My Actual Advice to Parents of Kids With ADHD

In this deeply personal and thoughtful post, author, LWC Medical Director Owen Scott Muir, M.D., offers heartfelt advice to a family member navigating a child’s ADHD diagnosis. He breaks down myths, treatment options (including non-medication approaches like eTNS), and long-term risks vs. benefits.

With clinical authority and lived experience—he has ADHD himself—he reframes ADHD not as a disorder but as a context-sensitive brain difference with great potential when properly understood and supported.

I’m a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist. I’m also the only physician in my family— sometimes I get questions, and I want to do a good job on them, because it's people in my own family asking.

It turns out, I think a little bit differently about answering a question from someone in my own family than I do when I'm writing an article. The articles I write are intended for general audiences, and so I'm keeping in mind people who have the problem, and people who don't have the problem. I'm thinking about payors when I'm writing this newsletter. I'm thinking about physician colleagues, and I'm thinking about the individuals affected— all at once.

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