A ADHD/ADD is increasingly understood. It is good, that the problem is recognized, because without recognizing there is no solution of the problem. However, parents need to be careful. In many countries the diagnosis of hyperactivity is most regular source of income for psychologists and educators.
This site aims to help parents to recognize the problem, if it really exists, but not to be manipulated, if the problem is not actually.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD is a developmental disorder of self-control. Basically, it is a disorder of attention, which may be accompanied by restlessness and impulsiveness. It is not the developmental stage the child will grow, not the result of parents’ failure in upbringing, not a sign of the child’s “bad character”.
CHARACTERISTIC BEHAVIOR OF CHILD WITH ATTENTION DISORDERS
• Begins to work before he/she received clear instructions and understand them
• Saw the other children are doing before he/she try to do that..
• Works fast and makes unnecessary mistakes, not errors associated with ignorance.
• He/she is constantly in motion, all touching and not a long time sitting in one place.
• Answer questions too quickly and does not try to think first.
• Not able to follow the instructions given to the whole group.
• Cannot remember the instructions, although there is no difficulty with memory.
• Transitions from one activity to another and rarely ends started tasks.
• Has difficulty organizing written work: it are usually confused.
• Incorrectly interprets simple statement, does not understand many words and sentences.
• He/she can repeat statements whose made a lot of time ago. and can not repeat the ones that have been told recently.
• Easily slips and falls, awkwardly throwing objects, or they fall from his/her hand.
• Easy to triggers for children whose talk a lot and make noise, often completely stops work in order to be joined.
• She-he is too talkative, often hangs up.
• Often leaves the bench and a little searchs around the classroom, while other children sit quietly.
• Does not watch when the teacher explains something, looks elsewhere.
• She/he is often said: "I cannot do it", before tries, easily give up, especially conspicuous in the new tasks.
• She/he speaks, sings and whispers to her/himself.
• Unable to express thoughts in a logical and understandable way.
THE MAIN TYPES OF ADHD/ADD
Of course, a child with this disorder does not have all the above features of behavior. There are three main subtypes:
1. Hyperactivity
2. Impulsiveness
3. Difficulties with attention and lack of concentration
Hyperactive children often, even as a baby, are an unusually active: cry a lot, at night, ask to eat, have difficulty sleeping, often, it is difficult to calm and comfort them. In later life, they are constantly on the go, cannot still sit, touch everything, ask questions all the time, their attention is not in accordance with age, is hard to play alone, for them. Because of the unrest, hyperactive children are at greater risk of injury. Although, they start walking early, they are clumsier than other children, they often fall, poor planning and predict the consequences of their actions.
Sometimes, hyperactive children are not the fear of separation and they are non-critical in approaching strangers. Because of the difficulty in predicting the consequences of behavior, such children are often fearless in situations whose frighten other children.
They cannot follow and respect the parents’ requirements and prohibitions.
In preschool and school age, hyperactive children are extremely impatient, never in place,do not listen to teacher, babble, while other children work in silence. Often interrupt the work of the group, get into the word and disturb others in the performance of duties or activities.
Hyperactive children have difficulty in the organization, often forget to bring books, notebooks, supplies, lose their stuff.
The basic difficulty in children with hyperactivity is diminished impulse control, adequate and inadequate. Children with this problem experience constant problems with the control response to signals, stimuli or events that are irrelevant to the performance of current tasks.
In the school age and adolescent, impulsivity is a major problem. Impulsive children are amenable.
They want to be accepted by their peers and often make things persuaded by their peers. This behavior may be innocuous, such as petty mischief, but can lead to life threatening situations. Impulsive behavior can be motivated by mere curiosity.
Very often, impulsive children have difficulties with creating and maintaining friendships. Interrupting the word, the imposition of, speaking the wrong thing at the wrong time, patting, hugging or touching others without reasons, aggressive conflict resolution can lead to problems in relationships with peers.
3. Difficulties with attention and concentration
Due to problems with attention, these children are very difficult to learn and may have difficulty with academic success and the adoption of practical and motor skills (such as cycling or swimming). For the same reason, there are also problems with learning speech, which can cause tricky when they turn in conversation and group activities.
Many of the problems of hyperactive children, related to school and social skills, are actually caused by the inability of these children to maintain concentration for long enough so that they can learn what it takes. Hyperactive children often have the ability to learn the necessary skills, but they need help to succeed to keep the attention long enough to do so.
There are children, especially girls, whose are not hyperactive or impulsive expressed, but they have serious difficulties due to the large deficits of attention and concentration. For this group of children, we said that they have Attention Deficit Disorder without hyperactivity. Often, these children remain unidentified by the discretion of their interference.
