How To Deal With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder? Article

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How to deal with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder also known as Attention deficit Disorder (ADD) or ADHD is a common behavioural disorder that affects how well someone can sit still, focus, and pay attention.

Author: Kinjal Shah

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It can affect how kids interact and function socially, academically, and at home and can cause children to be aggressive and disruptive, making things uncomfortable and unpleasant for other children in the home. Typically there are three sub-types of ADHD - predominantly hyperactive-impulsive, predominantly inattentive and combined.

These children often lack confidence and show signs of excessive worry, fear, or panic leading to physical symptoms such as a racing heart, sweating, stomach pains, and diarrhoea. Some symptoms include limited social skills, school performance issues, needing extra time to learn, irritability, inability to concentrate, impaired cognitive skills and a short attention span. The good news is that ADHD can be managed even though it has no cure.

While there are several medications available in the market to manage ADHD, there are specific actions parents can take to help their child and manage ADHD. Some of the common behavioural changes required in dealing with child with ADHD syndrome are:

Understand your child's misbehaviour: Most of the times the behaviour is down to attention seeking as the child the parents to reach out to them. It is necessary to put your frustrations aside and understand what the child is trying to convey to you by behaving the way they do.

Take interest in your child’s education: This is by giving time to their studies, understanding what they are doing at school and not assuming that everything is fine at school, just because it might be the best school in town.

Connect to your child: Give them the time and listen to them. Ask them how their day went, take genuine interest in them and show them that you care.

Coach: Do not keep on controlling and directing your child. Spend time to coach them, allow them to find their answers and do not shout or get frustrated with them. Have patience and make them chose their path or approach. This will give them more confidence.

Feedback: Give positive feedback and praise when your child has achieved the desired results. This will help them discover their talents and develop self-esteem. Sometimes lack of proper balance between negative and positive feedback can result in lack of confidence. Parents should give immediate and positive feedback for behaviours they want to encourage, and ignore or redirect behaviours they want to discourage. In some cases, it also helps to remove the child from an upsetting situation for sometime so that they can calm down. Yelling and spanking should be avoided under all circumstances as it can over stimulate the child.

Help Child to Cope: Parents should structure situations in a way that it becomes easier for child to cope – like restricting their playmates to one or two to avoid over stimulating their child or dividing their work to smaller tasks so that the child finds it easier to complete the task and does not get confused. Avoid distractions like turning on TV or chatting in front of the child, when your child is focussing on their activities. Finally it is important not to get frustrated and respond calmly to the behaviours that are not acceptable.

Also it is necessary to organise everyday tasks and routines so that there are fewer confusions on daily tasks and where to find the resources to complete the tasks. Have certain rules like wake up time, breakfast time, bedtime etc which will help the child to organise. This will also ensure that there is no confusion about certain routines. If possible write these routines down and keep them at places easily accessible to your child and let them know of changes to the routine well in advance.

Be clear and consistent in communication: Children with ADHD need consistent rules they can understand and follow. If you change your mind or routine let them know well in advance and wherever possible explain the reasons for change, so that they do not get confused. At the same time be mindful of long-winded explanations – be clear and brief.

Limit choices: Offer limited choices to your child so that there are fewer chances of getting confused and your child doesn’t feel overwhelmed and over stimulated.

Medications: There are also many medications available in the market to treat ADHD. The most common medication is stimulant, which has a calming effect on the child and improves their ability to focus, work, and learn. Medication can also improve physical coordination. However most stimulants have side effects like decreased appetite, sleep problems, lack of emotions etc. It is necessary to talk to your medical advisor about the side effects before administering the stimulants.

Most of the symptoms of ADHD can be checked through proper behavioural changes on part of the parents. By helping your child and supporting them you can get the best results and would not require administering any medications. The crucial thing to remember is that you need to have patience and be ready to give the time to deal with the problem.

About Author

For more tips on parenting refer to my free e-book "New Parenting Style" on
http://www.newparentingstyle.com/index.html
The author is a successful marketing executive in a large consumer good company and a mother of two boys. She has had a rough ride in the past two years and has successfully saved her family from the brink of disaster by working on her parenting style. She has recently built a website www.newparentingstyle.com, which touches upon some effective parenting tips that have helped her in her success.

Article Source: http://www.1888articles.com/author-kinjal-shah-26802.html

How to deal with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?