When you are raising a child with ADHD, it can become very easy to spend most of your time focused on what is not working.
The missing homework. The forgotten backpack. The argument over chores. The struggle to get out the door. The reminders that seem to disappear the moment you say them. The school feedback that once again focuses on what your child needs to improve.
But if so much of childhood becomes about correcting weaknesses, where does a child get the opportunity to discover what is strong in them?
That question sits at the heart of my conversation with Dr. Ned Hallowell, one of the most recognized voices in ADHD, on The ADHD Kids Can Thrive Podcast.
Dr. Hallowell’s message is not that ADHD struggles should be ignored. It is that we should be just as intentional about discovering and developing a child’s strengths as we are about helping them with their difficulties.
As he told me:
“You build a life on developed strengths, not remediated weaknesses.”
That may be one of the most important ideas for parents raising a child with ADHD to remember.
How Can Parents Help a Child With ADHD Build Confidence?
Parents can help a child with ADHD build confidence by noticing genuine interests and strengths, creating opportunities for connection and play, helping the child practice something meaningful, recognizing real progress, and providing structure for areas that are difficult. The goal is not to ignore ADHD challenges, but to make sure those challenges do not become the child’s entire identity.
Who Is Dr. Ned Hallowell?
Edward Hallowell, MD, is a board-certified child and adult psychiatrist and one of the best-known voices in the ADHD field. He founded the Hallowell ADHD Centers, served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for 21 years, and co-authored Driven to Distraction and ADHD 2.0 with Dr. John Ratey, along with numerous other books on ADHD, connection, parenting, and mental health.
Dr. Hallowell also has ADHD and dyslexia himself, and throughout his career he has advocated for a strengths-based approach that recognizes both the very real challenges of ADHD and the possibilities within the person who has it.
Is ADHD Only About Attention Problems?
Clinically, ADHD is recognized as a neurodevelopmental disorder that can affect attention, impulsivity, activity level, and everyday functioning. Dr. Hallowell, however, encourages families to look beyond a purely deficit-based description.
In our conversation, he describes ADHD as a different “way of being in the world” that can include both strengths and challenges.
He talks about distractibility alongside curiosity, impulsivity alongside creativity, and hyperactivity alongside energy. At the same time, he acknowledges the difficulties ADHD can create with executive functioning, organization, remembering details, completing boring tasks, managing time, and following through.
This distinction matters.
A strengths-based understanding of ADHD does not mean pretending ADHD is easy or dismissing the areas where a child needs support. It means refusing to believe that a diagnostic list of difficulties tells us everything important about who that child is.
Why Is It So Important to Notice a Child’s ADHD Strengths?
One of Dr. Hallowell’s most practical recommendations for parents is to continually look for what he calls a “glimmer of interest.”
Maybe your child loves cooking. Baseball. Drawing. Animals. Building things. Music. Dance. Computers. Writing. Fixing things. Making people laugh.
The particular interest matters less than noticing that something has captured your child’s curiosity.
ADHD difficulties tend to announce themselves loudly. A forgotten assignment gets noticed. An emotional outburst gets noticed. A messy backpack gets noticed.
A quiet talent can be much easier to miss.
That is why Dr. Hallowell encourages parents, teachers, and coaches to deliberately look for those “little nuggets of gold.” Once you notice one, nurture it.
You are not trying to manufacture a talent or tell your child what they should love. You are watching for what is already beginning to emerge.
Does Strengths-Based Parenting Mean Ignoring Weaknesses?
No.
Dr. Hallowell is very clear about this in our conversation. Children with ADHD still need support with the things that are hard. They may need help with executive functioning, school, routines, organization, emotional regulation, behavior, or other challenges.
His argument is about where we place our overall attention.
If childhood becomes an endless remediation project, a child can begin to believe that their primary job is to fix everything that is wrong with them.
Instead, parents can hold both realities at once: support the weaknesses while developing the strengths.
A child may need help organizing homework and also need time to develop as an artist.
