ADD Student

Archive for the ‘Life Skills’ Category

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.

One piece of advice that you often hear experienced moms giving new mothers is to rotate the toys.

Take a certain percentage of your child’s toys – say a third – and put them away for a while. When they seem to be tiring of the ones that they have, you put a third of them away and bring out the ones that have been out of circulation. The children have renewed interest in toys that they haven’t played with in a few months or so.

The idea is a good one, and can be applied to lots of places. Here are a few suggestions:

Homework has to be done most nights, and it gets old quickly. Think about rotating the homework when boredom starts to set in. Getting tired of math? Let’s do some science instead for a while, or read a book. When that gets tiring, go back to math. (Yes, I am aware that you can’t compare playing with toys to doing homework, but adding variety might help them with something that they have to do.)

Got a teen (or a mom) with too many clothes and nothing to wear? Rotating some out might be just be the answer.

Changing seat assignments in class every month or so might make things a little more interesting in class.

New pj’s or a different room arrangement might make bedtimes easier.

Something new and delicious for breakfast might get sleepy heads out of bed sooner.

Some new bins for their room may encourage putting things away. (It could happen).

Think about the ways that you can switch things up and rotate the toys at your house. ADDers really respond positively to new and different; it might be just what you need.