Holiday Traveling with your ADD ADHD Child

The holiday season is hectic for everyone, but holds particular challenges for the parent of a child with ADD/ADHD.

If you plan to travel with any child, things can go south in more ways than one.

Travel stuff

It seems you’ve no sooner gotten your child into the swing of things and settled into the routine of the school year than the holidays come along and send you all back to where you started. It’s quite bad enough for the vacationing family who chooses to stay at home—familiar surroundings can make a difference for the ADD/ADHD child when the schedule is shot to Hell—but the family who intends to travel to a holiday destination is facing some serious difficulties. You can head off the nightmare by thinking ahead as you plan your trip and by taking the time to prepare your child, too.

Preperation Is Key

If you are planning to travel by train, plane, or automobile, offer your child a map of the route you’ll be taking and mark out the special sites you’ll be visiting along the way. Explain the distances you’ll be traveling and give them an estimate of how long the trip is likely to take.

Easy travel tips

If the mode of travel is one that they have never before experienced, give your child some background information. Describe the airport or train station, and what they can expect to happen on-board the train or while the plane is in flight. If you will need to catch a connecting flight, explain how that works.

Prepare activities for your child to bring along. You may want to allow them to choose the books, games, and toys they will bring along. These items will keep your child entertained as you travel and by being included in choosing these familiar items, your child feels a part of things and enjoys a sense of security, too. Appropriate items to bring along include books, hand-held games, iPod or MP3 player with earphones and a Frisbee or a small ball for breaks during road trips.

Nonstop Chattering

If your child is like most other children with ADD/ADHD, expect them to chatter about the sights he sees throughout the trip. You might suggest they record their thoughts with a small recorder to keep them occupied while you drive or navigate.

If you take a road trip, allow time for frequent stops. This gives your child some time to stretch and exercise. It will help your child make the switch from play to travel time if you offer a gentle warning, “Ten more minute of play and then we’re back on the road to drive some more.”

If you travel by plane or train, allow your child to walk around the airport or train station as much as possible, so they can explore. Stay by his side for safety’s sake.

Related articles

• Processed Foods and ADHD (community.cognibeat.com)
• Ritalin and Adderall Abuse (community.cognibeat.com)
• Temperamental Temporal Lobes (community.cognibeat.com)

ADHD = Big Business

The ADHD Business Niche

The ADHD industry is booming and everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. Parents are happy to try anything, but are they helping or hurting their children?

Katherine Ellison, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of a memoir entitled, “Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention” is generating a great deal of attention. In a recent article, Ellison wrote about what she calls the “ADHD-industrial complex” in the Washington Post, describing the way commercial entities have co-opted ADHD for themselves, spotting a serious business niche by way of parents who will buy just about anything in their desperation to make their children’s ADHD go away.

Katherine Ellison

At the top of this pyramid is the U.S. pharmaceutical industry which is said to sell over $5 billion worth of ADHD medications per year. The United States and New Zealand are the only countries with permission to market these products to the public.

But prescription drugs aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, and so another industry has sprung up to fill the gap: the alternative medicine route, in which there are any number of creative alternatives to the popular prescription stimulants and psychotropic medications for ADHD. These alternative treatments are for the most part unregulated and tend to be expensive as well. Within this spectrum one can find herbal supplements, magnetic mattresses, dolphin therapy, life coaches, and exercise regimes touted to stimulate certain brain regions.

ADHD is big business.

Marketing Targets

Consider the cause: being the parent of a child with ADHD means coping with impulsivity, forgetfulness, distraction, and inattentiveness. It pays to mention that ADHD has a genetic component—quite often, the parent of a child with ADHD is just as impulsive and distracted as their offspring. Good marketing targets, for sure.

Ellison was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 50, just three months after her son’s diagnosis. As a result, she decided to take a year to look into the disorder and discover the best means of coping from what is on offer. Since her son, like many other ADHD kids, didn’t like the effects of the stimulant medications, she had a huge incentive to look into the Pandora’s Box of alternative treatments.

