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How to Help your ADHD-I Child Greet the Dawn…or at least the School Bus

If your idea of a good morning is one where you don’t have to get your children up, you must be a parent. The same erratic sleep patterns that can wreak havoc with an established bedtime also make wake-up calls a repeated, frustrating exercise.

Some folks take mornings better than others, but unless everyone in your family has agreed to take night jobs and night classes, getting up in the morning remains a necessity of life.

Take a look at these tips to keep mornings more civil for all involved:

1. Pay attention to alarming details. First of all, you shouldn’t be the token alarm clock. Place a loud alarm clock out of your child’s reach so he must get out of bed to turn it off. One ring tone over another can also help…and changing ring tones periodically is a good idea.

2. Do the math first thing. Solve a basic math problem to turn off the alarm – brilliant! I’ve had pre-teens and teens who could carry on a conversation with me about breakfast and promptly go back to sleep remembering nothing later. This alarm app for your i-phone might engage your teen more.

3. Light up your child’s life…early. This depends on where you live, but if the sun comes up close to your usual wake up time, keep the shades open in your child’s bedroom. Another idea is to invest in an alarm clock that lights up before sounding off. When Joe was having major sleep problems, this is what his doctor recommended that they use for him. Try this wake up light.

4. Start the night before. Do whatever you can to streamline your morning routine. Have your fashionista diva or devil-may-care dresser choose clothes the night before. Set the breakfast table ahead of time, complete with cereal, bowls and spoons. Keep signed forms and homework pieces corralled in your child’s backpack. You don’t want to be chasing down myriad details before 8 a.m. if you can help it.

5. Rewarding what you like. Praising a good start can encourage more of the same. For elementary aged children, a star chart with a reward may entice some sleepyheads to change their ways.

6. Caffeine drip. For two of my teens, coffee in the morning helped. Or at least they told me that because they really liked starting the day with a highly sweetened chocolate caramel mocha shot of caffeine. A stimulant similar to medicine used to control symptoms of ADHD-I, caffeine introduction for your children or teens should be discussed with your doctor.

7. Drawing certain boundaries. Make boundaries tight enough for structure and loose enough for flexibility. One mom’s boundary was that her children had to be downstairs and dressed, ready for breakfast 30 minutes before the bus – or they lost computer time later as a consequence. If I had to drive a lagging child to school, it would cost them allowance. Consequences need to be set and then re-set when they stop motivating. You have to ask yourself how many times you are willing to drive your child to school because she misses the bus. As chief chauffeur and parent, you set the scales of justice, discipline and mercy.

8. Write your own last stand story. Every parent has limits. For Ron, he found out the day he missed the bus the third time in two weeks. Kayla wasn’t driving him – as she had already warned him before that memorable morning. So he went to school in a taxi that day, funded from his own spending money.

With a little strategy, you can help your child or teen greet a new day with less drama. Is it true that there’s nothing new under the sun? Let us know about your latest rise and shine challenges and how you overcame them. Your latest episode and resolution might be just the encouragement that another parent needs to hear.

Got Younger Kids? Read Divide and Conquer – ADHD and the Morning Routine.

How Reading Shapes Us: Guiding Your Children to Good Choices

Albert Einstein once said “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”kids reading

I’m not out to give you a definitive list of books your children must read to be a model citizen or better student. I do want to encourage you to keep reading and to keep putting books in your children’s hands. You never know which book is going to spark, inspire and change everything.

Some of us may not be born book lovers, but most of us are born to become book lovers.

For the same reason children shouldn’t be served a steady diet of chicken nuggets, fries and pizza, the same sorts of books shouldn’t be continually given. Your child may prefer comic books, but you want to keep offering other choices.

With our firstborn, we read to him early and often. Reading was something he loved from the beginning. Our first daughter also loved books – no problem. Our daughter Lesley was a completely different story and didn’t sit still for much. All the smugness I felt from having two children who loved reading disappeared overnight.

She didn’t want to Pat the Bunny and she was ambivalent about bidding the evening adieu with Goodnight Moon. She mostly listened when I did my best “Grover” voice for The Monster at the End of this Book. She was mildly intrigued by Richard Scarry’s Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy Town.

If she had been my firstborn, I’m sure I would’ve obsessed about what book to try next. Fortunately, having two older children helped me keep a balanced perspective and also preoccupied me so that I had no time to obsess about much.

