These questions are probably asked by every parent on the planet every time their child does what kids do! So how do you tell if your child is exhibiting ADHD behavior?
ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and ADD is Attention Deficit Disorder – the main difference between the two conditions obviously is the hyperactivity. The signs of ADHD are usually where the child is unable to keep still for very long, is constantly on the go, very often has problems sleeping and is up and at it and all over the place CONSTANTLY! These children cannot stay focused on task or concentrate for very long.
ADD has similar symptoms but the memory retention is poor and the focus and concentration just isn’t there. Often losing things, forgetting things but without the constant fidgeting and squirming associated with hyperactivity. These are the signs of add and
are the basic characteristics of the condition but very often there are other behavioural problems alongside this. Things like aggression, defiance, no fear of consequences and impulsiveness are generally associated with ADHD.
In the many years that I have been working with these conditions in children and young people and supporting families and professionals, evaluating natural approaches and remedies when used with ADHD and ADD, I have noticed other characteristic behaviours as well.
Very often, there is a craving for milk products prior to the child having an episode of very disruptive behaviour and there may be certain obsession and fixations, which then leads to the child being diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum as well.
However, although there are certain common characteristics in these conditions, every child is unique and their behaviour will be individual to them. Any system that offers support in my opinion, must take into account the uniqueness of that child. This system should tailor make the therapy or the remedy to fit the child and not the other way round, where a child is made to fit into a box that carries a particular label with it – you know the sort of thing – “If your child has ADHD then THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST DO /TAKE etc etc.”
The way to find out if your child DOES actually have ADHD of course, is to have them tested for a diagnosis. This involves certain tests like the ‘Connor’s Scale’ which is a chart of behaviours (all of which incidentally, we all exhibit on a bad day!) The score that your child rates on this scale would indicate whether or not these behaviours are severe enough or frequent enough to warrant the diagnosis. Once the diagnosis is made then it opens the door to certain entitlements in terms of extra educational provision, or possibly access to benefits or prescribed medication.
I have to say at this point that on more than one occasion I have actually had parents say to me – “This HET programme won’t make ‘em better will it.? ‘Cos I don’t want to lose any benefits”?
If this is an issue for you, then I suggest you don’t read on - because you probably won’t want to hear what I am going to say - which is YES! in over 10 years that myself, and other qualified HET practitioners, have been working with HET (Holistic Educational Therapy), we have consistently been over 86% successful in achieving the goals set with parents, professionals and young people on the programme.
So, what about the medication option? My advice? Find out as much as you can about the choices you have – then the decision you make is an informed decision! The traditional way of treating this condition is with a drug called Ritalin, which belongs to a group of medicines called methylphenidates. A quick internet search on this will take you to numerous sites and it is fair to say that the side effects are well established and documented. They can be extremely unpleasant for children, and some sources would say downright dangerous.
I have known of situations where a school has said to the parent who was resisting their child going on this type of medication, that their child would not be allowed to attend the school unless taking this type of medicine. My reply to this is would they really want their child to attend a school where the policy is not primarily placed upon the child’s well being and health and have appropriate strategies and resources in place to support that.
A frightening statistic from some recent research would look at approximately 5% of the school population having this condition and this doesn’t include young people who have not had a formal diagnosis or are being educated at home due to the failure of the educational system to address the issues.
In my experience, and I have visited many, many schools in my capacity as an Educational advisor and also a verifier for many educational programmes, I have seen that traditionally, schools do not have a good track record in assisting ‘ADHD’ or ‘ADD’ labelled children to be successful and reach their potential.
That is due to the fact the very nature of ADHD /ADD and the associated behaviours that I described earlier, are not consistent with often old fashioned and poorly ventilated or designed buildings with a build up of environmental toxins (which incidentally a lot of these children can be very sensitive to). Children are cooped up in a classroom and only allowed outside for short periods. They then return to noisy enclosed environments where they are unable to deal with the build up of the noise level as very often these children have a hearing sensitivity stemming from early undiagnosed glue ear conditions and are unable to process information in certain conditions of loud noise.