PROBLEMS OF CHILDREN WITH ATTENTION DEFICITS/HYPERACTIVITY
There are three basic groups of problems:
1. Family problems
2. Learning problems
1. Family problems
Children with attention deficit disorders and hyperactivity may have difficulties at home. It is very likely that, even in the most attentive families, interrelationships be burdened by high tension because of the behavior.
Hyperactive children often need less sleep than the other inmate s, the result is that other family members are chronically tired. Parents often have little time for themselves. Constantly talking, noise, jumping, destruction of toys, pencils, crayons, destruction of televisions and other valuable things, an inevitable part of many families with a hyperactive child.
Sometimes, these families have serious marital problems, as a consequence of the child’s attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity. In many families this is a disorder caused by the rivalry between brothers and sisters.
Other family members have a lot of work around these children. It happens that the parents are tired and exhausted by the constant calls from the school because of the problematic behavior of their child. Sometimes the parents rejected by their family and their friends because their child’s behavior led to they are not being invited to social gatherings and events.
Sometimes the parents begin to feel incompetent and incapable of children upbringing. It affects their self-esteem. Connection, even professionals tell them that they are not capable of parenting.
2. Learning problems
A substantial proportion of hyperactive children have specific learning difficulties, especially difficulties in reading and writing. Given that the whole education system is based on reading and writing skills, and successfully reading and writing are necessary for participation in teaching any subject, hyperactive children often have problems with grades. At one time when they left behind by their peers, they very difficult compensate it. Except their medium, through which knowledge is transmitted, create difficulties for them, because of their disorder, they have a number of other problems. They cannot concentrate as long as their peers. Noise and movements around them very easy distract to them. Very often, they miss important information or instructions given by teacher, because they are busy thinking about something else. Many of them have a very messy and illegible handwriting, which create additional problems. They very difficult understand and read it, too, and very often, criticism comes for manuscripts from teachers. To prevent further problems developing, it is important that teachers understand the specific way of functioning of hyperactive children, which often negatively affect the school artwork and generally the performance of the obligations and responsibilities. It is required to contact the teachers to help distinguish between behaviors that stem from hyperactivity, prevented the development of secondary pathological upgrading and the child is adequately helped.
3. Problems in creating friendships
Many children with attention deficit disorders and hyperactivity have very few friends and are often seen as "another type". Their problems are often a result of their impulsivity and short-range focus for which they are not able to learn social rules or to recognize social cues and messages. These children are often painfully aware of its isolation and rejection, and their inability to keep friends, try to change it, but they do not know how.
BEHAVIOR OF PARENTS
1.Praise, rewards and ignoring undesirable behavior
It is necessary to explain behavior is expected from him, as accurate and specific as you can. You should try to ensure that he/she understands which behavior is acceptable and which not. Praise child for each desirable behavior.
- Praise must take place immediately after the desired behavior.
- Praise must be associated with specific behaviors.
- Praise must be specific and specific (for example, "I am happy you are so quiet play").
- Praise child by smile and look, but also by words.
- Located next to the phrase, forgive, hug or kiss a child.
- Notice and praise your child every time he-she behaves well, do not save praise for perfect behavior.
- Use praise consistently, every time you see behavior that you want to encourage.
- Praise child n the presence of other people, too.
Reward your child for a desirable behavior because she/he will also begin to believe that she/he could succeed. Ignore unwanted behavior. If children are constantly punished for something, they get discouraged and stop trying to be good.
2. Developing a positive self-esteem
Hyperactive children may feel quite negatively about their abilities. This often hampers them to achieve success, and also to recognize and accept that some things are good or successful. . Because they have a negative opinion of themselves, with hyperactive children you can never overdo the praise hyperactive children. They need assistance in how to critically reflect on their failure, to realize them in a positive light and thereby change their image of themselves. Parents should be taught their children how to be positive by telling them positive things every day.
Hyperactive children are very creative and have special talents. Their strengths should be identified and used, even when those talents do not fit in the parental expectations. Detection, emphasizing the cultivation area of competence of hyperactive children is a very effective way of changing low self-esteem.
3. Daily schedule and predictability
Hyperactive children respond well to predictability and routine. It is necessary to make a clear timetable for getting up in the morning, writing assignments, learning and fulfillment of daily duties. Predetermined routines provide a basis for adopting good habits of learning. During the time allotted for learning, should not be allowed to watch television or the presence of other distracting activities. Gradually, the children should indulge responsibility for their obligations.
For hyperactive children, it is a heavy burden and stress when the rules keep changing. Parents should be sure that children know the rules and the way they should follow and parents should tell them if routine is changed. Any changes should be planed ahead. Both parents must have a consistent educational attitudes and reactions to different behaviors of the child.
