Dr. Forgan’s advice on ADD/ ADHD

Three Ways to Unlock Potential in Children with ADHD

/in /by

Children with ADHD are full of energy, enthusiasm, and life.  While these are fun qualities, at times they create challenges.  Many children with ADHD do not conform to the ‘inside the box’ educational system as their movement, energy, and need for support stretch a teacher’s resources.  It takes an understanding and intentional teacher or parent to help truly unlock potential in a child with ADHD.

Children with ADHD are often outside the box thinkers, movers, and shakers who have enormous amounts of creativity and energy and once properly channeled, this energy can result in enormous success. You may have heard the names of famous people who have channeled their ADHD to their advantage including Michael Phelps, Ty Pennington, Wendy Davis, Adam Levine, and Howie Mandel.

Unlock Potential in Children with ADHD

The first thing you can do to help unlock the potential of your child with ADHD is to understand that your child is intelligent.  Sometimes schools define intelligence by a single IQ score but intelligence is much broader than that. I subscribe to the theory of multiple intelligences that was created by psychologist and professor Howard Gardner. He identified eight types of intelligences which include: visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, interpersonal, logical, musical, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.  In my book, The ADHD Empowerment Guide: Identifying Your Child’s Strengths and Unlocking Potential, I have a short survey you can take to determine your child’s top three intelligences.

The second way to help a child with ADHD is to shore up any weaknesses in personal characteristics or executive functioning. We want your child to have the necessary skills to do things independently, predictably, and consistently. My book has a survey you take to identifyyour child’s weaker areas that could prevent your child from maximizing the natural strengths you identified in the multiple intelligence profile.

Now that you know your child top intelligences and which area need strengthen, the third thing to do is give your child opportunities and experiences to enhance the strengths.  Since some children with ADHD don’t excel in academics, they need other areas where they can be successful and feel good about themselves.  I suggest you consider your child’s top three intelligences and any weaker personal traits and engage in activities to build them.  My book matches specific activities to each area.

Your intentionality will help unlock the potential in your child with ADHD and position your child for success.

Divorce Rate Increases with Child With ADHD

/in /by

Researchers studied married couples and found that before age eight, parents of children with ADHD were 22% more likely to divorce than parents who did not have a child with ADHD. Having a child with ADHD will strain your marriage relationship.

Children with ADHD, especially the hyperactive-impulsive type, are often emotional and have behaviors that are difficult to manage. I know parents with great parenting skills who have one child without ADHD and with this child they look like parenting champs. They also have a child with ADHD that makes them feel like they don’t know what they are doing. Parenting is a project when you have a child with ADHD and I recommend three thoughts.

Spouses must be on the same page when parenting a child with ADHD. Back each other up. When it comes to discipline, I often find mom is the bad guy and dad becomes the good guy. This strains the marriage relationship and the parent-child relationship. One child with ADHD cursed out his mom and the dad, standing nearby, did nothing. His inaction reinforced how this boy treats his mom and with time it will transfer to his girlfriend or own spouse. Dads must take a stance.

Give moms a break. Dads can take the child with ADHD and do something they both enjoy. I used to take my child camping so my wife could have a day to herself. A friend took his child to sports games. Time alone gives mom time to renew. Everyone needs it.

Married parents must spend quality time together. Without your relationship there is no intact family unit. Make time to talk. My wife and I would sit on our patio or walk around the neighborhood together. Sometimes we’d hire a sitter for a date night. The point was to make time for the two of us to communicate. Connect with each other and beat the divorce statistics.  Call our office if you need help.

How to help my child focus without medication

/in /by

Most medications for improving a child’s focus have negative side effects. Sometimes the side effects are significant enough that these outweigh the benefit. When side effects are too severe, parents often ask, “How do I help my child focus without medication?”

How to help my child focus without medication

There are many ways to help your child focus without medication and the three ways are discussed below are use a focus item, provide a visual reminder, and change your child’s diet.  Usually a combination of these approaches helps maximize your child’s focusing without using medication.

Use a focus item

There are attentional controls in our fingertips so when a child’s fingertips are activated his attention improves. You may have noticed your child has busy hands and often drums fingers, touches things, or tears at napkins. This helps a child focus but many adults find these behaviors as annoying. Give your child a small item to hold that can be squeezed, rubbed, or squished. This is a focus item. The item becomes a learning tool rather than a toy.

Elementary teachers often read this book to their class to help their students learn how to increase their focus. Then the teacher places a basket of focus items in the classroom so any child can use it when they need to focus such as during seat work. Some parents buy two copies and give one to the teacher so the teacher and parent are on the same page.  The focus item is one way to help a child focus without medication.

Provide a visual reminder

Most people are visual. When we go into a room, office, or auditorium we look around to see what is hanging on the wall or displayed. We visually look at others: the shape of a person’s nose, size of their body, height, and other physical features. This visual inspection naturally occurs.

You can help your child increase her focus by providing a visual reminder that’s constantly in front of her. Use a plastic bracelet with the word ‘focus’ written on it rather than a saying like ‘Live Strong.’ These are available for purchase on the internet. Another visual is a personalized pencil and rather than your child’s name on the pencil, personalize it with “keep working, keep listening.” These subtle visual reminders will help your child remember to focus.

Change your child’s diet

Most children do not eat as well as they should. Parents are busy and kids are picky eaters so this is a recipe for a battle and who want’s to battle at 6pm? Nevertheless, your child’s focusing difficulty may be nutrition related because most kids eat too much processed food high in sugar and carbs without enough protein. A book I find valuable is The ADHD and ADD Diet! by Peiper and Bell. These two are the authorities so don’t buy any other diet book because with self-publishing on Amazon there are many useless knock offs. Follow Peiper and Bell’s diet with your child and I believe your see your child’s focus noticeably increase.

