It’s 7pm on a Wednesday evening. You’ve survived another homework battle, negotiated screen time limits for the fourteenth time this week, and somehow got everyone fed. Your child with ADHD is bouncing off the walls. Again. You’re exhausted. Again.

And somewhere in the back of your mind, a small voice whispers: Should I be doing more?

Here’s what I want you to know after twenty years of working with families just like yours: you already have one of the most powerful therapeutic tools available. It doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t require a prescription. And research from the New Forest Parenting Programme—one of the most evidence-based approaches to ADHD we have—places it at the heart of effective parent training.

Why Play Matters More Than You Think for Children with ADHD

I hear versions of the same confession regularly in my consulting room. Parents sitting across from me, shoulders tense, admitting almost shamefully:

If any of these sound familiar, you’re not alone. Modern life has somehow convinced us that play is frivolous—something children do while we handle the ‘important’ tasks. We buy toys and games designed for solo entertainment, telling ourselves this counts.

But here’s the thing: no toy, however expensive or educational, can replicate what happens when you sit down on the floor with your child and give them your full attention. None. Not the tablets, not the elaborate LEGO sets, not the enrichment apps. Your presence is irreplaceable. And for children with ADHD? It’s not just nice to have. It’s therapeutic.

The Science Behind Play Therapy for ADHD

Research from the New Forest Parenting Programme has demonstrated something remarkable: when parents engage in structured, focused play with their children with ADHD, measurable improvements occur in attention, behaviour, and parent-child relationships. This isn’t wishful thinking. It’s been validated in multiple randomised controlled trials across different countries and clinical settings.

Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp’s groundbreaking work showed that social play directly affects frontal lobe development—the very brain region that governs executive function, impulse control, and attention. The same executive skills children with ADHD struggle with most.

Let me put this another way. Children with ADHD have brains that are approximately 30% delayed in executive function development compared to their peers. Their ‘executive age’ lags behind their chronological age. Play—particularly interactive play with an engaged adult—provides exactly the kind of scaffolding these developing brains need.

What Your ADHD Child Actually Learns Through Play

When you play with your child—really play, with your phone in another room and your attention fully present—you’re teaching them an enormous amount without either of you realising it. The learning happens through the side door, which is exactly how ADHD brains learn best.

Attention and Concentration Skills

Games require sustained focus on shared activities. Your child practises attending to one thing while you gently redirect wandering attention back to the game. This is working memory training disguised as fun.

Turn-Taking and Impulse Control

Every board game, every back-and-forth, every ‘your turn, my turn’ sequence teaches the brain to wait. For a child whose natural inclination screams NOW, this practice is genuinely therapeutic.

Emotional Regulation

Losing a game is hard. Winning gracefully is hard. Play creates safe, low-stakes opportunities to experience big feelings and practice managing them—with you right there as their emotional anchor.

Social Skills Development

Listening, communicating, cooperating, negotiating, handling conflict, reading social cues—all of these develop naturally through play. And crucially, they develop in real-time interaction, which is the only way children with ADHD truly learn social skills. Telling them what to do doesn’t stick. Practising with them does.

Problem-Solving and Cognitive Flexibility

Open-ended play encourages thinking flexibly. Building blocks, pretend scenarios, making up games—these activities stretch cognitive flexibility, an executive function that ADHD brains find particularly challenging.

Self-Esteem and Connection

Perhaps most importantly, when you play with your child, you communicate something words cannot: You are worthwhile. You are valuable. I choose to spend my time with you. For a child who spends most of their day being corrected, redirected, or reminded of their failures, this message is profound.

The ADHD-Friendly Way to Play: Games That Actually Work

Here’s something crucial that well-meaning parenting advice often misses: children with ADHD need play designed for their brains. Long, complex games that take ages to set up and hours to complete? These often end in disaster. The ADHD brain craves immediate feedback and rapid reward. We need to work with this, not against it.

Games That Work for ADHD Children

Quick-Start Games: Choose activities that require minimal setup. If it takes longer to set up than to play, you’ve already lost the ADHD brain’s interest. Card games like Uno, Snap, or Go Fish work brilliantly. Memory matching games. Dice games. Anything that goes from ‘let’s play’ to ‘we’re playing’ in under two minutes.

Fast Reward Cycles: Games where something happens every few seconds keep attention engaged. Building towers to knock down. Racing cars. Quick card-matching games. The dopamine hit comes frequently enough to maintain interest.

Movement-Based Play: Many children with ADHD think better when moving. Chase games, ball games, dance parties, obstacle courses—these allow the body to discharge energy while the brain engages socially. That parent who told me ‘if he doesn’t get out and play every day, life is hell’ was absolutely right.

Imaginative Play: Role-playing, pretend scenarios, creating stories together—these are profoundly valuable for ADHD children. You’re practising perspective-taking, emotional expression, and narrative sequencing all while having fun.

