ADHD - a talk ALL parents of ADHD kids should listen to.

I have been listening to this talk over the last 2 weeks. I recommend it to you if you are an ADHD family. It is LONG but well worth it. I have learnt a great deal of new and helpful ideas .

 Essential Parenting Youtube talk for ADHD parents. A must.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo

How to get an ADHD child to do what you ask them to do -- 2 hot tips.

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There are not many things in life that I would love to have but just can not  - and that is ok. As a Chrisitan , I know God is at work in me helping me to be content and that contenetment with godliness is great gain. One thing I would love to give our family is this opportunity.

In the USA Dr Barkley runs an ADHD clinic for families. Oh how I would LOVE to take our family off there and get some help.

If you have an ADHD family, you will totally understand this.

But, having said this, he has given some excellent and helpful talks via the Internet and so we have some help at hand.

This post is about getting the ADHD child to act.... to do... to follow instructions.

I write about this because following through with an action is very difficult for ADHD children and they often, more often than not, will 'fail' in this area. 

Here are some hot tips from Barkley that he shares with the families who visit his clinic. 

Turn off the telly or any other noisy object when giving an instruction.

Take the child gently by the arm - touch them in some way. 

Get them to look you in the eye

give short instructions

expect follow through

and praise!!!!!

Touch and talk. 

This is his advice and to be totally honest with you we have been trying this with our children this week and it has really worked.

It requires the adult to engage totally in the child's world and to step back out of the thing that captivates us most.

We have usually relied on the 'verbal sprinkling' kind of parenting . You give the instruction, out loud, and expect the child to get on the job. This has failed terribly with our ADHD, especially our one son, who is totally not motivated by his own goal or actually my goal. He is stuck in the moment , enjoying his game and actually seems totally not to hear me. But, now, if I touch and talk, then we shift things for both of us. 

Radical change. 

He HEARS me and know what I expect and then can act. 

ADHD children are NOT stupid. They have loads of knowledge. They just have struggle effectively executing it. A silly example is... I know how to brush my teeth. I do not need you to show me how to do it,. I do not brush my teeth NOT because I do not know HOW but I lack the ability to follow through with the action.

We, the adults, need to change the ENVIRONMENT to help the ADHD child work and succeed. This was revolutionary to me. I supose I have been doing this already.... We have as a family. But now, it just seems to make more sence. Changing the environment to help the child experience success is a win win way of opperating. 

He talks a great deal about increasing the frequency of consequences. Not as a punishment or as a means to change behaviour ( this is unlikely in ADHD children) but as a way to get them to behave appropriately and to do what needs to be done. 

The ADHD child does not have a strong internal motivation system. Time and goal setting does not motivate them. An interesting project will probably motive them. If these do not, then we, the parents need to set EXTERNAL motivations like rewards or something that helps the child keep going.

This makes total sense to me but is very difficult to set up and get going.It requires a lot of energy, thought and creative ideas. It requires God's grace!!

I hope that these ideas help someone. I know that they really shifted some ways of parenting and expectations for me as a mom of ADHD children.

The adventure continues.

Feeling good - ADHD , The emotional rollercoaster.

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 If you are an ADHD family you will know that emotions and managing emotions is something ADHD children really struggle with. 

Up until the 1970's the emotional impulsively was a core feature in understanding ADHD and in diagnosing it. The difficulty that children with ADHD have in controlling anger, frustration, sadness and the quick and obvious outward display of these emotions , is very much, I think, part of ADHD. The child fails to regulate his emotions and struggles to self-calm. 

The 0 to 100 in a split second is what we call it in our home. 

The ADHD child struggles terribly with frustration and impatients. 

I have several, daily examples of this with our boys. This aspect of ADHD is both difficult to parent and extremely painful for me as a mom. I see before me a child who is so deeply saddened by something and who can not cope with that feeling. 

Similarly, when he feels frustrated and or angered he will respond and this response will be irrational and impulsive. 

Ritalin and other meds have and do help to calm the emotions and bring the inner chaos and neurological inability to self-control into some order.

It is this aspect of ADHD that causes children to struggle with friendships. Dr Russel Barkley speaks about this in his talks to parents with children who are ADHD. It is well worth a listen. 

I agree with him that other children lack patience and perseverance with children who are emotionally volatile. This is heart breaking for parents. Our ADHD children often have no friends or their friends lack the insight and ability to help them in the struggle. Understandably. 

Last weekend we had some fun with emotional stuff and our kids. 

I made a sensory bottle filled with glitter and beautiful stuff to look at for our ADHD boy who struggles terribly with impulsive anger and frustration. This was to be a calming bottle. We talked about his struggle together. I gave the bottle to him and he loved it. All the while the others whispered... I think glass was not a good idea mom. Round 2 will be made of plastic. 

