ADHD - You are your child's frontal lobe!

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ADHD is a neurological disorder of the frontal lobe. ADHD children struggle with functioning on many levels and across all areas. ADHD is NOT a lack of KNOWLEDGE or SKILL. They do not need to learn How To but they need help with taking what they know and functioning well with it. 

Time is an issue for ADHD children.

There are many great ideas to help kids work within  a certain time frame. I have found setting timers work well. Stop watches work well. Dr Barkley suggested a cool thing.... taking a large amount of work like 20 maths problems, and dividing them up into shorter, manageable groups or bits. This is, in his words, so as not to TORTURE the ATTENTION SPAN. Don't you just love this idea. An ADHD child already struggles with paying attention especially to dull and repetitive things like list of words or loads of maths problems. So , by breaking it into small chunks, they can have a brain rest in between and a reward in between. Lots and lots of praise!!

His big idea which is brilliant is called Time off the clock. Here, instead of giving and ADHD more time in a test etc, they get the exact same amount of time as everyone else BUT by using a stop watch, they get to take frequent BRAIN rests along the way. These are short and quick and they are held by stopping the watch. When the child works on the test again, the time runs. This whole process takes longer but the child gets the same time as all the others. BRILLIANT!!!!

So, the great news is that there are excellent ideas and studies being conducted that are going to revolutionise the way ADHD kids get to write tests etc. The difficult news for us, as parents, is that we really need to be our child's frontal lobe. We need to create and environment for him, that will aid and help him where he struggles on his own. 

Realistic, age appropriate and child appropriate expectations work. 

Medication works.

frequent, consequences and rewards work to keep the child motivated and plugged in and NOT necessarily cause behaviour to become internalised. -This bit of news is difficult to hear ( for me that is) but I guess it is part of the owning of the ADHD. 

Our kids are growing, changing and learning and their brains are growing, changing and learning. 

We are either going to be part of the solution or part of the problem. 

I choose to be a frontal lobe for my children - whenever theirs fails them:)