These three ideas may help your child. Want more? Call  (561) 625-4125

ADHD Focus Without Medication

/in /by

Help your child with ADHD focus without medication.  A focus item helps children with executive functioning difficulty and ADHD focus without medication.

Children learn how to hold a small focus item in one hand and rub or squeeze it. A focus item helps children with ADHD focus without medication because we all have attentional controls in our fingertips. This implies you pay attention better when your fingertips are active! Do you doodle, drum your fingers on the table, squeeze a pen, twirl your hair? These are different socially acceptable ways adults have learned to focus better by keeping their fingers active.  Young children need to learn this and they can start with a focus item.

Instead of your child picking apart an eraser, he squeezes a focus item.  Instead of your daughter playing with pencils in her desk, she rubs a focus item.  A focus item helps kids divide their attention so their hands are busy but their ears and mind are listening. A focus item can help many kids in the classroom, including yours.  Plus, if other kids use a focus item your child will not feel self-conscious about holding a focus item.

You can help your child replace distracted behaviors with focused behavior.

Now, where did I put my phone?!

Faith and ADHD

/in /by

If worship is a part of your life, you know the comfort your spiritual beliefs offer. ADHD faith or having faith has been a central part of my life and a main reason for my child’s success in overcoming ADHD.  You may also be seeking a way to integrate your beliefs and practices more fully into your son or daughter’s life. But, you may also find that going to your religious services present some of the same challenges he or she finds at school. This writing comes from my book Raising Girls with ADHD: Secrets for Parenting Healthy, Happy Daughters.  See if any of these scenarios sound familiar:

  • Getting ready is a struggle. For younger children, it’s the everyday challenge to find shoes, get dressed, eat breakfast and get out the door.
  • It’s hard for either of you to fully appreciate the service. Your daughter may find the service boring, or she may be totally overwhelmed by all the stimulation from the people, the lights, and the music. You’re so preoccupied with her behavior, either trying to keep her engaged or trying to reign in her inappropriate outbursts, that you can’t focus on the message.
  • You feel you must explain your daughter’s behavior to those around you, and often you can’t help feeling judged by those around you for what they perceive as bad parenting.
  • Your daughter’s religious teachers or youth leaders are unequipped to work compassionately with a child who has ADHD.

Or there’s this: By the time the weekend rolls around, all of you are simply exhausted. You can’t muster the energy to add anything else to your lives.

We understand. And yet we want to encourage you, if you’re so inclined, to find a way to pursue your spiritual beliefs with your daughter – both for you and for her. It’s true that children with ADHD tend to struggle in religious settings, both with socialization and with spiritual growth. Here are a few suggestions that may help your child on the journey:

Prayer: Sitting meditation has been shown to reduce ADHD symptoms in students. To us, it stands to reason that prayer could do the same, and help your daughter build a sustaining relationship with God. Because her ADHD may make it difficult for her to focus, help her start a prayer journal to help guide her quiet times. And because routines are so helpful for children with ADHD, you might also initiate a family prayer time.

Small groups: If your daughter is uncomfortable in a religious service, she may thrive in a small-group setting where she can make a handful of intimate friends. Similarly, you may find you’re able to form strong and supportive relationships in the small-group setting, where you can share the challenges of parenting a daughter with ADHD. Many religions incorporate small groups to help their members learn and grow together while they form strong bonds of friendship and fellowship.

Just as helping your daughter grow in her own faith can be an important component in managing her ADHD, you can turn to God for comfort, guidance and hope. Through her prayers for her son with ADHD, one mother made a profound transition. She says, “I’ve stopped asking God to change him; I’ve started asking God to use him.”

Dez, the mother of a Hannah, and 11-year-old girl with ADHD, reminds us of the ways the world tends to label children: “good,” for those who are well-behaved and academically successful, and “bad” for those like children who struggle with ADHD, who are so often viewed as lazy, unmotivated and a nuisance. When that happens to her daughter, she writes, “I feel terrible, and I end up slipping into survival mode – let’s just get through this test, or this day, or this school year.”

But for Dez, that sense of gloom is short-lived. She writes eloquently of the spiritual foundation at the core of her family’s life:

I can’t imagine how families deal with ADHD without faith. If you have faith in a higher calling on your child’s life, you are able to get a bigger, better perspective of what truly matters. Who is my child? What are her gifts, strengths and abilities? When you praise, pray and ponder God’s plan for your child’s life, you reject the sadness and struggles of survival mode. You anticipate and claim the goodness of God’s promises. ADHD certainly has its challenges for Hannah, myself and our entire family, but oddly enough, it’s been a blessing, too. I am a better person, parent and teacher, because I am able to clearly see the struggles of children with ADHD. There is never enough time, resources or patience for these struggling students, which leaves teachers and parents at a loss. Ultimately, it is our inner character that we will be judged by – not our grades, but who we are and what we have done with our gifts and talents.

Staring at our problems and at ourselves won’t cultivate a sense of accomplishment or perseverance, but helping others will. Scripture tells us to persevere even when faced with adversity. Hannah is extremely gifted when it comes to working with children. She has the ability to look at something and creatively come up with a life lesson. Her academic weaknesses allow her creative side to thrive. So I actively involved her in helping out in my preschool camps and classes. This opportunity allows her to see where she is gifted, giving her a sense of pride and reminding her of her special place in God’s world.

My advice to you is to keep the faith.  A bible verse that helps me is Isaiah 40:31. I hope it can help you too.