:)

 

 

ADHD time blindness

 

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I have written a post on time and ADHD. 

This is some more on the important issue of Time and ADHD.

 Taken from a talk by Dr Russel Barkley.

ADHD kids and adults have what is called a kind of Time Blindness.

This means that an ADHD child lives in the now... in the moment. 

His brain has not got the hindsight voice that works backwards and whispers all that is learnt from experience. This voice is very weak in and ADHD child. He also lacks the future reference that a goal orientated brain would have. His forward planning brain also functions poorly. This means that the time for an ADHD person is NOW.

He is blind to time. Time has no meaning and he operates without any or very little reference to time.

This means that the ADHD child is often living life from one crisis to another in relation to planning and work. The ADHD child has an inability to organise his thinking for the future. He is unable to organise himself around a future intention or goal. 

This is profound!!

Once we realised this was the cause for my husband, many things changed for us. We began to operate in a totally different way with each other and in our marriage.

Firstly, my expectations changed. 

Secondly , my planning changed to include reminding him about the future dates and plans that I know know he has little or no organisational functioning towards.

EVER.

People often say to me, "oh that is just a man thing,my husband does that too."

I use the word ever because this time blindness is not an occasional thing. it is a forever and alwasy thing. ADHD children opperate like this all the time and so do ADHD adults. 

They struggle to plan forward. 

This Time Blindness has a profound effect on our ADHD children. They live in the moment. There is little if no thought for the future planning in any way in the day. 

So, if I have to remeber to take a book home at the end of the day for my afternoon study time. What are the chances of him planning to take it ahead of time and remebering to take it.

 Time managment for ADHD children has to happen  EXTERNALLY. 

This is new thinking for me and I am really still trying to get my head totally around it.

In part I have been doing this for my boys but I guess hoping that they will internalise the time thing for themselves. In part, this is better for the older son. I have had a good routine runing for him, since he began school and I reason that that routine was keeping time for him, externally. 

 I guess this means that the child might not learn to manage time internally , for himself, perhaps every. He will need to manipulate the environment to help with managing time. This is what we are going to try in our family going forward. Instead of trying and failing to get the ADHD child to fit into the time based way of thinking that most kids can handle, we need something new and something that works for our ADHD children.

Dr Russel Barkley suggests lots of timers , post-it notes, remeinders on phones, colourful notes and lists . Anything and everything needs to be tried and experiemented with, so that something that works can be found. 

The ADHD time blind child needs external visual reminders so that he can be alerted to time and so he can function well.

Here goes experiment number one.....

:)

Dear ADHD Parents.

I am a parent of 2 ADHD children and I am married to a wonderful man, husband and father, who is ADHD.  We have been thinking a great deal about ADHD in our home of late. Part of this has sprung up from the very real struggles ADHD children have as they navigate life and our inability to parent these difficulties with successful outcomes AND a permanent change in behaviour.

If you are a parent of an ADHD child you will know what I mean by this. 

There are some behaviours that just do not seem to change. 

The child does not seem to be internalising these for himself and needs us, the adult, to remind and remind and remind and sometimes do it for them. 

These can be things like...

1. making a bed

2. brushing teeth

3. writing down all the homework

4. remembering books from school

5. remembering to pack a bag

6. what day is it?

7.where are my shoes... again?

8. I should not do this 'thing' that got me into trouble last time... but here I go again

Do these sound familiar to you?

This is ADHD.

In our more up to date search for information and ideas and help I came across two excellent talks that I have spoken about. 

Both Doug and I have learnt an enormous amount from listening to these talks. 

Here is what the speaker, Dr Russel Barkley, encouraged all parent with ADHD children to do.

Here they are...

1. get a good, evaluation of your child by and EXPERT in ADHD.

Linked to this is becoming an experimenting parent. In other words try stuff. Some stuff works for some kids and some does not. I know this is true in our home. Our one son is motivated by competitionand so he is driven to win. The other is not and so we struggle on to find something that motivates him to endure and persisit in activities that are boring and not interesting foe him.

2.become an expert on ADHD yourself.

read, research and read again. The Internet is FULL of information on ADHD and in fact when he googles ADHD he came up with 14 million sites. Clearly we can not read them all and to be honest I would not want to read many of them. BUT there are good sites  with sound , up to date information on ADHD. They will have a common thread running through them and not offer all kinds of wonderful JUNK that will not help us or our children one little bit.

3. Medicate. Medication is the one effective solution to all ADHD children that works so far.

The main reason for this is that we can not always be there with our child to help him navigate the difficulties he will experience in life. Medication does for his brain what it can not do for itself. Much like a diabetic and insulin!

