Is Your Child Hyperactive? Inattentive? Impulsive? Distractable?: Helping the ADD/Hyperactive Child

Is Your Child Hyperactive? Inattentive? Impulsive? Distractable?: Helping the ADD/Hyperactive Child

Is Your Child Hyperactive? Inattentive? Impulsive? Distractable?: Helping the ADD/Hyperactive Child

Is Your Child Hyperactive? Inattentive? Impulsive? Distractable?: Helping the ADD/Hyperactive Child

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Overview

Evan, five years old, hardly stands, much less sits, still for more than a few moments. Jessie is eight -- she's adorable...she never finishes anything on time...she's a dreamer. Cal is fifteen -- he is so impulsive that his parents worry he'll try drugs on a whim.

What do these kids have in common? Do they remind you of your own children?

The most talked-about childhood syndrome of the eighties and nineties is ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). This developmental disorder disrupts a child's life and often results in low self-esteem, poor grades and even social and emotional problems. These problems usually are not outgrown -- without help. But does your child have ADHD?

ADHD is characterized by the following groups of behaviors:

Inattention

-- making careless mistakes

-- difficulty sustaining attention

-- problems with listening

-- failure to finish schoolwork or chores

-- difficulties organizing

-- trouble sustaining mental efforts

-- losing things

-- being easily distracted

-- forgetfulness

Hyperactivity/Impulsivity

-- fidgeting/squirming

-- trouble staying seated

-- inappropriate running/climbing

-- difficulty playing quietly

-- being on the go/driven

-- talking excessively

-- blurting out answers

-- difficulty awaiting turn

-- often interrupting

All children display many of these behaviors at some point. But-according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, Fourth Edition, for a child to be diagnosed with ADHD, six or more of these symptoms of inattention and/or hyperactivity/impulsivity must have persisted for at least six months.

Is Your Child Hyperactive? Inattentive? Impulsive? Distractible? offers an invaluable step-by-step program already used by thousands of parents to help you change these behaviors at home. Don't just watch it happen; help your child help himself.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307874436
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 04/14/2010
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 256
Sales rank: 1,011,616
File size: 5 MB

Read an Excerpt

1
 
 
    My
Child Has
    What?
 
                                                            Evan, five years old, is a slim, wiry perpetual-motion machine. He hardly stands, much less sits, still for more than a few moments from the time that he rises until he finally falls asleep late in the evening.
 
Jessie is eight. You couldn’t find a little girl with a sweeter face. She’s adorable, with sandy blond hair cascading from two pigtails anchored with pink ribbons. Although rarely a troublemaker, she never finishes anything on time—her schoolwork, her food or getting dressed. She’s a dreamer, creating castles in the sky.
 
Cal is fifteen with the body of a man, the swagger of a football player and the interests of a teenager. If a friend simply mentions an idea, Cal is going to do it. Without a thought or fear, he’s in the midst of any scheme. His teachers report that Cal is not an instigator but the supreme reactor. He is so impulsive that his parents worry he’ll try drugs on a whim.
 
What do these youngsters have in common? At first glance, perhaps nothing. Yet in one major respect they are very similar. All have difficulty controlling some aspects of their behavior. For Evan it is movement—he cannot sit still. Jessie, Miss Personality to all who know her, remains a challenge to her parents and teachers. Not malicious or disrespectful, she simply never finishes anything. When it comes to Cal, the term impulsive could have been coined with him in mind.
 
Fidgeting, restlessness, interest in everything around them and tuning into one’s own little world are behaviors common to every child at one time or another. What toddler is not a whirlwind in motion? Who has not known a teenager more fascinated by her own reveries than anything going on around her? And don’t we all have to remind ourselves sometimes to think before we act or speak?
 
Most of us learn to focus on and accommodate to the world around us. Slowly but surely we master the rules and comply with them. What makes Evan, Jessie and Cal stand out so clearly among their peers is that their friends have begun to make these adjustments, but they have not. Just this issue may have brought you to this book—your fear that your child will not learn to adapt to the world around him. Will he eventually be able to sit through a meal? Will she ever get dressed fast enough to get to school on time or hold down a job? Is he going to be a sucker for every troublemaker? Will it be a constant struggle to get my child to adulthood?
 
We do not know when you first heard about attention deficits or hyperactivity and thought these might apply to your child. Some parents have compared their children to others for years, wondering if a lack of discipline caused their offspring to be so unruly and unreasonable. Other parents attribute their son’s abundance of energy to the fact that he is a boy and do not think any more about it until the teacher calls that first time.
 
Everyone who reads this book has one overriding concern—helping a child gain control over his own behavior, whether it is control over motion, mind or impulses.
 
Labels are important if they lead to a better understanding of your child. Even if a specific diagnosis is not appropriate, understanding attention deficits and hyperactivity may help you undertand your child’s problems better.
 
In this chapter, we provide the background information that will clarify the terms that have been used to describe these problems including the most recent—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Before we conclude the chapter we will summarize a variety of pet theories about what causes ADHD. Then with a common starting point, we will be ready to help you to define your child’s specific problems and then help him.
 
