Dealing with emotions in autistic and ADHD children

Managing emotions is a real issue for many children and teenagers with ADHD and of course their parents in caring for them and supporting them. Research has shown that this difficulty in managing emotions appears early in childhood.

A recent study, led by Dr Aja Murray at the University of Edinburgh, has suggested that children aged between three and seven who struggle to control their emotions have more symptoms of ADHD than their peers. This early emotional regulation difficulty was also linked to showing more conduct problems and having more ‘internalising’ behaviours (such as worries and sadness). The findings were evident for both young girls and boys.

The research team highlighted that emotion regulation skills are acquired from early in life and children develop these skills at different rates. They concluded that slower development of emotion regulation skills may be an indicator of a higher likelihood of developing a neurodevelopmental condition and mental health difficulties later in childhood and adulthood.

We also know that managing emotions is a real issue for many autistic children and young people. We recently held a webinar on this topic delivered by Professor Jacqui Rodgers from the University of Newcastle (a recording of this is on our parent platform). In this webinar, Professor Rodgers spoke about the importance of adults helping these children with their emotional literacy including helping them to recognise and communicate their emotions as well as understanding the emotions of others.  This can make the world feel less overwhelming.

There were many great strategies and tips in her webinar including:

• Modelling – Parents (and other adults) talking about their own feelings such as ‘I was worried and this made me feel….’.
• Reflecting – Talking about the child’s responses and reactions: ‘When we played a game you seemed happy. I knew this because you were smiling’ and ‘When you went to school to visit you seemed worried. I knew this because you kept asking me about it’ are examples.
• Reading stories or watching movies or programmes with emotional content.
• Using picture or other rating scale you choose together to help the child understand about grading emotions. This can help the child be less extreme i.e. I hate or love something and understanding there are different degrees of liking something for example.

Next week we will be hosting a webinar on ‘dealing with the emotional ups and downs in ADHD’ by speaker Dr Aja Murray from the University of Edinburgh. The webinar can be accessed via our parent platform which also hosts many previous webinar recordings including topics of sensory processing, food and eating, masking in young neurodivergent people, and anxiety in autistic children and young people. To join EPIC Think Learn as a parent please register here: https://epicthinklearn.com/parents-join-epic/