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As we mentioned last time, the line between “normal” and behavior that signals ADHD can seem fuzzy at times.
ADHD is marked by a weakness in the ability to sustain, shift or divide attention, coupled with a biologically-based weakness in the ability to control impulses. One aspect or the other – hyperactivity or attention – may be more pronounced, but in any case, the behaviors must significantly affect learning and social relationships and must show up in several areas (e.g., home, school, sports). If it occurs only in the classroom, for instance, it may not be ADHD but a sign of teacher-student mismatch, learning disability or other issue.
Yet even signaling behaviors can be misread. Sleep deprivation, anxiety, stress, diet, neurological conditions or even inadvertently reinforced behavior can all contribute to ADHD-like behaviors. Consequently, they must be ruled out before a definite diagnosis can be made.
In fact, as Dr. Jeff Sosne discusses in our course ADHD: The Mind-Body Connection, our home and school environments can actually set the stage for behavior that looks like ADHD but isn’t.
For instance, consider the demands for attention made on children in overly structured lives. There’s increased academic pressure and heavy homework loads, even at the K-5 level. There may be afterschool obligations such as sports, music, tutoring, church and service groups, or lessons of some sort. While such activities may be pursued for personal pleasure or enrichment, they’re just as often used to sweeten a youth’s “resume” for later schooling.
The resulting stress easily leads to distracted or “wild” behavior, as children find it harder and harder to conform to such demands.
Much can be accomplished through making sure the child eats right, gets enough exercise and adequate sleep, and has opportunities for unstructured play. We see a big reduction of symptoms when these basic human needs are met – whether the child actually has ADHD or not. Children become more able to learn practices that can help them improve their ability to focus, pay attention and self-regulate. These, in turn, support ongoing healthy habits, for through them, kids are nurtured into mindfulness, including awareness of their bodies and what their bodies are telling them.
Courtesy of Dr. Sosne, here are 9 tips for nurturing those skills – useful for all children, but especially for those diagnosed with ADHD:
- Attitude is everything! Emphasize a positive, “Can Do” attitude and internal motivators (e.g., “This is a good time to clean your room.”).
- Make eye contact during activities. Practice not responding to a child until they make eye contact, too! Some good games for practicing this skill: Red Light/Green Light, Steal the Bacon, 20 Questions.
- March toward a goal. Talk out loud about the process so the child can later internalize it. Announce a goal and timeframe for every activity.
- Start with small goals – things the child can do in 15 minutes. Observe and reward small changes. Don’t give too much time for an “ADHD child” to complete a task.
- To teach that things change, occasionally stop activities at random and reward the child for handling it well.
- Focus on accomplishments. Have the child write a note on what he or she accomplished in school today.
- Acknowledge their agenda and pair it with a request from you – e.g., “While I am getting you a sandwich, could you pick up that wet towel?” Getting something they want does not in itself promote a sense of entitlement.
- Build habits and routine. Build skills, not consequences.
- Don’t put too much emphasis on the label “ADHD.” It stereotypes and only points to weaknesses, not strengths. Redefine. Instead of saying, “Robert is ADHD,” say “Robert loves baseball and does better when in the middle of the action (i.e., infield),” or, “Jillian has a great sense of humor but has trouble listening, as well as telling jokes.”
Want to learn even more? Join Dr. Sosne and us for our next session of ADHD: The Mind-Body Connection, October 22 – 23 here in Portland, OR. Registration is required and spots fill fast, so enroll today! CEUs are available.
Image by woodleywonderworks, via Flickr
Picture a typical first grade classroom and two students whispering to each other even as the teacher begins the lesson. Seeing their distraction, the teacher calls out their names and says, “Please, pay attention!”
What the teacher is asking the students to do, of course, is to focus forward, watch and listen. But the children don’t necessarily know this. What they know for sure is that if they stop whispering to each other and look at the teacher as though they’re listening, the teacher will go on with the lesson. This tells the kids that they have obeyed and that “paying attention” means only facing forward and being quiet. Mentally, however, the students may remain thoroughly distracted.