4. Suck it Up. This was Dr Russel Barkley's advice to us. OWN our child's ADHD. It is real. It exists and we need to face it and accept it.

ADHD is not all of who our child is. He is a beautiful and unique person with gifts and talents that have nothing to do with ADHD. His is a boy who is ADHD. ADHD is part of who he is.

I found this very, very real and helpful. 

I hope you do to.

XX

Whats new about ADHD ?

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 The New ADHD

It is ADHD Awareness month- October.

I have been doing a great deal of writing, reading, thinking and praying around ADHD. I have listened to 2 excellent talks from the USA, on ADHD. Both these were totally mind blowing , clear and helpful. The one made me really, really sad.

We are desperately trying to live as an ADHD family with a good and healthy mindset around ADHD.  I guess this talk was totally realistic  in explaining the up to date research on the brain and so it really lacked empathy for those of us who have children who are ADHD and who are perhaps ADHD ourselves.

Be that as it may, one can not negate the information because of the WAY the person gave the message.

The key thing I am hearing around up to date ADHD information is this…

ADHD is called the wrong thing.

I suspect that over the next 5 years it will become clear what we should have called it and it will change in name.

Living with the experience of ADHD I totally agree with this thinking. ADHD is far to limiting and as this Dr argued in the talk, it therefore does not express or explain the real and serious issues around an ADHD person.

 This means that people do not take these children seriously!!!

They do not take the diagnosis seriously. It also means that some children are diagnosed ADHD who are not.

Last night , as I listened carefully to his explanation on brain activity and what we see in behaviour from an ADHD child and adult, I was comforted and deeply saddened that our family is indeed and ADHD family.

There is absolutely no doubt in our minds.

Do you know that the first medical documentation of ADHD was in 1798.

It has been around forever and is NOT a modern construct. What has happened is that ADHD one of the key brain research areas and so more and more information is coming to light.

If you have ADHD in your family, you really should listen to these two talks. They are long but you will do yourself an enormous favour by listening to them.

I will post the links here.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo

I just end this post with a prayer for all of us who deal with this issue.

Loving Heavenly Father

I come before you this morning

Knowing and trusting in you.

Lord you made each one of these precious children

And adults.

Lord you totally understand the way their brains work.

Lord you love us.

Please would you pour grace onto and into our lives as we think and live with each other.

Give us wisdom beyond human measure

Give us grace and forgiveness.

Help those who are struggling with ADHD and all its complexities.

Lord give grace and insight to teachers, parents, and all who work with these children.

Help them to develop and grow well so that they can live well as adults.

Would you be at work, revealing yourself to them

Show each their need for your forgiveness and real help.

AMEN.

All things Hairy!!

What does hair and The Falconers have in common?

Well, for most of our married life , Doug has had long hair. He was married with long hair, much to his mothers disapproval:)

He cut it once in all the years we have been together and that was when he turned 30 and we were living in the UK. We all went out to celebrate and he shocked his mates with his very short hair.

I too have gone from long, flowing locks to the short look.

I do not consider myself a hair chick but I do have a great hair dresser. She works from home but was a stylist in one of the posh hair dresser spots in Cape Town. What makes her great. She is spontaneous and cuts hair well.  I have dead, dead straight, thick hair and not many can handle this kind of hair. She is totally at home with it. She cuts all our boys hair and the thing I like about this, is that as their hair grows out , it still looks good.

The strange thing is, that I love Doug's hair long BUT I love my boys hair short. 

Today was hair inspection day at school Of course we had left it all to late and too long. Sam and Jet had their hair cut today and Thomas and James are up for Wednesday. 

While the two little ones had their hair cut I read "You Mag" , as you do. 

The truth is I am actually a closet hair cutter and of course a pyromaniac.( for another post)

I think nothing of it to simply just cut my hair when it is getting annoyingly long. My darling hair dresser takes this in her stride and simply thins and corrects my mess:)

 

We have lots of pets. They bring their very own hair issues with them too. This is Luke. He is the most lovable , irritating dog ever. His gets really long , woolly and matted and so , twice a year, we shave him. This is the result along with an old T Shirt to keep out the cold.

The teen hair thing is also upon us. This involves hair sprouting from all sorts of parts of the body. This weekend I overheard another, younger child saying to our son, " you have a moustache!" - My heart ached for the pain and strangeness with which adulthood is born.  Becoming a man is a glorious thing and a God given destiny for our sons and yet it is a strange and painful journey to navigate. We stand with our first born, on the edge of manhood. side by side with him as he steps through the door onto his life, hair and all. :)