Substance use and delinquency among adolescents with childhood ADHD: The protective role of parenting.

Abstract

Several domains of parenting have been identified as important for adolescent well-being. Whether these same domains are equally beneficial for adolescents with ADHD histories remains an empirical and clinically important question. This study examined whether parental knowledge of their teen’s activities and whereabouts, consistency, support, and parent-adolescent conflict are associated with substance use and delinquency similarly for adolescents with and without a diagnosis of ADHD in childhood. A sample of 242 adolescents, 142 diagnosed with ADHD in childhood and prospectively followed into adolescence, and 100 without ADHD in childhood, were the focus of study. The relations between adolescent-reported outcomes (i.e. substance use and delinquency) and parenting behaviors were tested using latent variable modeling to determine both the effects of general (common) and specific (unique) parenting behaviors for participants with and without a history of ADHD. Adolescents’ report of parental knowledge was a significant correlate of delinquency and substance use above and beyond other parenting variables and the variance in common across the parenting variables. More knowledge was associated with less delinquency and substance use for all participants, but parental knowledge was more strongly associated with alcohol use for adolescents with versus without childhood ADHD. These correlational findings suggest that, despite the increased difficulty of parenting youths with ADHD histories, actions taken by parents and youth to increase parental awareness may provide some protection against behavioral transgressions known to be elevated in this population.

Advancing a Biopsychosocial and Contextual Model of Sleep in Adolescence: A Review and Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Further, parenting behaviors such as monitoring and rejection/hostility are associated with delinquency (Hoeve et al 2009), affiliation with deviant peers (Claes et al 2005;Galambos et al 2003), and substance use (Burke et al 2001;Dishion et al 2004;Marshal et al 2003), which in turn is likely to impact sleep functioning. There is recent evidence to suggest that parents' knowledge of their adolescent's activities and whereabouts is associated with less delinquency and substance use for all teens but may be especially critical for teens with ADHD (Walther et al 2012). It is unknown, however, the degree to which family factors contribute to the sleep problems commonly experienced by adolescents with ADHD or whether such associations are moderated or mediated by problem behaviors or a negative peer group.…”

Differential Associations Between Alcohol Expectancies and Adolescent Alcohol Use as a Function of Childhood ADHD

“…However, there is some evidence for certain environmental predictors, such as parenting factors (Walther et al, 2012) and peer use (Marshal et al, 2003), to be more strongly associated with alcohol use for individuals with ADHD compared with individuals without ADHD. Although environmental factors may be more strongly related to alcohol use for individuals with ADHD, the reverse may be true for certain individual factors.…”

Stimulant Treatment of ADHD and Cigarette Smoking: A Meta-Analysis

“…Another potential explanation is that consistent stimulant treatment may mitigate social risk factors that contribute to smoking in adolescence but are less influential adulthood, such as school failure, 60 family conflict, 61 or exposure to delinquent peers. 62 Alternatively, poor parental monitoring and parent-child communication have been found to predict smoking for ADHD adolescents, 63,64 and treatment-seeking parents may be more engaged in parenting and monitoring. Children who were consistently followed by medical providers for medication management may have also received more oversight and monitoring, thus reducing their risk.…”