Tony Eccles/Flickr
Of course, there are many factors that interfere with attention and learning – whether it is the average distraction described above or a chronic state as with children who are sleep deprived, have poor diets or are dealing with anxiety, depression or elevated stress.
When we ask children to “pay attention,” what we’re really asking them is something closer to the concept of being mindful.
Mindfulness, as Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches, is a special kind of attention: “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: On purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” It’s developing awareness of what’s happening both outside and inside oneself, and one’s physical being in the world.
As such, mindfulness has far-reaching effects. It lowers stress, develops concentration skills and improves memory. It nurtures emotional regulation, impulse control and goal-directed behavior. It supports learning preparedness.
Attention is the gateway to learning.
The ability to engage, shift and sustain attention is central to academic and social success. Yet despite increasing concerns about inattention in our classrooms and the need for mindfulness in education, teachers often lack the information and strategies necessary to help their students.
This is why we’ve added a new course to the Yoga Calm curriculum – The Attentive Mind – which we’ll be offering for the first time November 13-14 at Lewis & Clark College here in Portland, Oregon.
In this two day course, we’ll explore the nature of attention, the mindfulness strategies that facilitate it and the factors that are toxic to a child’s ability to focus. This course is designed for both teachers and parents who want to help all children develop attention skills. Topics include:
- What “attention” is
- Biological, motivational and emotional factors that affect attention
- Mindfulness practices to improve attention
- The toxic effects of stress, multitasking and electronic media on attention
- Creating attentive classroom environments
- Instructional strategies that enhance attention
- Special considerations for ADHD, LD, TAG/GATE and other “unique” learners
Pre-registration is required. Ten Washington Clock Hours or 1 PSU Graduate Credit are available.
And for those who are seeking information about specific strategies and tools for children when ADHD is an issue, we also have our ADHD: The Mind-Body Connection workshop this October 9-10 at Marylhurst College, just south of Portland. You can learn more about this workshop and register for it here.
“Habit is one of the antidotes to inattention,” says ADHD expert Dr. Jeff Sosne, one of our featured presenters at our inaugural Children’s Wellness Conference earlier this year.
In the clip below, Dr. Sosne gives some tips for creating habit and countering what he describes as the “toxic factors that erode a child’s attention.”
His full talk, “ADHD and the Attentive Mind,” is available on our four DVD chronicle of the conference. The set includes nine engaging presentations with over six and a half hours of practical advice and teaching tips from expert educators, counselors, scientists and health professionals. Sessions include ADHD/Attention skills, Food for Thought, Yoga for Families and preschoolers, how to evaluate wellness programs, environmental education, Tools for Grieving Children, and Contemplative Education.
To order, visit the Yoga Calm Store.
Dr. Sosne will also be speaking at next week’s workshop, ADHD: The Mind-Body Connection, an essential seminar for teachers, counselors, OTs and others who want to enhance their ability to support children diagnosed with attention disorders, as well as parents of kids so diagnosed. The workshop features a live class component and will be held at Marylhurst University, just south of Portland, Oregon, October 9 – 10, from 9 am to 4 pm each day. PSU credit, CEUs and Washington State Clock Hours are available.
Space is limited, so if you’ve not yet registered, we encourage you to do so right away.
Recently, Good Morning America ran a segment on how – and why – more doctors are recommending yoga for young patients. One situation in which yoga is increasingly recommended is for children diagnosed with ADHD, as it is well recognized that yoga-based activities of all kinds can be extremely effective in helping kids learn how to focus and self-regulate.
We see this efficacy regularly in our work with children – Lynea’s at the school where she is a counselor, and our work together in conducting children’s classes at a clinic. And because so many other teachers, counselors, occupational therapists and other adults who work with children are regularly faced with the special challenges of working with kids diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, we found it beneficial to create special Yoga Calm trainings focused on ways of meeting those challenges. (Parents, of course, find these workshops invaluable, as well!)
