When Your Pre-Teen’s Friends Are the Problem: What ADHD Changes About What to Do
Your child with ADHD isn’t more likely to have bad judgment about people. They’re more likely to have run out of other options.
Your kid used to play with the same three kids since kindergarten. Now there’s a new name at the dinner table — someone with a different vibe, an eye-roll where there used to be enthusiasm, maybe a few new words you don’t love. You’ve heard the grades slipping. You’ve caught a lie that didn’t used to be there. Every instinct says: get your child away from this kid, right now.
That instinct is worth slowing down before you act on it. Not because the worry is wrong — sometimes it isn’t — but because with a child with ADHD, there’s usually more going on underneath than “made a bad choice of friend.”
