Table 18 Challenges with Parenting

Canada

We’re running late to everything so it directly affects her [daughter], and then she’s embarrassed to walk into her class late. So I feel like I’m always letting her down. […] We miss the beginnings of everything. And I just feel like she is living with someone that has a disease.

France

After having treatment, I found my children again and was able to rebuild my relationships with them. I explained to them what had happened and why I was taking treatment and as they had witnessed my shortcomings first hand they recognized that it was an illness.

Germany

I regret it especially with the education of the children. Here it could have been helpful because there was a lot that could have been better or we could have done it better had we known that we had ADHD.

Italy

My elder child makes me suffer because he makes me re-live all the most difficult and embarrassing moments of my life because now it’s his turn. I can help him put these thing in perspective, I can orient him but I cannot live his life, I let him live it.

The Netherlands

When I’m at home I can be a real bully, I have no patience and I react fiercely to everything. I thought let’s try the medication and see if things can be handled better.

United Kingdom

I’ll have times with my son where everything’s going well for a while, then when my life goes downhill it affects my son really because he’s going back to his dad's house so that his dad get him to school on time and, just with his schooling it’s really where I’m not organized, like getting him to school on time. Some mornings I’ll be depressed, some mornings I don’t get up, I forget to put the alarm clock on. Then when he comes home from school I’ll forget that he’s coming home.

United States

I can’t even focus and hold a decent conversation with my kids unless I’m in the car and the radio is off.