Top 10 Books on ADHD for Parents (UPDATED 2017)

Books with the greatest impact for parents of kids with ADHD

Parents are sent out into the world with a prescription and maybe a fact sheet or two when their child is diagnosed with ADHD. When my son was diagnosed (2008), there was no manual or guidebook for this special parenthood (so I wrote one). Most parents are still thrust into it blind, and usually take a beating before you get this special parenthood figured out.

I've since written a guidebook for parenting ADHD — What to Expect When Raising Children with ADHD and The Stop Battling with Your Child Online Course — but the following books on parenting ADHD have been my greatest resources to learn to effectively parent my son, who has ADHD (and autism, dysgraphia, written expression disorder, anxiety, and a gifted IQ).

What books would you add to this list?

The Explosive Child — I learned the most about my son and what makes him tick by reading The Explosive Child, and my son isn't even explosive. This book gives insight to frustration issues and inflexibility like no other book I've read. UPDATE: Dr. Greene has a new book out that outlines the same approach as The Explosive Child, but is an easier read for parents of kids who are not necessarily explosive — Raising Human Beings.

In Superparenting for ADD, famed ADHD expert, Dr. Hallowell, teaches parents to focus on the positives and the gifts to raise a child's self-esteem and make life about success, not weakness.

Raising Boys with ADHD explores the impact of ADHD on both family life and academics. This is a good starter book if your child was recently diagnosed with ADHD. The author now has Raising Girls with ADHD available as well.

Written by a pediatrician and based in proven-effective mindfulness techniques, Mindful Parenting for ADHD will help you and your child with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) keep calm, flexible, and in control.

Many children with ADHD also have Sensory Processing Disorder. The Out of Sync Child explains this disorder and how to help your child appropriately manage sensory input and needs.

Easy to Love but Hard to Raise contains essays from moms raising kids with neurobehavioral disorders, including ADHD. Often, raising a child with ADHD can be very isolating, but reading this book shows that you are not alone.

As I said, kids with ADHD have tremendous difficulty with planning and organization. Smart but Scattered offers a great system to help your chronically disorganized child.

In The Organized Student, professional organizer Donna Goldberg, walks you step-by-step through creating systems that work for any child. This book is not specifically about ADHD, but contains valuable advice for parents of kids with ADHD.

Current efforts to help children with ADHD/LD don't work because they don't take into account that these kids are under chronic stress. They are required daily to do what for them is physically impossible—staying focused, reading with peers, sitting still—and live in a constant state of feeling inadequate and embarrassed. Jerome Schultz, PhD, peels back the curtain to reveal the true levels of stress and trauma kids with learning challenges often experience at school in Nowhere to Hide.

Of course, I can't leave my own books off the list. While I might be biased, moms all over the country are telling me reading Boy Without Instructions is like reading their own story — the emotional turmoil transcends the differences in the details of our parenting stories. Read this book to feel less alone, and to learn some of the wisdom I've acquired the hard way. My subsequent books are packed full of strategies that WORK for kids with ADHD: take a look at those on Amazon here.

There are so many great books that I discovered or have been published since I originally made this list. I'm adding a few below:

Share your thoughts.

3 Comments

Jennifer ajami
November 4, 2020 at 7:21 am Reply

Hi, I don't see a title listed for number 9?? Thanks for the list!
- Penny Williams
  November 4, 2020 at 2:31 pm Reply
  
  Oh boy, this post was all messed up. I cleaned it up and added the title for #9, Nowhere to Hide by Jerome Schultz, PhD. The graphic is on the page with all the book covers again too. https://parentingadhdandautism.com/2014/05/top10booksonadhd/
donna
May 5, 2021 at 4:03 pm Reply

my daughter is 4.5 years old and I know that she has adhd as I have suffered with it my entire life. I want to know what are good books to read that help with preschool age children