Pathways to Resilience III: Beyond Nature vs. Nurture

Abstract #277
From Stress to Challenge: Supporting Parents During the Transition of Their ADHD Child to High School
Presenter: Sylvie Normandeau Co - Presenters: Lily Hechtman, Jessica Vaillancourt, Julie Girard-Lapointe, Julie Allard  
Abstract:
Parents' major concerns about their ADHD child's transition to high school are their child's capacity to cope with the higher academic demands and their own ability to adjust their supervision of homework. This paper assesses the impact of a program to support academic skills of ADHD children during the transition to high school, on parental stress. Families were randomly assigned to the intervention group or the control group. Parents completed the Stress index for parents of adolescents (Sheras et al, 1998) at pretest and posttest. They also reported on the child's improvement in organizational and learning strategies at posttest. Following the intervention, parents expressed less stress about their adolescent's emotional reactions, and interpersonal development. They expressed fewer difficulties in coping with their responsibilities of parenting, more satisfaction in the relationship with their spouse, and more confidence in their ability to cope effectively with their adolescent. Furthermore, they observed improvement in their adolescent's organizational skills: attention, task initiation, planning and prioritization, organization of space and schedule, time management, perseverance. These preliminary findings suggest that parents became more resourceful in meeting future challenges, developed a more positive view of themselves and their child as a result of their participation to the program.