Interactive Reading: Before you say ‘but my child can’t sit still for books,’ hear me out. Interactive reading—where you do voices, ask questions, let them predict what happens next, even act out scenes—transforms reading from a passive exercise into engaging play. Start with short, high-action picture books and build from there.

Games to Approach Carefully

• Long Strategy Games: Monopoly-style games that take hours often end badly. By round three, everyone’s frustrated.
• Complex Rules: Games with multiple exceptions and conditions overwhelm working memory. Keep rules simple and clear.
• Waiting-Heavy Games: Any game where one player takes extended turns while others wait is setting up for failure.

Special Time: The 15-Minute ADHD Intervention That Works

Parent training programmes consistently recommend something called ‘special time’—15 to 20 minutes daily of one-on-one, child-led play. No commands. No corrections. No teaching moments. Just you, fully present, following your child’s lead.

This sounds simple. It is anything but easy. Here’s how to make it work:

1. Schedule it like an appointment. Put it in your diary. Protect it fiercely. Children with ADHD need predictable routines, and knowing that special time happens every day at 5pm (or whenever works for your family) creates something to look forward to.
2. Put your phone in another room. Not on silent in your pocket. In another room. Your child knows when you’re mentally elsewhere, even if your body is present.
3. Let them choose the activity. This isn’t the time to steer them toward ‘better’ choices. They want to play dinosaurs? Play dinosaurs. They want to crash cars? Crash cars. Following their lead communicates respect and builds their sense of agency.
4. Narrate like a sports commentator. Describe what your child is doing: ‘You’re building such a tall tower. Now you’re adding the blue block. Oh, you’re making it even taller!’ This teaches them you’re paying attention. For children who feel chronically overlooked or criticised, this focused attention is therapeutic.
5. Resist the urge to teach. This is not the time for ‘What colour is that block?’ or ‘Can you count how many pieces?’ Your child has enough people teaching them all day. During special time, just be present.
6. Set a timer. When the timer goes, special time ends. This creates clear boundaries and helps manage expectations—both yours and theirs.

“But I’m Exhausted”—Honest Answers for Tired ADHD Parents

Let me be direct: raising a child with ADHD is exhausting. By the time evening rolls around, many parents are running on empty. The idea of sitting on the floor playing feels like one more demand on a depleted tank.

I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But here’s what I’ve observed: parents who build regular play into their routines often report that it actually restores their energy rather than depleting it further. Connection is energising. Conflict is draining. Play builds connection, which reduces conflict throughout the rest of the day.

And honestly? Once you get past the initial resistance (yours, not your child’s), you might find you enjoy it. Many parents rediscover their own playfulness. Believe it or not, play can be therapeutic for adults too.

The December Holiday Opportunity: A Four-Week ADHD Play Plan

Here’s why I’m writing this now. The end-of-year holiday break is approaching—that strange period where normal routines dissolve and time stretches differently. For many families with ADHD children, holidays can be challenging. Lack of structure, overexcitement, disrupted sleep, sugar overload from festive treats… it’s a lot.

But the holidays also offer something rare: time. Time without homework battles. Time without the morning rush to school. Time to try something new.

This December, I’m challenging you to start a new chapter with your child. Here’s a simple plan:

By January, you’ll have established something powerful: a regular practice of connection that can carry you through the year ahead.

Play as Part of a Complete ADHD Treatment Approach

I want to be clear about something. Play is not a magic cure for ADHD. If your child needs medication, play won’t replace it. If they need educational support, play won’t provide that. ADHD is a brain-based condition that often requires a multi-faceted approach.

What play does is build the relational foundation that makes everything else work better. It strengthens the parent-child bond that carries you through the hard moments. It provides the positive attention that ADHD children so desperately need and so rarely receive. It teaches skills through the side door when direct instruction fails.

In my clinical practice, I recommend play as part of what I call the CALM approach—Communication, Associated conditions, Lifestyle factors, and Medication. Play sits right at the heart of the Communication piece, and it influences everything else.

Evidence-based parent training programmes like the New Forest Parenting Programme, Barkley’s Behavioural Parent Training, and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) all incorporate play as a central element. This isn’t fluffy ‘spend quality time with your kids’ advice. It’s supported by decades of research and clinical evidence.

The Message Your ADHD Child Needs to Hear

Children with ADHD receive an estimated 20,000 more negative messages by age 10 than their peers. Twenty thousand more corrections, redirections, criticisms, and expressions of frustration. Is it any wonder so many struggle with self-esteem?

When you sit down to play with your child—when you choose their company, follow their lead, laugh at their jokes, celebrate their wins—you’re delivering a different message entirely:

No expensive therapy can replicate that message. Only you can deliver it.