It’s always hard to judge when your children are ready to handle risky tasks on their own. Taking the training wheels off and letting your child try something alone for the first time is one of the most difficult parts of being a parent, particularly with an ADHD child. A new study shows that parents might be even more cautious than they might otherwise be when teaching their child to judge when its safe to cross a busy street.
ADHD kids may look as they are capable of crossing solo, but even if they’re stopping and looking both ways they don’t seem to be as adept at judging how much time they need to cross safely.
“In our study, the outcome of crossing the street was much worse for kids with ADHD than for their peers without ADHD,” the study’s lead author, Despina Stavrinos, an assistant professor in the department of medicine at the University of Alabama, told HealthDay News. “Kids with ADHD left much less time to spare to cross, and there were several close calls,” she said.
Results of the study, published online July 25, will appear in the August print issue of Pediatrics.
The researchers chose to look at street crossing because it requires a lot of quick information processing and executive decision making, both places where ADHD suffers tend to be lacking. Parents of ADHD kids may need to put extra emphasis on helping their children learn to make this kind of basic, but dangerous, life decision carefully and cautiously.
