ADHD - Put the breaks on.

When we first had our son diagnosed ADHD we began with a good educational psychologist.

He taught us something that I was reminded off by Dr William Dobson in his pod cast.

Slow down…. STOP……be in the 'now'!!

We learnt to understand the ADHD brain as having a Ferrari brain with bicycle brakes. I think this is so helpful for explaining the brain to a child.

Ritalin and other meds help the brakes function more effectively.

Meds help with impulse control….

Hyperactivity

Inattentive

Impulsive

But then what….

Well, the exciting thing is that the child is then what I call available to learn….

It is at this point that real other learning can happen. ADHD children and adults are often not aware of the effect they have on other people. There ability to read social cues does not work effectively BUT they can learn to read them better.

Dobson calls this Mindfulness. This is a psychological term and really is used in counselling. It is the idea that we can stop and think about ourselves and our behaviour in the moment. We can train ourselves to become self AWARE… this is different to self –INVOLVED but rather is a way of noticing what effect my behaviour is having on myself… the why of behaviour but more importantly for the ADHD child… the how my behaviour is effecting others.

I love this bit because a group of friend with kids on the spectrum were actually talking about this very thing.  That is, the idea that children are not really self aware. They simply just act. 

Part of growing up is becoming self aware and thinking about why and how we behave. 

Concious living.

This idea is really rich for me because it means we can help our ADHD children and in fact all our children to stop and really think about the effect of their beaviour.

A good example is an impulsive ADHD child's interrupting of conversations. This is something one of our children struggles with . He never seems to learn not to interrupt.

I am so excited to try and get him to start thinking about the effect that his interrupting has on others… ?? well see.

I guess that what he is saying is that the ADHD child can learn how do behave socially. A little like teaching an Autistic child to greet by shaking hands and making eye contact…. ( Temple Grande is a great story and movie illustrating this)

I really think we have to do some hard wok as a family on this front….

I often feel ‘sorry’ for my ADHD kids because of their struggles and so cut them slack. I think this is OK but not in the area of appropriate behaviour socially. 

We all need to function well so that we can live well.