ADHD and Making Friends: Helping Your Child Find Their People
Many ADHD kids struggle to make friends. Here are some ways to help them bond with their peers and build meaningful friendships.
Making friends with ADHD can be difficult no matter your age, but it can be even more fraught for kids, tweens, and teens with ADHD making friends. At that age, everyone’s trying to figure out how social dynamics work, and making friends with ADHD sometimes brings an added challenge to an already tumultuous time. As a parent, it can leave you saddened that your ADHD kid has no friends, left in the land of what-ifs: “What if my ADHD child can’t make friends?” “What if no one likes my ADHD child?” or “What if all kids with ADHD are loners for life?” As a youth worker and a parent, I feel you. It hurts so badly to watch incredible kids be rejected by their peers, desperate for any kind of connection, and wondering if there’s something wrong with them. But there is good news. ADHD kids can make friends; I’ve watched (and, on occasion, helped) them do it for years. Like many other things, kids making friends with ADHD works a little differently than for their neurotypical peers – but those little shifts make a big difference. Here are some ways you can help your ADHD child make friends.
Why Is It Hard for Kids with ADHD to Make Friends?
Being an ADHD child with no friends can feel like a personal failing, but there are ways to build friendships no matter how your brain works.
Anything that sets a child apart as “different,” whether it be their gender identity, disability, race, or neurodivergence, can increase the difficulty of making friends. Sometimes, this is because of systemic barriers and biases. Sometimes it’s because other kids are insecure themselves, on the lookout for somebody they can put down. Other times, it’s because people naturally have an easier time understanding people who are like them — at any age, it takes effort to connect with people different from you!
All of these hold true for ADHD kids. Most schools, classrooms, sports, and activities are built with neurotypical children in mind, which can leave kids neurodivergence struggling to regulate and success in front of their peers, which lends to difficult social situations. Some children will latch on to any ADHD behavior they see as unusual: fidgeting, making mistakes in class, being loud, losing things, interrupting — anything that can be ammunition for teasing. Some of these behaviors can also be off-putting to neurotypical children who don’t understand them, or even to neurodivergent children who are dealing with their own struggles. Put together, this can be a recipe for difficulty making friends as a child with ADHD.
Will My ADHD Child Ever Make Friends?
Kids making friends with ADHD sometimes struggle, feeling like they’re left on the outside of social groups.
The things working against your child may feel insurmountable, but don’t give up hope! For starters (and I realize I’m not doing your child any social favors, but hear me out), I think your ADHD kid is awesome. Genuinely. I’ve been a youth worker for several years now, and I’ve gotten to connect with so many incredible kids with ADHD. They’re brilliant. Their minds are so creative and work in ways that I find incredible. They have so many thoughts and ideas and so much energy to share that, even if I give them the tiniest chance to express themselves, they end up amazing me every time. In fact, my husband and the love of my life just got diagnosed with ADHD, and it explains many of the things I love about him: his creative mind and the many wonderful things he makes, the energy he brings to every conversation, and the ability to pivot and adapt and keep going that I simply do not have. And every person with ADHD is also an entire person, with ideas, thoughts, strengths, and personality that will inevitably find somebody to mesh with. But if you set out a pathway for an ADHD kid to make friends in the same way their neurotypical peers do, you’ll be falling short. Children with ADHD thrive when they have the structure to regulate themselves, can develop the social skills to engage with others, and can have pride in the accomplishment of mastering something they enjoy in a group setting.
Help Your Kid With ADHD Make Friends Through Structure and Regulation
Structured and engaging activities can help ADHD children make friends.
Structure is huge for neurodivergent minds. As we discuss in depth in another article, ADHD brains benefit from a structured routine. Knowing what to expect helps reduce mental distractions and build up the habits to be able to follow through on tasks and stay focused. All kids are better off when they feel safe, and predictability can be a big element of that, especially for ADHD kids who, if they aren’t given boundaries, often keep pushing to try and find them. (Note: balance is key! After a certain point, adding more structure and more rules stops helping — and may even backfire. Every kid needs a little bit of space for independence and unpredictability, and ADHD kids are no different. After all, the structure of classrooms often works against them!)