Even with kids who love books, they may not like the same books that you do. As a child, I adored the “Little House” series books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, but none of my children particularly cared for them.

Early in the reading game, we went past our own collection of books and checked out the local library. I have to admit that looking for new children’s books was something I looked forward to as much as they did. When they were small, we all started looking for anything by Rosemary Wells wrote to see if there was another Max and Ruby adventure.

Even Lesley liked the privilege and adventure of going to pick out new books. Sometimes we just giggled over birthday cakes with real worms, or how noisy Nora could be. The Sweetest Fig showed us that dreams could really matter. Oh, the Thinks You Can Think reminded us how important our imaginations are. Miss Rumphius got us to wondering what we would do to make the world a better place.

After reading anything by Patricia Polacco, we all wanted to say Thank you Mr. Falker. He was her brilliant teacher who recognized how awful it could be if you couldn’t read and you didn’t know why.

In a time where no specialized help was readily available in public school, he made sure that she got the help she needed and stopped the bully’s teasing that tormented her.

In Polacco’s words, “Mr. Falker had reached into the most lonely darkness and pulled me into bright sunlight and sat me on a shooting star. I shall never forget him…So this book is written both to honor Mr. Falker, but also to warn young people that mean words have a terrible power…and that they should do all that they can to see that teasing stops at their school.”

Many books that we read together or that my children read included great messages I wanted them to absorb. Hopefully these stories weren’t so obvious with their moral or my children might not have chosen to read them. After all, reading needs to be fun!

There are children who don’t click with books until middle school or high school. My daughter’s 9th grade English teacher admitted that his father made him read classics in the summers. It wasn’t until the third summer that he enjoyed any of it.

With summer quickly approaching, you might want to combine a love of video games and the hope of more reading with a chart where kids earn their video gaming time by increments of time spent reading. For instance, 30 minutes of reading can buy a kid 15 minutes of video game time. If you’re interested in seeing the sort of Excel spreadsheet that was used in Kayla’s family, email us and we’ll send you a copy.

Whatever method you choose to inspire readers, keep trying, and don’t give up!

If your child has a few favorites, please let us know what those titles are. What method worked at your house to convert a mildly interested reader to a book lover? We would love to hear from you. What you’ve learned could help someone else who’s struggling now.

Have you tried the Kindle with your ADHD Child?
Read More About it Here!

Sophie, Pay Attention!

sophie pay attentionSusan Braun is the mother of three wonderful girls, and the author of Girls in White Dresses – a wonderful blog about all things parenting. She’s also a long time reader of “Who Put the Ketchup in the Medicine Cabinet?”. Without mentioning names, let’s just say that Susan is very familiar with inattention.

A while ago, Susan contacted me about a new children’s book she had written called, “Sophie, Pay Attention!”. It’s about a little girl who has trouble attending. Because she’s so scatterbrained, her family sometimes doesn’t pay attention to everything Sophie says, either.

It’s a great read for our kids. They’ll identify with how Sophie truly does want to pay attention, and how she feels when she’s misunderstood by those who love her. It also weaves in the story of another inattentive girl – the servant girl Rhoda who left Saint Peter standing at the door.

“Sophie, Pay Attention” is a Kindle book, and as of publication time it’s only $2.99. (For Amazon Prime members – it’s free!) I loved the book!

Grab your copy of “Sophie, Pay Attention” at Amazon.

The Kindle for ADHD

kindle for adhdIn the last post, we talked about how reading aloud to Lesley helped her with her reading assignments. But reading aloud to our kids isn’t always possible – and shouldn’t be something they rely on 100%. That brings us to Mike, who has a whole ‘nother type of reading to tackle. In addition to his English assignments, Mike has to read lovely books about theology and doctrine. He’s slightly more interested in his topics than I would be, but it’s still a chore to stay on task.

Kindle for ADHDkindle for adhd Knowing about Joe’s success with a Kindlekindle for adhd, we decided to try one with Mike. Mike loved it. And I got one too!

Here’s what we like:

1. Fast access. There’s no shopping at the bookstore, surfing online or browsing the library for Kindle books. You search for the book, and it’s downloaded immediately. The easy access can’t be beat.

