ADHD Help

A few years ago I conducted a work shop on unique play therapy, a technique I developed to help me work more effectively with children and families. Unique play therapy uses unusual toys, magic, balloons, and puppets to help educate and treat children.   Next month I will be at ChADD in Anaheim. I will be demonstrating some of these techniques at my booth. I will also be using unique play therapy when I begin on line social skills training.  By incorporating these techniques, I am able to make the treatment more fun and interesting. This encourages more participation by the child and increases the chance that (s)he will remember the main points.

I use unique techniques on my ADHD videos too. Puppets are a particularly strong technique since they are communication toys. I first started using my puppets this way when I was working at a residential hospital for profoundly and severely retarded people. It has always amazed me how much more attention the patients paid to the puppet than to me.

Now, I would like to claim that I was the first one to work this way, but that would not be true. As a child I used to watch The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show. Winchell also used puppets to teach children lessons. Next I watched Shari Lewis and Lambchop. I actually spent some time with Lambchop last year in Japan. We shouldn’t forget Mr. Rogers and especially can’t forget the Muppets on Sesame Street.
Please stop by my booth in Anaheim next month and meet some of the puppets.

For more information on the videos and the adhd club, go to www.adhd1.net/at-last-the-truth-about-adhd

This weekend Elwood and I led a workshop on social skills training for ChADD in Tucson. About 40 people attended, including 17 children. My goal was to present in such a fashion that it was attractive to the children as well as to the adults. I began with a vignette with Elwood in which we discussed the importance of communication, cooperation, kindness, and conflict resolution. After that Elwood shrunk my head. I am going to try to put the head shrinking up on my page. Everybody seemed to enjoy our presentation.

I have been thinking a great deal about how to conduct attractive and productive video seminars. I think that I will alternate between sessions for the parents and special entertaining therapeutic shows for the children. I will let you know when more information is available.

My thoughts have turned to 9/11. Currently I work at Fort Huachuca, an Army post in Southeastern Arizona. Not only am I remembering 9/11 but also quite aware of the impact the attack has had on young soldiers. I sincerely hope that peace will be with us in the near future.

Ever since I have been counseling children and families, I have tried to combine my entertaining talents with my therapy skills in order to make my treatments more powerful.  I even conducted workshops for mental health professionals on how to use unique toys to improve counseling skills.  I also conducted workshops for ventriloquists on puppet therapy.  In fact, I am an honorary member of the Japanese Puppet Therapy Association.

For a long time I have wanted to use my skills to provide group family treatment for ADHD families.  However, living in a small town, it is difficult to start this type of group.  Also most people accept the fact that it is tricky to run groups for children with ADHD since they tend to set each other off.

That is why I have finally decided to run these groups online.  I am actively preparing them and hope that some of you will be interested in participating.  We can have fun while simultaneously improving the quality of family life.  More information will follow.

The coin flipping thing is really working. We don’t argue about who is in charge. Dr. C says we might need to time how long we do each activity so that we each get equal time, but I don’t have a watch. Maybe we will just take turns so that I get to decide every other recess and he gets to decide to the other recesses.
About all the homework, Dr. C said to talk to my parents so that they could talk to my teacher. He said that sometimes children with ADHD only have to do enough work to show that they understand the lesson and don’t have to do as much homework as other kids. This is because it takes us so much longer. He said that it was up to my parents and the teacher. I sure hope that they will all agree. It sounds like a great plan to me!
I got to go to two birthday parties this weekend and sing happy birthday to the birthday girls. One of the girls was 70 and one was 90. Do I still get to call them girls when they are that old? I don’t know. It was a lot of fun and everybody liked my songs.
That’s all for now from me. Elwood, signing off.

