ADHD caregivers facing the COVID-19: the lockdown's impact on emotion and parenting strategies

Background: Recent literature highlighted the relevance of parenting strategies and emotions in dealing with children with ADHD and showed that these dimensions were highly affected by the COVID-19 lockdowns. Thus, our research investigated the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on caregivers of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We focused on the role of medications, children's age, and distance learning on changes in caregivers' emotions and parenting strategies. Methods: Nine hundred ninety-two caregivers completed an anonymous online questionnaire. The survey enquired caregivers about children's pharmacological therapy, difficulties in distance learning, and caregivers' parenting strategies and emotions before and during the lockdown. Results: Our results showed that caregivers experienced relevant difficulties in distance learning and that they felt more frustration emotions and employed more negative parenting strategies than before the pandemic. While pharmacological therapy was not a significant predictor of changes in neither positive nor negative parenting strategies, children's age and learning burden proved to predict caregivers' changes in positive parenting strategies. Moreover, our mediation analysis showed that the learning burden (e.g., homework increasing and children's reliance on caregivers) partially mediates the effect of age on changes in positive strategies. The older the children, the less the burden, and the less the change in positive strategies. Conclusions: These results describe lockdown's impact on caregivers' experience in dealing with children with ADHD and explain how they adapted to it by changing their parenting strategies.