ADHD Help

We hope you enjoy this One Minute Parenting tip from Dr. James Lehman, the creator of The Total Transformation Program.

by

Samuel R. Caron, Ph.D.

When treating children with ADHD, an easy mistake often made is to not actively involve the child in the ADD/ADHD treatment process. Not involving the child can negatively affect treatment outcome. This mistake occurs for several reasons.

To begin with there is a serious shortage of child mental health providers in the United States. David Crary, in an April 6th , 2006 Associated Press article stated, “America suffers from a serious, long-term shortage of child psychiatrists that is taking a toll on young people, their parents and their doctors.” According to a recent American Psychological Association article written by Annie Toro, J.D., M.P.H., “Research has shown a dearth of appropriately trained clinical child psychologists, child psychiatrists, and social workers. Only one out of five children and adolescents receives treatment from a mental health professional with special training to work with children. There are particularly acute shortages in the number of mental health service professionals serving children and adolescents with serious emotional disorders.” To address this problem The Child Healthcare Crisis Relief Act went before Congress in 2007. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, it has not been passed by Congress.

Counseling vs. Medication

Because medication by itself is frequently so effective, practitioners and parents alike can forget about the importance of counseling the child. However, the recommended treatment of choice continues to be a combination of medication and counseling.

Counseling also takes more time than medication. Once the proper medication and correct dose of medication is determined, the family usually only needs to see their physician for short, monthly medication appointments. Counseling, on the other hand, means attending longer sessions on a regular and frequent basis, possibly once or even twice a week.

Counseling is also more expensive than medication alone, meaning one must often convince insurance companies to cover the costs. Often it is difficult to get a sufficient number of session approved.

Finally, many therapists find it easier to work with the parents than with the child and so choose to focus on parent counseling rather than working directly with the children.

Involve the Child

We should involve the child in the treatment in order to educate him/her about the disorder. Understanding the problems can help the child to cope better as (s)he actively tries to function better. It can also help the child avoid developing impaired self esteem, for example believing that (s)he is stupid, inadequate, or mentally disturbed. Understanding can also help reduce the stigma associated with having ADHD. If the child is an active participant, we also might be able to avoid tapping into an oppositional response from the child, in other words many of the children might conclude that we are trying to control them with medications and therefore respond by purposely fighting progress and not trying. Currently a very high percentage of children quit taking medication when they grow up, even if they still need it. When we actively involve them in their own treatment, we increase the probability that they will continue to properly manage the disorder when they grow up.

ADHD Education for Children

It is for the reasons stated above that I have produced and will continue to produce videos which are aimed at directly educating children about ADHD and thus actively involving them in the treatment process.

These videos offer you an inexpensive alternative for obtaining treatment aimed directly at communicating with your children about ADHD. I hope your family will appreciate my Dr. C & Elwood ADHD videos.

What does the Norway Spiral have to do with ADHD?

As I was looking at the video of the giant blue and white spiral lights in the sky over Norway, my thoughts turned to children who have ADHD. What, you may ask, does the Norway Spiral have to do with ADHD? Those spiral lights are a phenomena to which many ADHD children could successfully attend. People who have ADHD are able to attend to things which really grab their attention. Things that are new, different, exciting, or rewarding, can hold their attention. Even though one of the three main symptoms is getting distracted easily, there are exceptions.

Parents often come to see me after being referred by a teacher who believes that their child has ADHD. Many immediately tell me that their child can’t have the disorder because the child is able to pay attention for long periods of time to video games or attractive cartoons. They only seem to have problems with schoolwork.

I explain to the parents that people with ADHD have their biggest attending problems with boring and redundant tasks such as school work. These problems are so severe that they really are unable to stay on task unless someone continually supervises them one on one.
I am writing this short article to remind you that just because your child can play a video game for long periods of time or can complete work when you closely supervise, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that he or she has ADHD.

If you think your child might have ADHD, get an evaluation and find out. The proper diagnosis and treatment can really 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.