School seems to be going ok except I don’t have any friends. Nobody likes me but at least I‘m not getting bullied. Dr. C says that it is important for everybody to have at least one friend. He said that I should look around my class for other kids who don’t seem to have a lot of friends. Then I could try to be their friend. He also said that we are going to be working with families to help the children get better at having a friend in their own family and to having friends at school. I’m gonna see if I can find someone who wants a friend like I do so that I can have somebody to play with at recess.
That’s all for now from me. Elwood, signing off.

Today was the first day of school. I always worry that the other kids will tease me and call me a dummy. Dr. C told me that puppets like me are called dummies. I told him that I preferred puppet or vent figure, and he told me that he would just call me Elwood.

The first day of school is always hard for me. I worry whether or not I will like my teacher. I worry whether I will know the children in my class, and if they will be nice. I also worry about bullies.

Dr. C. made a shirt with me on it. I say no, no, no, no, no, no, no to a bully who wants my money. The shirt is in Japanese, so all I can read are the no’s. I told Dr. C that if I said no, no, no, no, no, no, no to a bully, the bully might hurt me. Next he told me that I could tell the teacher or the counselor, or the principal. I told him that then the other children might not like me. Finally he agreed that bullies can be a big problem.

The writing on the shirt is in Japanese because Dr. C. wore it when he spoke about bullying at the Japanese Puppet Therapy meeting. I got to be there too because I am the puppet. Dr. C. said that bullies are even a bigger problem in Japan than in here in the USA. I am sure glad I don’t live in Japan because I don’t like bullies.

Anyway, probably it will be ok for me this year. Usually I have friends and nobody bullies me. Also my friends can help me if there is a bully. That’s good to know.

That’s all for now from me. Elwood, signing off.

Today I have to go to summer school. I don’t like summer school. No, no, no, no, no, no but mom and dad say that I have to go ’cause my grades were bad. The good things about summer school, it doesn’t last very long and there’s not a lot of kids. I’m trying so I won’t have to go next year. Bye.

The majority of medications used to treat children with ADHD are stimulants. Most mental health providers prefer sustained release preparations rather than short acting ones. With the short acting ones, you have to take them every 4 hours. Sometimes there are symptoms rebounds when the medication wears off. A symptom rebound is when the symptoms return, possibly even worse than normal.

The sustained release medications do not appear to have significant problems with symptom rebounds. Because you have to take them every 4 hours, more energy is put into the act of taking the short acting medication. I like to deemphasize the medication if at all possible. It is also more likely that you might forget to give some of the doses if you need to give the medication 3 times a day. Finally, the child will have to take the medication at school, thus increasing the child’s stigma or possible embarrassment. As you can see, there are many advantages to the sustained release preparations.

Sometimes less is more.

This is a counterintuitive statement (goes against intuition) which is often true when dealing with misbehavior in children. Conventional wisdom is that the more you yell at your child for a wrong deed, the better. However, I usually do not find this to be true. What you do when you yell is give your child lots of negative
attention. Sometimes this rewards the behavior instead of punishing it.
The more you yell the more powerful your child might feel.

It is better to deal calmly and efficiently. Tell your child the
consequence and move on.

We define a punishment as anything which follows a behavior and
decreases the probability for recurrence.
A reward is anything which follows a behavior and increases the
probability for recurrence. If you are yelling over and over regarding
the same type of misdeed, you are probably not punishing the problem.

Regarding less is more, shorter consequences tend to work better than
longer ones. When we use long consequences we have a difficult time
following through and can easily end up burying our child in
punishments. Better to use shorter punishments and follow through.
That way children also learn that we mean what we say.

When medication helps, the effects can often be remarkable. It is easy to fall into the trap of putting all of the responsibility for the improvements on the medication and forgetting that the child is responsible for her/his own behavior.

Obviously the medication is an important part of the treatment. However you have to remember that children improve because they try to change. The medication does not make them act appropriately. It just makes it easier for them to improve if they try.

When we put all of the emphasis on the medication, the child can stop taking responsibility. Remember to emphasize that your child is doing better because he or she is trying rather than just focusing on the importance of the medication.