2. Only one thing to lose. With the Kindle, all your books are in one place. There’s no “where in the Dickens is my copy of Dickens?” or “I left my copy of “Right Brained Children in a Left Brained World” at home.” There is only one thing to lose – and yes, our kids WILL lose it. But then the books are also available to be read on the computer or their phone. Kindle material is stored in the cloud and can be downloaded to almost any device.

3. Changing colors. Which leads to another feature – that as far as I can tell is not available on the Kindle itself. But, when you use Kindle for PC or Ipad, you can change the background color for your reading material – white print on black background or a sepia background. This is great for eye fatigue, for kids who see better with different color overlays, or just to change things up a bit. Heaven knows our kids need that!

4. Changing size. The font size can be easily changed on a Kindle, as well as line spacing, width of lines, and words per line. You have two fonts – serif and sans serif. There’s also an option to read horizontally. If your child has trouble with too many words on a page, this is a great way to limit the words showing at one time.

4. Read aloud option. Most Kindle books have a ‘read aloud’ option. The voice is mechanical, but it does allow a change of pace for a short period of time. I’ve used my read aloud while I was engrossed in a book but needed to fold a load of laundry.

electronic kindle for adhd5. Highlighting available. There’s a highlighter -and a place to take notes – built into the Kindle. The notes and highlights are saved and backed up in the cloud, so they won’t get lost. They sync across any device you use, too.

6. Built in dictionary! An electronic dictionaryelectronic dictionary
is on my ‘must have’ list for kids with ADHD. On the Kindle, it’s built in. Just move the cursor to the word, and a short, easy to understand (and copy) definition appears.

7. LONG battery life. Really, it’s not forever, but I’ve only charged mine once in about two months. I don’t read it everyday, but I’ve read about ten books on it.

Is it perfect? No. Here’s why:

1. They break! Joe and Mike have broken theirs. Granted, a new one arrives quickly (there’s a guarantee), but it’s a pain. I’ve never broken mine. I think – I KNOW – the boys are just rough. I’m thinking about getting Mike a Kindle cover for Christmas, so if anyone has a recommendation, let me know. I’m not sure if the covers actually protect the Kindle, though. I guess some research is in order.

2. Your choice is black on white. Unlike on an Ipad or a PC, the Kindle only has black text on white.

3. Bulky notes. To me, the highlighting and notetaking are cumbersome. I don’t like the Kindle keyboard at all, and move the cursor takes too much time.

4. Canned reading. The read aloud not always available and it sounds mechanical and dull. There is no expression. This is NOT an ebook, but an impersonal computer reading words.

5. Lost cord. Because the battery doesn’t need charging often, I misplaced the cord the one time mine did need a charge. And come to think of it – where IS that cord now?!

6. Too easy. It’s really easy to opt for instant gratification and buy more Kindle than you intended. I’m a big fan of cheap used books, but when you finish reading a book in a series, Kindle gives you a ‘sample’ of the next one…and then asks you to buy it. I’ve fallen for the bait – once. Joe already warned me that he had to really discipline himself not to spend too much!

All in all, though, I’m sold on the Kindle for ADHDkindle for adhd. We purchased the cheapest version for Mike and for me, the one without the 4G option and with the ads, which only show when the Kindle is off. It’s been a great alternative for him. He reads for school and for leisure.

Have you tried the Kindle or another reading device for your ADHD child – or for you? Has it helped? Tell us your successes – or your misadventures.

What’s Food Got To Do With It?

What’s Food Got To Do With It? – This instructional guide to ADHD dieting gives a broad overview foods which often cause allergic reactions. The ADD Nutrition Solution offers substitutes for these and other problem foods, and a way to isolate items that aggravate symptoms. It is also very acclaimed for offering many substitutes to the drugs meant to help a case of ADHD, such as Ritalin.

What’s Food Got To Do With It? takes home a sweet spot on our recommended reading list, because it does more than just tell what the problem is, but it tells you how to get around it. Read it!

 

What’s Food Got To Do With It?

Is This Your Child?

Is This Your Child? – This book by Doris Rapp gives suggestions about how reactions to foods and environmental factors can be recognized, prevented, and treated. With this information, children with food allergies may feel, act, behave, and learn better. She offers a way to cross-examine your child’s diet and the foods that may worsen a case of ADHD.

Is This Your Child? is a great book to caution parents on improper diets for those children, and adults, with ADHD. We recommend it!