12 Principles for Raising a Child with ADHD

Russell Barkley's short book for parents. It was published by Guilford Press in October 2020 and runs to about two hundred pages.

A note on the publication year: some lists give an earlier date. The publisher's site and library records show 2020. I have not come across an earlier edition.

Barkley's best-known parent book is Taking Charge of ADHD, which came out in Turkish as DEHB ile Baş Edebilme. That one is a reference work of more than three hundred pages in four parts. This book is the same body of knowledge reduced to twelve principles: shorter, more direct and noticeably gentler in tone.

I could not find a verified Turkish edition, so I am leaving the title in English. The only Barkley book I could find in Turkish is the translation of Taking Charge of ADHD.

Why a separate book

Having read Taking Charge of ADHD, I did not see at first why this book was needed. Then I realized that it is not realistic to expect a parent to hold that thick book in their hands and open it every day.

Especially if the parent has ADHD too.

12 Principles is designed like a handbook. Each principle is a chapter, and each chapter turns on one idea. There are quick-reference lists and downloadable tools. According to Guilford, the aim of the book is to combine an attitude of acceptance and compassion with knowledge of the executive function difficulties in ADHD.

That sentence explains the whole logic of the book. Barkley wants the parent both to accept the child as they are and to know how that child's brain works. When one of the two is missing, what follows is either blame or helplessness.

The twelve principles

The table of contents of the book runs in this order.

1. Use the keys to success.
2. Remember that this is a disorder.
3. Be a shepherd, not an engineer.
4. Set your priorities right.
5. Mindful parenting: be there and be aware.
6. Support your child's self-awareness and accountability.
7. Touch more, reward more, talk less.
8. Make time real.
9. Working memory is not working: take the load outside and make it physical.
10. Create order.
11. Make problem solving concrete.
12. Be proactive: plan for hard situations at home and away from home.

The wording of these headings is mine. Looking at the list, two groups appear.

The first half, especially the first six principles, is about the parent's mindset. How you look at things, what you care about, who you will be in front of your child.

The second half, from the seventh on, comes straight out of Barkley's theory of executive function. Time, working memory, order and problem solving: each corresponds to a function that stays weak in ADHD, and for each the recommended direction is the same: take that function out of the child's head and carry it into the outside world.

Remembering that it is a disorder

The second principle sounds harsh on a first reading.

It touches an issue I often discuss on this site: is ADHD a difference or a disorder? Barkley's answer is clear. ADHD is a picture of deficiency, and forgetting this drags the parent into unrealistic expectations, and therefore into constant disappointment.

This stance matches how the site looks at the superpower narrative. Presenting an area where the child struggles as a talent weakens the parent's willingness to ask for help and to request accommodations from the school.

Barkley ties this principle to a concrete rule. According to a practical calculation he often uses in his clinical talks, the executive functions of a child with ADHD run roughly thirty percent behind their peers. From a ten-year-old you should expect what you would expect from a seven-year-old when it comes to regulating themselves.

This calculation is a rough rule and does not claim to be an exact measurement. But it is very useful for a parent adjusting their expectations. What stuck in my mind as I read was this: if the adults around me had known this when I was a child, they would have given me as much responsibility as I could carry, instead of the responsibility my age called for.

The shepherd and the engineer

The third principle is the most quoted idea in the book, and Barkley often tells it in his talks as well.

Most parents see themselves as engineers: if I put in the right input, I will produce the right child. Because ADHD is largely hereditary, this expectation comes to nothing. A child cannot be designed.

A shepherd, on the other hand, does not design the sheep. But the shepherd chooses which pasture they will graze on, and sees to their feeding and protection. The environment affects development but does not determine who the child is.

This metaphor eases the parent's guilt. A child's ADHD is not treated as the result of the parent's faulty engineering. The heritability of about 74 percent given in the review by Faraone and Larsson (2019) supports this frame.

But there is a place where the metaphor can be misread. Being a shepherd does not mean being passive. What Barkley means is that the parent spends their power on arranging the environment the child lives in, rather than trying to reshape the child directly. This idea gains meaning when it is connected with the principles of the second half.

Priorities and accountability

The fourth and sixth principles complement each other, and I think they are the least discussed and the most useful.

Setting priorities means choosing what the parent will spend their energy on. A child with ADHD has hundreds of behaviors in a day that could be corrected. A parent who steps in on all of them both wears themselves out and turns the relationship with the child into a constant correction line. Barkley suggests that the parent focus on the important matters of today and not let big worries about the child's future poison the present relationship.

