Superparenting for ADD

From Ballantine Books, with its subtitle Superparenting for ADD: An Innovative Approach to Raising Your Distracted Child. The publisher's page shows the e-book date as 30 December 2008 and the paperback date as 23 February 2010; the publisher gives 240 pages for both editions, while one library record shows 212 pages. Page numbers may shift depending on the edition you have.

Edward Hallowell is a child and adult psychiatrist who served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for twenty-one years. He is one of the authors of Driven to Distraction and the founder of a chain of clinics bearing his name. Peter Jensen is a child psychiatrist and researcher. His name appears on the design papers of MTA, NIMH's large multicenter ADHD treatment study. So the book was written jointly by a clinician and a treatment researcher.

I could not find a verified Turkish edition; I write it under its original title. Another of Hallowell's books exists in Turkish, but I have not seen a record showing that it is a translation of this title.

This review is based on the book's table of contents, the publisher's description, library records and reader reviews. I know the content of the chapters only from their titles and from the publisher's description; where I could not verify something, I say so. The translations of the titles are mine.

The starting idea

The book's claim in one sentence is this: the constant criticism directed at a child with ADHD buries the child's real talents, and the parent's first job is to stop this burying.

The publisher's description sets out a three-part approach. The first is unconditional love: accepting the child as they are. The second is mirror traits: seeing a strength on the flip side of a trait that looks like naughtiness, for example reading stubbornness as persistence. The third is the cycle of excellence: five steps based on safe risk-taking, tinkering, practice through play, mastery and being appreciated. Some descriptions add a fourth element to these, finding the child's innate way of taking action.

In my view the shortest way to understand the book is this: Hallowell turns ADHD from an illness into a parenting question. The question stops being "How do I fix this child" and becomes "What is inside this child, and how do I make room for it."

Context: the ADHD conversation of 2008

Hallowell's approach has moved along the same line since the days of Driven to Distraction in the 1990s: he does not reject the diagnosis, but he objects to the diagnosis coloring a person's identity. This book carries that attitude to the parents' table.

That is why Jensen's being a co-author is interesting. A researcher whose name appears in treatment studies, and who defended the value of carefully managed medication in one of his papers, became a partner in the book's strength-based tone. I could not verify who wrote which chapter, so I cannot say how the partnership strikes its balance.

Inside the book: first, the parent's mindset

The table of contents in library records gives an introduction, fourteen chapters and a resources section. The book builds this order carefully: the first five chapters prepare the parent, the middle chapters give the tools, and the last chapters cover the school and medical side.

Chapter one, "Love: The Essential Strength." Judging by the title, the book's thesis is set up here. Chapter two, "Loving Your Child in the Face of Opposition," carries this thesis into the hard moment: how love lasts when the child resists seems to be the chapter's question.

Chapter three, "Developing Empathy," aims to bring to life in the parent's eyes what it is like to be a child with ADHD. Chapter four, "The Right Kind of Help," asks what the right help is. I could not verify what the chapter answers, so I make do with the title.

Chapter five, "From Moral, to Deficit-Based, to Strength-Based Thinking," is the book's philosophical backbone. It lines up three views: the child is bad, the child is broken, the child should be thought of together with their strengths. In Google Books' list of terms that appear often in the book, "moral model," "medical model" and "strength-based model" stand side by side, so this trio really does recur in the book's language. It helps to read this framework together with the is ADHD a real disorder article on the site.

Inside the book: the tools

Chapter six, "Emphasizing the Positive in Action," starts on page 65 of the book and puts emphasizing the positive into practice. Chapter seven, "Mirror Traits: What's Good in What's Bad," is where the mirror traits live. The example the publisher gives is stubbornness and persistence. Reader reviews also mention pairings such as distractibility and curiosity, impulsivity and creativity; I could not verify on which page of the book these pairings appear.

Chapter eight, "The Cycle of Excellence: A Method for Unwrapping Gifts," starts on page 85 and is the book's most mentioned tool. In the order readers report, the steps are a connected environment, play, practice, mastery and recognition. I think the logic is this: if a child is left free to try what they love in a safe place, they become skilled, and recognition gives them the courage for the next attempt.

Chapter nine, "Conation: A New Way of Tapping into Every Child's Strengths," starts on page 99 and is the book's most controversial chapter. Conation is a concept describing a person's own particular style of taking action, alongside thinking and feeling. Chapter ten, "The Kolbe Model in Action," tries to apply this concept to children with the Kolbe model. Together the two chapters take up about thirty pages. I go into the details below in the criticism section.