 From BC to ADHD: The Evolution of the Term
 
Organic driveness
Fidgety Phils
Postencephalitic behavior disorder
Minimal brain damage (MBD)
Minimal brain dysfunction (MBD)
Hyperkinesis
Hyperactivity
Attention deficit disorder (ADD)
Attention deficit disorder with or without hyperactivity
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
 
We do not know which term you first heard, but certainly these types of behavior problems are complicated enough without someone giving them a new name every five years. The word hyperactive has become so familiar that the abbreviated hyper crept into the vernacular some time ago. For the past ten years, ADD—attention deficit disorder—has been the preferred term. If you have only recently become comfortable with ADD, this may be your first introduction to ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Do not feel alone. We debated long and hard about which term to use in this book.
 
The accepted terminology has changed rapidly during the past fifty years. Unlike the latest automobile design, the alterations are not introduced to promote interest in the disorder. From hyperkinesis to hyperactivity, from attention deficit disorder and now to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, these transitions reflect an increasing understanding of the condition.
 
Think back to your own school days. In every one of your classes there was probably at least one person who was the class clown or the daydreamer in the corner, who was rarely able to supply the right answer and who was often in trouble. Might that child have benefited from a diagnosis that would help his teachers to work more effectively with him?
 
Many labels are detrimental. Words like dunce, lazy and dumb always hurt, no matter who says them. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may not roll off your tongue, but as the term leads a parent, teacher, psychologist or physician to a better understanding of the child, it becomes less frightening and more useful.
 
Although at times you may feel totally alone as a parent dealing with a child who has ADHD characteristics, the research literature is full of descriptions of children like yours. As early as the late 1800s and continuing to the present, there are citations about restless, impulsive, overactive children who have difficulty concentrating. From organic driveness and postencephalitic behavior disorder to hyperkinesis and fidgety Phils, there have been at least twenty names applied in the twentieth century to describe children who have difficulty controlling various kinds of behavior.
 
Changes in terminology, though confusing to all of us, reflect the evolution of thought about the causes of this disorder and more recently, the relative importance of the symptoms. A strong trend through the years has been to force a medical model on the disorder. Medical scientists began studying the effects of brain injuries or illness on children’s behavior during the nineteenth century. They noted that many patients who either survived an epidemic of encephalitis in the late 1800s or had had head injuries were hyperactive and had difficulty attending. Some researchers suggested that a diagnosis implying some degree of brain damage might also be a suitable explanation for children who had not been ill or hurt but who exhibited similar behaviors. Without conclusive evidence, the damage was assumed to be subtle.
 
Although the concept of some kind of minimal brain damage persisted as an explanation for these kinds of behaviors well into the 1940s, the notion remained difficult to defend. Many children who sustain brain injuries do not display hyperactive behaviors, and conversely, very few hyperactive children have any evidence of stuctural brain damage. Still convinced that neurological damage was the basis of these problems, researchers looked for “soft neurological signs” that could be considered evidence of brain dysfunction too subtle to be picked up by the diagnostic equipment available at the time. After finding a number of children who had trouble with fine or gross motor skills and difficulty imitating certain body movements that are standard parts of a neurological exam, the researchers felt it appropriate to amend the term minimal brain damage to minimal brain dysfunction. The formal name change to minimal brain dysfunction was made in 1966. Retaining the initials MBD reinforced an alphabet-soup mentality that led to years of confusion about the meaning of the term.
 
Somewhat ignored during this time was accumulating research indicating that one-half to two-thirds of children with concentration and activity problems did not fit the MBD pattern. Since the label remained popular, children with learning disabilities, attention problems, dyslexia, behavior disorders and hyperactivity were all at one time or another labeled MBD.
 
Also during the 1960s researchers shifted focus to look at the characteristics of the disorder rather than its causes. Using ingenious contraptions affectionately called “wiggle meters,” studies were designed to measure what was assumed to be the excessive motion of these children. As hyperactivity crept innocuously into the jargon, new studies brought surprising results. These children do not necessarily move more than other children, but they do have difficulty controlling their motion in situations that require stillness. Though the results demanded another swing in focus, they did provide another piece of this puzzle.
 
In the 1970s, Dr. Virginia Douglas and her colleagues at McGill University began demonstrating that it is difficult for hyperactive children to stop, look and listen, to sustain attention and to inhibit impulsivity. Others substantiated the notion that these children have problems controlling their behavior and adhering to rules. Furthermore, approximately 75 percent of the children were found to have additional learning disabilities.
 
Probably the only thing that is clear to you by now is that through the years great confusion has persisted as professionals in a number of fields have attempted to define the significant characteristics of the condition. Attempts to disentangle the terminology came when the American Psychiatric Association (APA) instituted the use of terms related to observed behavior to identify particular problems. When you visit a psychologist or psychiatrist, he designates the diagnosis for the visit just as your family physician does. These descriptors are defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, which is the established diagnostic guide and reference tool used by mental health professionals.

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