This principle made the most sense to me from the point of view of a child with ADHD. In a house where everything is important, nothing is important; the child cannot tell which warning is really serious.

The sixth principle is about supporting the child in noticing their own behavior and taking on its consequences. Since self-monitoring is weak in ADHD, this skill does not develop on its own. The parent's role is to show the child their behavior and its result like a mirror, and to do it without shaming.

The word accountability may sound harsh to some readers. In Barkley's framework it is about not using ADHD as an excuse. ADHD is an explanation; it does not remove responsibility, it determines how that responsibility is to be supported.

Time, memory, order

The principles from the seventh to the twelfth are the most hands-on part of the book.

Touch more, reward more, talk less. Children with ADHD take little from long verbal explanations. Short, clear and immediate feedback and physical warmth are far more effective. While reading this section I thought of the long lectures I listened to as a child. I do not remember a single one.

Make time real. In ADHD, time stays abstract. The child does not feel how long ten minutes is. Barkley recommends visual timers, calendars and tools that make time visible. I talked about this for adults in the article on time blindness; its root is in childhood.

Working memory is not working. The title of this principle reads like the most honest sentence in the book. Giving a child a three-step instruction and expecting them to remember it is setting them up to fail. Lists, notes, visible reminders: take the information out of the head and put it in the environment.

Create order. This is how I read the practical meaning of this principle: before expecting a child to tidy their room, build a room that can be tidied. Few things, visible boxes, a fixed place for everything.

Make problem solving concrete. Supporting abstract thought with physical tools, with writing and drawing.

Be proactive. Planning for hard situations before they come. Reminding the rules before going into the supermarket, talking about the reward and the consequence in advance.

The same idea lies behind all of these principles, and it comes from Barkley's model of executive function: in ADHD the problem is in using something you know at the right moment. If the environment is arranged to support that moment, the child can do what they know. I explained this in more detail in my article on executive functions.

I looked at the mindful parenting principle with suspicion

The fifth principle seemed to me the weakest link of the book.

The idea is understandable: the parent should be truly present when they are with their child, and notice before reacting. This is aimed at breaking the automatic cycle of anger that is very common among parents of children with ADHD.

But research on mindfulness-based programs for parents of children with ADHD is still limited and its results are mixed. The reader needs to know that the evidence base here is not as strong as it is for the book's other principles.

Then there is the matter of the parent with ADHD. Being there and being aware is exactly one of the hardest things for an adult with ADHD. This principle gives the parent a goal, but how to reach that goal, especially for a parent whose own attention is scattered, is not opened up enough.

Through the eyes of a parent with ADHD

There is a side of the book that puts the parent face to face with their own ADHD. Almost all twelve principles lean on the parent's executive functions: making time visible, creating order, planning hard situations in advance. A parent with ADHD, while reading these principles, is also reading a list of the areas they struggle in.

Even so, I find the book suitable for these parents. Much of the outside structure built for the child can serve the parent too. The visual timer in the kitchen makes time visible for everyone in the house; the checklist by the door does not remind only about the child's bag.

Its strength is the tone

I did not feel the sense of distance here that I felt while reading Taking Charge of ADHD.

In this book Barkley speaks less like a scientist and more like an experienced clinician. Even putting the first principle, nurturing the child's strengths and interests, at the start is a choice. Finding the area where the child is good before their difficulties.

This is different from the superpower narrative. Barkley does not say ADHD is an advantage. He says that a child with ADHD also has areas where they are strong, and that those areas are vital for the child's self-confidence.

Its weakness is the density

When twelve principles are squeezed into two hundred pages, some chapters come out short. The create-order principle and the working-memory principle are very close to each other. The priorities principle and the mindfulness principle also overlap.

The detail on diagnosis, adolescence, school and medication that is in Taking Charge of ADHD is not here to the same extent. This book does not replace it. On subjects like the decision about medication, what the book says stays within a general frame; that decision is made with a doctor.

For whom, and at what stage

For the parent who has got through the first shock after the diagnosis and is looking for how to organize daily life. Also for the parent who bought Taking Charge of ADHD and could not finish it.

For a parent who has ADHD themselves, this is Barkley's most accessible book in this area. Short chapters, lists, a structure that can be opened again and again.

It does not replace the parent behavior training that the American Academy of Pediatrics guideline (Wolraich et al., 2019) recommends as the first step for preschool age. But it is a good companion for a parent who is going into that training or coming out of it.

My suggestion: one principle a week. Twelve weeks. Changing only one thing each week.