My teenager has ADHD. Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between teen behavior and his condition.

• My oldest child was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 7 years old. 
• Now he is 13 and a full blown teenager, with eye rolling and moodiness. 
• It’s hard for me to separate what is him being a regular teenager and what is his condition. 

When he was 7, my oldest son was diagnosed with ADHD. In the years since his diagnosis, his ADHD has manifested in many ways: hyperactivity, impulsivity, inattention, loss of focus, etc. He’s a textbook case, and it makes parenting him harder.

I grew up in a time when awareness of neurodiversity was more limited, but by the time I became a parent, I had a pretty good idea of what it looked like. I knew it would add a wrinkle or two.

Last fall, that same kid turned 13. In the months since his birthday, his teendom has manifested in many ways: he sleeps late, he hides in his room, he rolls his eyes, and he’s moody. He’s a textbook teen, and it makes parenting him a lot harder.

I don’t know how to tell if he’s being just a teen

I knew having a teenager would bring new challenges. We joke about the terrible 2s, but it’s the terrible teens that most parents fear. After all, we remember being teens ourselves, and even the most delusional among us can admit we were no picnic. I knew what I was in for.

What I didn’t know was how his age and his ADHD would combine to expose my deficiencies as a parent. Not because his teen angst is especially extreme or his ADHD symptoms have intensified, but because it is hard for me to separate the two.

I have trouble differentiating my 13-year-old’s typical 13-year-oldness from actions that are caused or influenced by his neurodiversity.

We need to guide him without crushing his self-esteem

One of the first things my wife and I learned after my son’s diagnosis is that many ADHD kids struggle with self-esteem. They tend to hear a lot of criticism — I’m not the only person who misinterprets behavior — and can’t help but internalize it, damaging their self-image.

To counteract that, my wife and I constantly emphasize that ADHD makes your brain different, not worse, and assure our son that those differences can be harnessed into strengths. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to convince him of that.

The problem is teenagers do a lot of things that inspire scolding and criticism.

As kids grow up and start yearning for a level of independence that is suddenly becoming available to them, their eyes get bigger than their stomachs (only figuratively; anyone with a teen knows their stomachs are bottomless pits), and they often reach for too much at once. It’s our job to rein them in with a little discipline.

Discipline doesn’t have to mean punishment or lectures; it means taking a clear-eyed look at misbehavior, reflecting on what could have and should have been done differently, and reinforcing the importance of learning from those mistakes.

I’m trying to be a better dad for him

Newsflash: teenagers aren’t the most open-minded recipients of serious discussions about behavior (or about anything), and having substantial conversations with ADHD teens requires even more patience and understanding. It’s even worse when your dad is lecturing you for doing things your brain struggles not to do. Especially when he doesn’t understand that.

I’m trying to get better.

I can’t separate the ADHD-inflected aspects of my son’s personality from the rest of him any more than I can prevent him from being a teenager. Nor do I want to. His ADHD is a part of who he is, and stripping it from him would be no different than stripping away his sense of humor (although if I never hear another “deez nuts” joke, it will be too soon).

But that’s fine because my job is not to stop my son from growing up or to eliminate his neurodiversity. It’s to understand him better and what he’s going through and lovingly parent all of it.