They may need support remembering responsibilities and also have an unusual ability to connect with people.
They may struggle in a traditional classroom and still have tremendous curiosity, imagination, humor, or creativity.
The difficult parts deserve support. They don’t deserve ownership of the whole story.
What Is Dr. Hallowell’s Cycle of Excellence?
Dr. Hallowell describes a five-part process called the Cycle of Excellence, which he believes helps children develop confidence, motivation, resilience, and a sense of capability.
- Connection. A child first needs meaningful connection to people, family, friends, pets, nature, activities, community, traditions, and places where they feel that they belong.
- Play. Dr. Hallowell defines play broadly as an activity that lights up a child’s imagination. Play can happen through sports, art, questions, building, experimenting, music, storytelling, or learning something fascinating.
- Practice. When children become genuinely interested in something, they are more willing to return to it. Practice grows out of interest rather than simply being demanded by an adult.
- Mastery. Practice leads to improvement. Mastery does not mean becoming the best. It means experiencing the satisfaction of becoming better at something that matters.
- Recognition. Someone notices that progress. Genuine recognition reinforces the child’s growing sense of competence and brings the cycle back to connection.
What I appreciate about this model is that confidence is not created by repeatedly telling a child they are amazing.
Confidence comes from experience.
I tried something.
I practiced.
I got better.
Someone noticed.
Maybe I can do hard things after all.
Why Does Dr. Hallowell Put Connection First?
One of the strongest messages from my conversation with Dr. Hallowell was surprisingly simple:
Enjoy your children.
Parents raising kids with ADHD spend so much time managing. We manage school, homework, appointments, medications, screens, routines, sleep, activities, missing assignments, emotional moments, and plans for the future.
Somewhere in all that management, we can lose the experience of simply liking being together.
Dr. Hallowell sees connection as the launching point for everything else. A connected child has a foundation from which they can explore, play, practice, struggle, recover, and grow.
Connection does not mean having a conflict-free family. It does not mean abandoning expectations or boundaries.
It means making sure your child knows your relationship with them is bigger than their performance.
Sometimes the most useful question may simply be:
When was the last time my child and I did something together that we both genuinely enjoyed?
Why Is Play Important for Kids With ADHD?
Dr. Hallowell argues that play should be central to childhood, but his definition of play is broader than recess or toys.
Play happens whenever imagination becomes engaged.
This can be particularly important for children with ADHD because interest and stimulation can dramatically affect engagement. In the episode, Dr. Hallowell describes boredom as “kryptonite” for many people with ADHD.
Parents often see the contrast firsthand.
A child may barely be able to stay with a worksheet for ten minutes but spend an hour designing something, researching a favorite subject, practicing a sport, drawing, gaming, building, or talking about something they love.
Instead of only asking, Why can’t you focus like this on your homework? We can also become curious about what this level of engagement is telling us.
What captures this child?
What gives them energy?
What kind of challenge do they willingly return to?
Those observations can tell us something important about how that child learns, what motivates them, and where strengths may be developing.
How Can Parents Stop Nagging a Child With ADHD?
This was one of my favorite practical parts of our conversation.
I asked Dr. Hallowell about something nearly every ADHD parent understands: the exhausting cycle of reminding, nagging, repeating, getting frustrated, and eventually wondering, How many times do I have to tell you?
His answer was essentially: plan earlier.
Many of the most useful ADHD supports happen before the difficult moment, not during it.
Dr. Hallowell calls this kind of proactive preparation pattern planning.
If taking out the trash creates a conflict every Thursday, create a predictable Thursday trash routine. If mornings repeatedly fall apart, talk about the morning plan at a calm time rather than trying to invent one while everyone is already late.
A child may fully intend to do what a parent asked and still lose the instruction between hearing it and acting on it. That distinction can radically change how a parent responds.
Instead of assuming they don’t care, the question becomes:
What structure could make this easier to remember and repeat?
That is a very different parenting problem to solve.
Why Do ADHD Families Get Stuck in the Same Arguments?
