The holiday season is often accompanied by a unique set of stresses and pressures. For families of children who have ADD or ADHD, these seasonal stresses can verge on the overwhelming.

To help families have the happiest possible holidays, BellaOnline's ADD editor, Erika Lynn Smith, offered the following tips:

• Choose carefully what you and your family is involved in over the holiday season. One does not have to attend or accept every invitation that comes along. Life is short, decide who or what is important and then graciously decline those invites you do not feel will do anything but cause additional stress and disorder in life.

• Keep it simple and low key whenever possible. Most people with ADD are sensitive to lights, sounds, textures. A busy, crowded shopping center may soon cause sensory overload, leading to irritability, and decreasing ones ability to focus on finding what he or she came for in the first place.

• If feeling overwhelmed, remember to take care of your needs first, everything else can wait. Often we place the most outrageous demands on ourselves, pushing ourselves to the brink of exhaustion, determined to make this the best birthday, holiday, party. The reality is we end up tired, irritable, and unable to enjoy what we worked so hard to achieve in the first place.

Labels: tips, stress, holidays

Posted By: Aspen/CRC