Silent Meditation

Ellison paid $2,000 to Daniel Amen, a Southern California specialist who can find ADHD with a brain scan, tried Ritalin, extended loans to cover many neurofeedback sessions, and took a five-day silent meditation retreat. Her son was not immune to her experimentation and she doled out fish oil capsules, forced him into two days’ worth of neuropsychological testing to the tune of $4,000, paid for top tutors, and lobbied for him to get special accommodations in his public school, for instance permission to have him chew gum during algebra class.

Katherine Ellison's book

Ellison backs up her experiment by mentioning a 2003 survey which found that 54% of Boston parents of kids with ADHD had given non-medical treatments a try. She also speaks about the despicable idea that pharmaceutical companies are capitalizing on our children. But the journalist points out that at least the prescription medications are regulated. Some of the alternative medications are unsafe for children, especially when misused.

In the end, discovered Ellison, ADHD is a journey that continues. She has discovered that regular exercise and regular jolts of glucose by way of frequent trips to the refrigerator are helpful for her son as are her constant visits to his educators to make sure they stay on the ball.

She also learned that her biggest aid in helping her son was found in keeping her cool, no matter what.

This article has been copied with the kind permission of www.cognibeat.com and can be found in it's entirety at http://community.cognibeat.com/2010/12/bigbusiness/

Can’t Do Math

Moderate Dyslexia

A big blond man with a bigger personality, David Baron seems quite comfortable sharing and speaking about his struggles with dyslexia. Though David never received a formal diagnosis, his wife of over 20 years is a Special Ed teacher. To her, it's plain as day that David suffers from moderate dyslexia.

No Answers

Back when David was a schoolchild, in the 1950's and 60's, his parents knew something wasn't right, but back then, no one had any answers. It wasn't until he was a high school sophomore that a counselor sat up and took note that something just wasn't right. This was back in 1968 when David took the Illinois Standard Test of Educational Achievement, a test he was told was administered to all U.S. high school students.

Failing Chemistry

David's counselor called him in for a meeting to discuss his test scores and prefaced the discussion by inquiring as to David's favorite subject. David told him he liked chemistry. The counselor admitted he was aware of David's preference for this subject and had spoken with David's chemistry teacher prior to the meeting, whereupon he discovered that David was just about failing in the subject.

It's The Math

"My counselor asked why. I told him that I understood the material well enough but the tests all had a significant mathematics component, and it happened that I'm terrible at math, so I got poor to failing grades on the tests. I told him that if the tests were conceptually-based rather than mathematical, I would do very well.

Scientific Reasoning

He then pulled out my ISTEA test scores and whadaya know; my math score was appalling as it was almost rock bottom at 5.5 percentile while my scientific knowledge and scientific reasoning tests were at the maximum of 98.6 percentile. My counselor said that I probably answered every question correctly—to which I responded that it was a fact that I answered every question right. Besides, I finished those tests in 10 minutes flat.

Not My Language

My counselor couldn't understand the combination of my inability to deal with math at an intermediate algebra level while I could handle scientific reasoning at a high level. He said, 'But mathematics is the language of science!' To which I replied 'That's true, mathematics is the language of science, but it's not my language.'"

Just Average?

David's counselor was very puzzled because within the battery of tests covering chemistry, David's results were all over the place, while his composite score showed he was within the 51st percentile. Just average, according to these results, yet it was clear to everyone, including David, that this score didn't reflect his true abilities. "What was clear to me then as well as now is that I have a serious imbalance of talents, far greater that the average person."

No Improvement

David repeated the same test in 1970 with the only difference reflected in his math scores, which was much lower this time. Over those two years, there was no discernible improvement in his math abilities. He managed to squeak through basic algebra, but was forced to drop out of his intermediate algebra class. Everyone else in his class improved their math skills, while he stayed at the same absolute level. Relative to his classmates, he fell behind in his math skills.

Saving Grace

David's saving grace arrived in the form of a university instructor who believed that anyone could do the math that applied to statistical data. This teacher taught David's required statistics course from a conceptual angle and David found he did quite well.