Dr. Hallowell calls recurring family conflict “the big struggle.”
For many families, it happens at predictable times: getting ready for school, completing homework, eating dinner, preparing for bed, doing chores, or getting off screens.
Parents often respond by trying harder in the moment. More reminders. More urgency. More frustration. More words.
But if the same argument keeps happening, Dr. Hallowell suggests addressing it when nobody is upset.
Sit down together and acknowledge the pattern.
We keep having this same fight. None of us likes it. What could we do differently?
Create the structure, expectations, and next steps ahead of time.
This does not mean the child decides all the rules. Parents still lead. But involving children in the plan can build understanding and buy-in.
It also shifts the family away from solving everything in the heat of conflict.
Could Conflict Itself Become Stimulating for an ADHD Child?
Dr. Hallowell raises an interesting idea in our conversation: sometimes an argument may actually be more stimulating than the task the child is trying to avoid.
Math homework is boring.
Fighting with Mom is not.
Taking out the trash is boring.
Arguing about taking out the trash is considerably more interesting.
This does not mean a child is intentionally trying to make family life miserable. Dr. Hallowell’s point is to understand the pull toward stimulation.
For parents, that information can be useful.
If every boring demand becomes an emotionally charged twenty-minute negotiation, the argument itself may accidentally become the most engaging part of the task.
Sometimes fewer words, clearer expectations, predictable routines, and more proactive planning can help remove some of that fuel.
What Does Dr. Hallowell Say About Praise and Rewards?
Dr. Hallowell makes an important distinction between empty praise and genuine recognition.
He does not recommend praising children simply for praise’s sake. Instead, he encourages parents to help children experience something genuinely worthy of recognition.
Interest leads to practice. Practice leads to improvement. Then the parent can truthfully notice what happened.
You kept practicing that.
Look how much your drawing has changed.
You worked hard on that.
You remembered without being asked.
That recognition carries more meaning because the child has evidence to back it up.
During our conversation, Dr. Hallowell also favors rewards and positive goals over heavily punitive approaches. Children, like adults, are often more motivated when they are moving toward something meaningful rather than simply trying to avoid punishment.
What About ADHD Teens and Young Adults Who Are Not Yet Independent?
Parents often become increasingly anxious when an ADHD child reaches adolescence or young adulthood and still needs substantial support.
I asked Dr. Hallowell about the 18-to-24-year-old who may not seem to be taking responsibility as quickly as a parent expected.
His advice was to keep supporting the development of independence without turning that support into endless moral lectures.
Some young people with ADHD may need scaffolding longer than their peers. That doesn’t mean parents should do everything forever, nor does it mean they should ignore their own limits.
The goal is still independence.
But independence is something we help a young person grow toward, not something we necessarily create by abruptly withdrawing support and hoping struggle will teach the lesson.
This is an important distinction for parents who are constantly wondering:
Am I supporting too much?
Am I enabling?
Should my child be able to do this by now?
Sometimes the better question is:
What is the next piece of responsibility my child is ready to practice more independently?
What Does “Never Worry Alone” Mean for ADHD Parents?
Dr. Hallowell ended our conversation with another piece of advice that I think parents need to hear:
Never worry alone.
Raising a child with ADHD can feel surprisingly isolating. Parents worry about school, friendships, behavior, self-esteem, mental health, independence, and what the future might look like.
When those worries stay entirely inside our own heads, fear can grow very quickly.
When we bring them into conversation with a trusted partner, friend, coach, clinician, support group, teacher, or community, worry has a better chance of becoming problem-solving.
You may not have the answer immediately.
But you no longer have to carry the question by yourself.
A Parent Coach’s Perspective
What stayed with me most from this conversation is how easily parenting a child with ADHD can become centered around remediation.
We are constantly trying to improve something.
Remember this.
Stop doing that.
Get organized.
Finish your work.
Control your reaction.
Try harder.
Be more responsible.
And yes, our children need skills. They need boundaries. They need expectations and support. Sometimes they need treatment, accommodations, coaching, therapy, medication, school intervention, or other professional care.
