kids points for correctly identifying what emotion a
character from the show is feeling.
When I developed the Total Focus program, I made sure to provide materials
to help kids learn how to properly identify facial expressions as part of
the “Social Skills” module. The good news for parents is, Your ADHD child
can be taught to properly interpret facial expressions–one of the first
steps to stopping inappropriate behavior.
