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101 Ways to Turn Your Child's Problems into Strengths
Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D., author of "The Gift of ADHD Activity Book: 101 Ways to Turn Your Child's Problems into Strengths" (2008, New Harbinger Publications) and "The Gift of ADHD: How to Turn Your Child's Problems into Strenghts" (2005, New Harbinger Publications) offers these tips.
1.Your child needs for you to be on his or her side. In short, he needs for you to become an advocate for him. Research has shown that a teacher's perception of your child will dramatically impact his actual performance in school. This means that when teachers complain about your child, rather than offer profuse apologies, you might help the teacher reframe your child's behavior as resulting from his gifts or an alternative explanation rather than from the diagnosis of ADHD. In one case, a parent was able to tell a teacher that his son's antics toward a girl in the class were the result of awkward attempts at expressing his newfound interest in her.
2. As an advocate for your child, you should try to get the teacher to make accommodations that are not punitive or humiliating for her. Many times what happens in the classroom is that teachers "diss" students in front of their friends causing them to feel humiliated which provokes them to act out even more. If a teacher can allow a child to sit in the back and get out of her seat occasionally without being punished, this can help a child to focus more and not feel so negative toward being in the classroom. Some might ask if allowing the student to get out of his seat is going to be disruptive to the other students. But chances are that the ADHD student will likely get out of her seat anyways. The disruption to the class is made much worse by the attempts to discipline the child and resulting increase in bad behavior that results from the child's reaction to being humiliated.
3. Remember that it is more important for you to stay connected to your child than to enforce conformity, control and compliance. This one can be tough for parents. We often believe that getting our children to do what we tell them is fundamental to the job description of being a parent. However, for a child with a difference that gets labeled as a "deficit disorder", he needs to have someone on his side or his behavior will get worse because he feels alienated.
The feeling of being all alone and misunderstood will generate behavior that is highly disruptive. To see improvements, experiment with staying connected over enforcing compliance. There are ways to achieve both. In fact, emphasizing connection is more likely to lead to compliance than other techniques such as making threats. For example, if your child says he doesn't want to go to school because it's boring, stop yourself from going into a long lecture or expressing your frustration with your child.
Use your child's comments to start a dialogue, ask why he thinks school is boring and listen to him. Encourage him to give you many different reasons that school is boring. If some of the reasons he gives make sense to you, you can practice becoming an advocate for your child. If your child says school is boring because it doesn't have to do with the real world, you could ask the teacher to try to use project- based learning that involves solving real problems. As an example, a teacher could give students a real world case of wasteful governmental spending and ask students to figure out how to reduce costs rather than just asking students to memorize facts about the structure of the American government. When you listen to your child and honor his perspective in some small way, you go along way toward creating the connection that will fuel motivation and persistence.
Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist. She is author of The Gift of ADHD: How to Transform Your Child's Problems into Strengths, Listening to Depression: How Understanding Your Pain Can Heal Your Life which was selected as one of the best books of 2006 by Health Magazine and more than twenty-five scholarly articles. Her work has been featured in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and Publisher's Weekly as well as newspapers across the country and local and national radio and television. She specializes in the treatment of ADHD and depression and the psychology of pregnancy and motherhood; she speaks regularly on her areas of expertise. Honos-Webb completed a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at University of California, San Francisco, and has been an assistant professor teaching graduate students. Visit her website at www.visionarysoul.com.
For more an interview with Dr. Honos-Webb or review copies of her books contact: Lorna Garano, lornagarano@gmail.com, 510-922-9765. |
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