But they also need a childhood in which they discover themselves.
They need enough space to find out what lights them up, what they care about, who they enjoy being with, what they can become good at, and what they might eventually contribute to the world.
As parents, we may need to periodically ask ourselves:
Am I spending more time correcting what is hard for my child than helping them discover what is strong?
The answer does not need to be perfect.
The goal is simply to make sure we are doing both.
Because ADHD is part of a child.
It should never become the entire child.
Listen to Dr. Ned Hallowell on The ADHD Kids Can Thrive Podcast
Listen to my full conversation with Dr. Ned Hallowell: How to Parent Your ADHD Child Towards Their Strengths on The ADHD Kids Can Thrive Podcast.
We talk about ADHD strengths and challenges, finding your child’s interests, connection and play, the Cycle of Excellence, getting out of nagging battles, proactive planning, rewards, independence, and why parents should never worry alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are common strengths of children with ADHD?
No single set of strengths is shared by every child with ADHD. Dr. Hallowell encourages parents to look for the individual child’s curiosity, interests, creativity, humor, empathy, energy, imagination, problem-solving, or other abilities rather than assume ADHD automatically creates a particular talent.
How can I build my ADHD child’s self-esteem?
Look for opportunities for genuine competence rather than relying on general praise. Help your child discover something interesting, support practice and improvement, and recognize real progress. At the same time, make sure the relationship includes enjoyment and connection rather than becoming primarily about correcting behavior or performance.
Why can my child with ADHD focus on things they like but not homework?
Interest and stimulation can strongly influence attention and engagement for people with ADHD. A highly interesting activity may hold a child’s attention far more effectively than a repetitive or boring task. That does not mean the child is simply choosing not to work. They may need more external structure and support for less engaging tasks.
How do I stop constantly nagging my child with ADHD?
Look for recurring situations you can plan for in advance. Create predictable routines, clarify expectations when everyone is calm, externalize reminders, and decide ahead of time what will happen if something is not completed. Proactive structure can reduce how much parents have to rely on repeated verbal reminders.
What is the Cycle of Excellence?
Dr. Ned Hallowell’s Cycle of Excellence moves through connection, play, practice, mastery, and recognition. A child connects to something meaningful, becomes interested enough to play and explore, practices, develops greater competence, and has that progress recognized. The experience can help build motivation, confidence, resilience, and further connection.
Does strengths-based ADHD parenting mean being permissive?
No. Parents can recognize strengths while still maintaining expectations, boundaries, routines, and accountability. Strengths-based parenting means a child’s difficulties don’t become the only things adults notice or address.
Should parents keep helping an ADHD young adult who is struggling with independence?
Some young adults with ADHD may need support and scaffolding for longer than parents expected. The goal is still increasing independence, but support can gradually shift as skills develop. Parents also need boundaries around what they can realistically provide. Individual circumstances vary, so significant concerns may benefit from professional guidance.
About Dr. Ned Hallowell
Edward Hallowell, MD, is a board-certified child and adult psychiatrist, founder of the Hallowell ADHD Centers, former Harvard Medical School faculty member, and longtime author and speaker on ADHD. He co-authored Driven to Distraction and ADHD 2.0 and is known for his strengths-based approach to helping children and adults with ADHD recognize both their challenges and their potential.
About Kate Brownfield, ACC
Kate Brownfield, ACC, is an ICF Associate Certified Coach, Certified ADHD and Executive Function Parent Coach, author of How We Roll: A Parent’s Journey of Raising a Child with ADHD, host of The ADHD Kids Can Thrive Podcast, and founder of ADHD Kids Can Thrive.
Through private parent coaching, education, writing, and expert conversations, Kate helps parents better understand ADHD in children, navigate executive functioning and everyday family challenges, and support their child with greater clarity, confidence, and connection.
Disclaimer
This article and podcast are for educational purposes only and are not substitutes for individualized medical, psychological, behavioral, or mental health care.