We teach the ADHD workshops with Jeffrey Sosne, PhD, a clinical Psychologist and Director of The Children’s Program. Widely recognized as one of Portland, Oregon’s leading authorities on ADHD, Jeff is the author of two practical guides for parents and school personnel: The ADHD Notebook and The Anger Notebook. Together, we cover Dr. Sosne’s strategies and games for working with ADHD and show how Yoga Calm activities – both the physical yoga and the social/emotional games – can be used to help nurture self-control and focus in kids for whom such things have been difficult.
Here are five of the tips we teach for doing so:
Practice Making Eye Contact
Eye contact helps children show that they are interested and paying attention. A lack of eye contact leads to “divided attention,” which makes it harder to focus and follow directions.
To practice “shifting” attention, introduce activities in which the children must switch between two (or more) adults giving signals or eye contact for directions (e.g., Steal the Bacon). Also, parents can get closer to their children when they are talking or giving directions, and stop speaking if their kids aren’t maintaining eye contact. If necessary, parents can schedule time to practice eye contact by having their child watch them as they move about the room while reading a story to their youngster. As the child improves, he or she can practice while learning to look away from distractions strategically placed in the room.
Model and Instill a Can-Do Attitude
In workshops, we use different games (e.g., Jenga) and positive self talk (e.g., “I am in control,” “I can do it,” “I can be responsible.”) to illustrate how a positive attitude improves performance and how helpful it is to decide what you can do instead of what can’t be done.
At home, parents can encourage their children to decide what they can do to help before dinner or what they can clean up before going to a movie. We will not respect tasks that are accomplished with a negative attitude, and we value accomplishment of reasonable goals that have been set by the child more than tasks that we have defined and the children have reluctantly completed. Positive self-talk should also be encouraged, leading children to focus on their strengths and accomplishments, nurturing a sense of self-mastery.
Practice Listening and Giving Feedback
There are lots of games you can play with children that require them to listen and to give feedback in a calm, clear manner. For instance, in workshops, we may play Hot and Cold, in which players give each other feedback about finding a hidden object. To find the object, of course, the child who is searching for it must listen, evaluate and respond to the feedback given, while those giving the feedback must do so clearly.
You can build opportunities for reflection into any game or activity, and, of course, give compliments after activities done well. In group situations, Yoga Calm’s Compliment Game can be an especially fun and effective way of learning how to give and receive praise. And it provides another opportunity to reinforce the importance of eye contact!
Practice Stillness
There are many activities in life that require staying in control and not going too fast. To teach this, you can have children participate in several activities that create a bit of excitement and then challenge the kids to stay calm and go slowly to be successful.
The Yoga Calm Mat Tag activity can provide just such a challenge. When any of the children get too excited or out of control, simply ask them to sit down. Once they have shown they can calm down, they may re-join the activity. During any activity, if a high level of chaos or excitement is reached, just stop until everyone is calm, or remind the children to say something to themselves like, “Go slow, easy, easy,” to help them think about staying calm.
Encourage Setting Goals and Making Plans
A goal is something we want to work toward, while a plan is the strategy used to get to the goal. For this concept, we will do some activities several times to work on adding parts to a plan to lead to a more accomplished goal. For example, we may ask students to do a number of increasingly difficult tasks involving tapping a balloon in the air: using just one finger, using only the feet, behind the back and so on. Because the tasks become more difficult, we stop after a child cannot complete the challenge and come up with plans that could help make reaching that goal easier. The children realize that sometimes they needed several points in their plan to be able to reach their goal.
Parents can work with their children at home on the idea of setting a goal and coming up with a plan to reach it. We suggest making a chart with a diagram of a sun with many rays coming off it. Inside the sun, write the goal; in the rays, parts of the plan that will be followed in reaching that goal.
To learn more about helping children with ADHD:
- Buy and watch Dr. Sosne’s ADHD DVD
- Attend a Yoga Calm ADHD workshop (next scheduled for Portland, OR; Feb. 6-7, 2010)
- Find an ADHD class at The Children’s Program