4.Clear communication with your child
User to child should be clear and precise. Instead:"Do not toss the shoes everywhere!;, should say: "Put your shoes in the closet!"
-Keep your hands on the shoulders of the child until you tell what you want to he/she do.
-Watch your child's eyes.
-Speak in calm, but by firm voice.
-Insist that your child listen and do what you say, and must state the reason why you want to.
-Remember that mumbling, complaining, discussing, praying, yelling or outvoted the TV will not give any result.
-It can help if you ask the child to repeat what you want to do.
5. Realistic expectations
It is important to have realistic expectations. It is not possible and it is inefficient to try to change all child's undesirable behavior at a time. When you decide to change some behavior, select one or two clearly defined pattern of behavior and work on their change, only.
6. Learning support
In this section, both, teachers and parents are necessary to take part.
-Distribute the material into smaller pieces. Learning targets and goals should be realistic and achievable.
-For the academic achievement of hyperactive children, planning is extremely important. It gives children the structure and facilitates learning.
-Break complex instructions to solve the tasks or tests in more simple instructions. Ask a hyperactive student to repeat what should be done to check the understanding of the task. For younger children, it is recommended to give instructions step by step.
-The teacher should be familiar with the problem and the children orally examined. Hyperactive children do better and better show off their knowledge by answering verbally. The teacher should reduce the number of written assignments, and if necessary, extend the time for hyperactive child.
-When the teacher instructs the whole class, he should stand by hyperactive students in doing so. To explain the task, teacher should use his book and workbook an example.
7. Help in making friends
-Practice good social skills at home. Determine, in consultation with the child, one or two social behaviors that you want to increase in the repertoire of behavior of your child to other children. This may be sharing toys, quietly talking, no command, no falling into the word and the like. Establish a program of rewarding these behaviors.
-A few times each week, take a few minutes with your child and practice selected behaviors. Explain to your child skills that you would like to try to use. Fake a situation where you would be a child and thus show the child how to use this skill. Then let your child try a new skill in front of you. Encourage your child to use newly learned skills when he plays with some child the next time.
-Whenever you have a chance, watch your child play with other children, brothers or sisters. Whenever you notice that the child used the new skills, praise or reward. Be careful, not to interrupt the dynamics of the game. Sometimes it is better to invite the child to the side and reward him there as a child would not be embarrassed.
-Your child may not be popular among their peers. Popularity is not as important as friendship. Better goal of popularity can be encouraged friendship with your child.
-Encourage your child to call on house some of their peers after school or on weekends. If your child has serious problems with social skills, plan time that children will spent together. For example, plan a trip to the cinema, playing a party game, prepare special sandwiches, prepare a mixture for modeling or anything else for what you would think that another child could enjoy. It is important that the activity is structured and to be under your constant supervision. Such contact may be structured to encourage friendship between your child and his peers.
-If the friend of your child is at your home, monitor the activities that children do. The moment you notice that their interaction is beyond control, end the game and offer to children something to eat or give them a more peaceful, structured activity.
-Do whatever you can to avoid that your child see an example of aggressive behavior at home. Be aware of your own behavior and the behavior of other household members, as it would not happen to unknowingly modeled aggressive behavior of your child, whether it is a shouting, insulting or speaking profanity or throwing things. Also, it is necessary to closely monitor what your child watches on television. If you can not avoid your child watching aggression on television, most of these scenes for the child to indicate what behavior is unacceptable behavior and other children do not like.
-Try to prevent your child socialize with other children who are aggressive. Encourage your child to socialize with children who will be a positive model for relations among peers.
-Involve your child in organized activities in your community, such as scouts, sports clubs, folklore. Try to choose those activities that are structured and supervised by adults, preferably with small groups of children. Avoid those activities that require a coordinated effort with other children or which have complex rules in order to achieve success. Such activities could be too demanding for a hyperactive child. Also, it is better to choose activities those involve less competition. The competition causes increased arousal, which, in hyperactive children, may increase the incidence of disorganized behavior.
BE CAREFUL WITH USING DRUGS!
It is clear, that the education of children with attention deficit disorders and hyperactivity need a lot of patience, time, education and love. Everything should be done before applying medication.
According to the World Health Organization, psychiatric drugs (including medication for ADHD) take 2, 3 and 4 place most prescription drugs to youngest patients.
They are increasingly being prescribed for the younger children (eg. aged four to seven years) but no one knows exactly what a reaction will caused, nor the first attempt to treat by psychotherapy. It is not surprising if it is known that in 2000. in America only, for the ADHD drug market worth 625 million U.S. dollars.
Worrying is that most drugs are not tested for pediatric use, but may be based on past experience by doctor who prescribes medication.
