ADD Student

Archive for the ‘Life Skills’ Category

Most kids have chores that they need to do around the house. For young children, it might be as simple as getting dressed and brushing their teeth; older kids, of course, are capable of more.

As the parent of a child with ADHD, even the simplest things can be a challenge.

Getting them up in the morning and ready to leave for school can feel like your biggest accomplishment of the day.

Chore charts are a great way to help kids remember what they need to do and encourage a little independence.

Kelly at Make It Sparkle Mama made a chore chart of sorts for her 8 year old son. I think her idea is simply genius and easy to make too.

Here’s a sneak peek at what Kelly came up with:

From Make It Sparkly Mama

To read Kelly’s entire post and get instructions on how to make your own Kid Friendly To Do List, head over to Kellys now.

Today on her blog on ADDitude magazine’s website, Kay Marner writes about the side effects that ADHD and ADD medications have on parents.

She makes some good points, and brings up a subject that’s rarely discussed: the emotional toll that ADHD takes on the parents.

Parenting an ADHD child is an emotional roller coaster.

When you get the initial diagnosis, or begin a new treatment, hope shoots up. Maybe now you’ve finally found something that will work, something that will really help your child and bring some peace and normalcy to the household.

Then, inevitably, reality sets in.

You realize that living with and managing ADHD is a lifelong process with both good days and not so good ones. There is no magic pill, no “one size fits all guaranteed to work” treatment that will make everything better.

Life with ADHD, just like life in general, is a series of learning experiences. Some are good, some are challenging.

Yes, living with and learning to manage ADHD takes time and effort and even attention. Recognizing that won’t make the low days go away, but maybe it can make them easier to endure.

Be sure to read Kay’s article. It’s a worthwhile read.

In a recent experiment, a group of 50 children with ADHD were put into a room with 50 sleep deprived children. Then a group of experts – some behavioral experts and some sleep experts – were put into the room and asked to identify which children had ADHD and which simply needed some sleep.

Overall, the experts did very poorly. According to sleep specialist Dr. Chris Seton, “A tired five year old and a five year old with ADHD can both act in the same way”.

If you are the parent of a child with ADHD, you know how important sleep can be. A lack of sleep can make ADHD symptoms worse, and as the study suggests, perhaps even mirror ADHD behavior.

ADDers can have trouble getting to sleep because it’s difficult to “turn off” your brain long enough to relax and get to sleep. And once they’ve gotten to sleep, it can be hard for them to transition back to a waking state.

In addition, Dr. Seton says that modern technology has greatly impacted the sleep patterns of teens. A recent study showed that 45% of American teens were using their cell phones as late as 3:00 am in order to send and receive text messages.

According to Dr. Seton, the best indication of whether or not you have had enough sleep is that you awaken spontaneously without the use of an alarm clock. He also says that teens need about 9 or 10 hours of sleep per night, while younger aged kids can need as much as 9 – 11 hours each night.

Based on my own observations, it seems that way too many of us are sleep deprived by Dr. Seton’s standards. It’s something you may want to consider in the overall picture of ADHD.