Inside the book: school and the medical side

Chapter eleven, "What to Tell the School?" starts on page 129. Chapter twelve, "Schools That Get It Right," on page 137. Google Books' list of frequent terms mentions Section 504 and special education; these are concepts of the American school system. For their counterpart in Turkey it is more accurate to look at the what is a BEP article.

Chapter thirteen, "Making a Diagnosis and Composing a Treatment Plan, Including New, Alternative Approaches," starts on page 147 and runs about eighteen pages until the next chapter. The term list shows neuropsychological testing, neurofeedback, Adderall and Concerta. Chapter fourteen, "A Collaboration Convened / Please Join!" is a six-page closing and call that starts on page 165. After that come school system information and the resources section.

Let me make a note here: giving eighteen pages to a subject as big as diagnosis and treatment shows where the book's weight lies. I could not verify the content of this chapter in detail, so I do not recommend leaning on it for medication and treatment decisions. Those decisions are made with a doctor.

Its strongest point

The most valuable thing about the book is its order: love first, then method. As an adult with ADHD, it is easy to wonder what would have changed if a parent had looked at the years before my diagnosis with this eye. I think this way of seeing is the book's real product. The book intervenes at the root of the problem I described in the shame and self-compassion article on the site: criticism heard for years settling inside.

The second strength is the tone. The praise that comes up most in reader reviews is that the book is optimistic and constructive, and that it increases the parent's empathy. The endorsements the publisher printed point the same way: Richard Lavoie finds the book hopeful and constructive, and Susan Smalley says it goes beyond a framework that looks only at deficits. But these are promotional texts and do not count as independent assessments; John Ratey's words also come from Hallowell's longtime co-author.

Third, it does not stop at saying "find the strengths" but describes this as a five-step process. As I explained in my article on the question of strengths in ADHD, the strengths narrative often turns into a slogan. This book at least tries to put a method behind the slogan.

Its weak points

Evidence. For the three tools at the center of the book, namely mirror traits, the cycle of excellence and conation, I could not find an independent test. There are studies showing the effect of parent behavior training, and I described them in my parent training programs article. This book's own framework, however, does not seem to have been tested to the same level. The strength-based approach seems sensible and harmless, but "sensible" and "shown to work" are two different sentences.

Kolbe. One of the discomforts most often voiced in reader reviews is that the Kolbe assessment is a paid tool and reads like a commercial element in the book. I have not tried the paid tool myself. But to my mind these two chapters are not the most applicable part of the book but the part carrying the most question marks.

Generality. Some readers find the book more encouragement than concrete strategy, and some complain about repetition and length. According to another review, overemphasizing the message "just love your child" can read as if it ties the child's struggles to a lack of love. This reading is not unfair; that is not the book's intention, but it builds a framework open to parental guilt.

Age. The book is from 2008 and uses the term "ADD." Its examples focused on hyperactivity are less useful for children in whom inattention is more prominent. Some readers also stumbled over comments about gender and over generalizations about teachers.

Who it is for, and who it is not

For a tired parent who wants to rebuild how they see their child after the diagnosis. For someone whose relationship with their child has turned into a constant line of correction. If you are looking for a framework for the family, it is also a good start in the period when you are thinking about how to explain the diagnosis to your child.

It is not enough, though, for a parent who comes with questions like these: how do I get the bag packed in the morning, how do I set up homework time, how do I run a reward system. For that job the reward system article on the site and the books below are more concrete. Nor is it a source for medication decisions.

Its place on the shelf

Hallowell's other books on the site, Driven to Distraction and Delivered from Distraction, are for adults. Superparenting for ADD is the same author's child and parent side.

Putting it side by side with Russell Barkley's 12 Principles for Raising a Child with ADHD is instructive. Both put love and acceptance first. Barkley openly counts ADHD as a disability and adjusts expectations accordingly, tying it to supporting executive function from the outside. Hallowell, on the other hand, leans on finding and nurturing talent. The thick reference work is the Turkish edition of Barkley's guide. My order: first build the way of seeing with this book, then the structure with Barkley.

If someone in the family has ADHD too, the being a parent with ADHD article works as a bridge between these two books.

My clear stance

This book should be read not as a method book but as a book about a way of seeing. Anyone who expects to be left with a program after reading it will be disappointed. Anyone ready to reconsider how they look at their child will find what they came for. Its evidence is thin and its commercial chapters are debatable, but the warmth of the first five chapters is enough on its own to earn it a place on the shelf.