This is pretty common for ADHD (and actually not all the uncommon for NT kids).

It's generally best not to address in the moment outside of perhaps responding with a quick, "This was a choice you made" and then giving some space. Do not engage at that time. The child is feeling very overwhelmed and cannot respond appropriately. We have found that engaging in those times tends to amplify the blame and anger, and the child gets in trouble for saying things he shouldn't and feels worse.

If we give some space, he calms down. He probably knows that others are not to blame, so you might not even need to address it, unless he keeps bringing it up like he wants a respond. Then, a quick answer and moving on is best.

When you do talk about it, it is best to do it later, when he is calm and can be rational about it. Don't belabor the point. Just work together to plan for the future - "It sounds like you're frustrated with how this turned out. What do you think would make it go better next time? Can we plan ahead for a better result?" You might get a "next time you need to help me with this," but you can say, "I'm happy to help, and I can do so if you ask me to / and I can only help with finding resources, not writing your paper / etc."

You can call it what you want, and lots of kids do this, but I think of it as “shifting blame” because the child doesn’t want to take personal responsibility or feels like they screwed up and that is uncomfortable, so they blame others. Lots of SN kids feel like they screw up a lot, and some of them do this. With an NT kid, you can just tell it to them straight. With some SN kids, you need to try to understand why they do it, point it out to them, and then help them understand what went wrong and how to avoid it next time. Over and over. Of course, being unpleasant about it is not okay, and consequences apply, but it helps if the adult understands why and how to help.

Anonymous wrote:Does your ADD child tend to blame you and others for things they are at least partially responsible for? If so, how did you address it constructively? An example might be a DC turning down help on a project than blaming parents for not helping with said project.

Uh this is one if the most prevalent features of adhd


It's not called add anymore and hasn't been for years.

I suggest you educate yourself with parent training classes as much as possible inorder to help your child.

So overreacting in a loud rude manner is now called Deeply Feeling instead of emotional dysregulation? Hmm.

Our ASD ones the family have Oppositional Defiant Disorder to most questions, requests or suggestions. They also learned ODD behaviors from one of their parents who can’t stop doing it.

Hi OP, while she isn't really my cup of tea generally, Dr. Becky from Good Inside talks a lot about this in her work on "deeply feeling kids" (which describes most kids with ADHD..) She just did a post on something similar and I did find it helpful how she explained why "deeply feeling kids" will do this, that it mostly stems from shame. I haven't been able to delve into what she says to do about it yet, it was just this week that I saw her talking about it but just wanted to share because I found it helpful to remember what is really going on when my son with ADHD does this. Now I have to get to what to do about it.. but she has a bunch of content on it that i haven't gotten to so thought I'd share in case you want to look

Both of my kids do this, especially when they can’t find something they want. We obviously hid it. It’s not just kids with ADHD. My NT teen is baking cookies right now and just got over a yelling fit that we hid some of the things she needed. I responded by calmly telling her to get a stool, look for what she wanted and then I left the kitchen.

We deal with this very day. OP how do you deal with any of the other ADHD behaviors your child does?

Yes, I think there's a term for this, but I can't recall.

At a calm time I say something like "I noticed that you blamed me for your grade." Generally nowadays that's enough of a prompt to get "I'm sorry I wasn't thinking, I was just upset about the grade."

But it took a while to get there.

To start the conversation initially I said "I noticed... Did you notice?" And then "is it possible that you were upset at the grade and blamed me impulsively? Or to feel better?" And lots of taking about reasons for why we say certain things

Does your ADD child tend to blame you and others for things they are at least partially responsible for? If so, how did you address it constructively? An example might be a DC turning down help on a project than blaming parents for not helping with said project.