In the youth groups I run at Young Dragonslayers and in person, I’ve seen how a good balance of structure and freedom within an activity can be the sweet spot where neurodivergent kids can regulate themselves without feeling othered. I let participants use fidgets, and get snacks. In person, I let them walk around the room or step out for a little break. Online, I let them go wherever they need to and mute themselves if that’s helpful. When it’s someone’s turn to talk, I let them take their time expressing what they need to; when it’s not, I make sure they know that they need to respect others until their time comes. There are clear channels for sending silly images, emojis and messages that let that fun silly energy out without distracting from the main activity and communication. All of this helps ADHD kids to feel safe and take what they need to regulate themselves. When a child is in a regulated state and they feel safe, they’re in a much better place to be able to engage with their peers. Plus a structured activity often gives them built-in ways to interact with others, which can be a huge help for ADHD kids who feel self-conscious about making friends.
Social Skills for an ADHD Child Making Friends
Building social skills can help your ADHD kid make friends.
Making friends as a kid with ADHD is a skill that must be learned like any other. You didn’t expect them to know how to read, use the toilet, or tie their shoes without first practicing and learning how. Making friends is a much more complicated process than any of these! Instead of inanimate objects, it involves other people, who are unique and complex. And rather than being a singular process that can be practiced in isolation, making friends is done using a wide variety of skills and can only be practiced with others.
But, at the same time, all kids are learning these skills, ADHD or not, and they’re figuring it out together. As they grow, kids develop social-emotional skills like self-awareness and self-management, learn to make responsible choices, become more socially aware, and, of course, learn relationship skills like leadership, conflict resolution, and resisting peer pressure. Having a consistent group, a skilled facilitator, and a collaborative activity are great ways to build social skills. This gives kids the double win of slowly developing friendships and gaining mastery of something over time, both of which give a huge boost in confidence and accomplishment – and assures them that they have it in them to be able to make friends in other contexts too!
How Can ADHD Kids Make Friends?
I’ve seen so many ADHD children making friends in my Dungeons & Dragons groups!
If you’re looking to help an ADHD kid make friends, giving them places to develop social skills and activities with enough structure to regulate their brains and emotions help a lot. But what I’ve seen give that extra push to actually form those genuine friendships is finding a space where they can fully express themselves. By that, I mean a place where they get to show off what they do best: being creative, running with ideas, and bringing unique energy, enthusiasm, and knowledge to an activity.
Here, we run games of Dungeons & Dragons where kids get to create characters and take them on magical quests, and we find that tons of ADHD kids are drawn to it. And it makes sense; they get to use their imagination to come up with a character, they’re not only allowed but encouraged to do dramatic voices and gestures, and they can be the one to come up with a new clever idea when things don’t go according to plan. Our ADHD players bring such a unique energy, crafting extensive backstories and lore for their character and the world and finding the perfect (and zany) plan when the dice don’t go their way. And because they’re already at a table with geek-minded kids who are invested in the game, that gives them some serious cool points from their peers!
Help Your ADHD Kid Make Friends Through Collaborative Gaming
ADHD children can make friends in many ways, but collaborative storytelling games like Dungeons & Dragons are uniquely suited to build social bonds and skills.
Though I admit I’m biased, in my professional opinion, collaborative storytelling games like Dungeons & Dragons are some of the best ways for ADHD kids to make friends – especially ADHD kids who have trouble making friends! Not only does the game have the inherent structure of rules and sessions, the creativity of telling a story, the socialization of doing so alongside others, and the confidence of mastering a game, but there’s even more in it that helps ADHD children make friends.
The process of tracking hit points and coming up with combat strategies develops working memory, impulse control, and other executive functioning skills that people with ADHD often struggle with. By facing conflicts and challenges in a fictional world, players can practice dealing with frustration and disappointment in a safe context without “real life” consequences. And, of course, being able to adventure in a fantasy realm gives kids an escape from the everyday stressors of life – but doing so with others helps them to build friendships along the way. If you think Dungeons & Dragons would be a good way to help your child with ADHD make friends, why not try our games? We match players based on their interests, play style, and experience level, and we give every child the chance to play a trial session and see if it’s the right fit for them. Find out more about what we do and join the waitlist below!