Behaviour is a language of communication. It is the barometer for a child’s emotional state . If a child is unable to communicate what is wrong and how they are feeling – they will communicate this through their behaviour. Sadly it is true, that most environments that your child will be in outside of the family, will not be conducive to people observing their behaviour in different situations, studying what is triggering it and why and what your child responds to. These children are very sensitive to certain things going on around them, they work better in natural environments and in order for them to succeed, they will need to have their learning approach and personality understood on an individual basis and their learning curriculum designed around them!
Another case where we need to fit the system to the child and not the child to the system, however today it is mainly the case that if they don’t fit into the system, the policy is to drug them to subdue them into submission, unless the side effects backfire first!!
Sadly this is very often the situation that we are faced with in today’ society where these problems are escalating out of control as we see in the press on almost a daily basis now.
So this is a pretty bleak scenario in response to your question of what is DHD / ADD and what can be done about it?
Well, having discussed in some length about what it is and what is the mainstream approach in dealing with it –let’s personalise this to your child and take it to where any effective support system needs to be! A set of behaviours that are unique and individual to your child with whole myriad of reasons behind them that your child is not able to understand, discuss or address – where does that leave us?
Ok then, the reason that we have such high success rates with HET is that it is an individualised programme designed to meet the needs of your child and your family – we have a proven programme and fit it to your child.
Where do we start??? Firstly, we need to identify what these behaviours are and we do that through a simple consultation questionnaire which we take from different points of view. We do this in order to agree what the desirable and the undesirable behaviours are. Often these behaviours will vary between home and school and even between different members of the family. We also need to know when the behaviours occur. It may be at certain times, or doing certain things or eating certain foods. For example one of the things I mentioned earlier was the undiagnosed early glue ear condition. A typical observation of this is when a child ‘kicks off’ as soon as the noise levels start to rise in the school hall or lunch time or PE for example.
When we have agreed the behaviours, we then need to set some targets to reduce the inappropriate behavioural responses and increase the positive ones. To help us do that we introduce a special type of Reward Chart scheme which is unique to HET and very powerful as it designed to support your child’s success at every level of the HET programme and can in itself show us a lot of what is going on within your child’s behavioural vocabulary!
The next step is to provide a natural remedy that will help to manage your child’s emotions for this we use an established and powerful system called the Bach Flower Remedies which were originally designed by a Harley Street Doctor as a natural alter vive to the medicine of the day – and we are talking 80 years ago here folks!!!
Diet and nutrition are generally well researched in helping the ADHD / ADD child and in HET we have evaluated a very basic programme and found that everyone following this nutritional approach has seen improvements within 3 months and the company whose products we work with have backed this up with a money back guarantee. Of course we look at making the relevant dietary adjustments as well as looking at the sensitivities to certain additives etc. As I mentioned earlier children with ADHD ADD symptoms are very often prone to these type of additive sensitivities.
We also look at a very effective physical activity programme. Traditionally children who are hyperactive respond well to channelling their energy into productive and creative physical activity which creates feel good factor. This programme has been designed for HET in consultation with a child PE specialist and ex Olympic coach, to devise our PHEW Physical Holistic Exercise Workout programme. This is where the child meets their own targets and then acts as a coach for the family, drawing on our alternative curriculum of outdoor activities eco projects and green exercise providing a learning environment which has proved more effective in enabling these children to achieve success in their learning progress.
The next stage of HET, which incidentally we refer to as stepping stones because the very structure of this programme is interfaced with the way we learn and how experiences and our perceptions of these experiences link into our psychology and our physical health and structure. This is very much at the leading edge of scientific thinking in this area. We introduce the core issue remedies to deal with the experiences that form root traumas or blocks in our lives and around which we hang a lot of emotional behaviours and reactions when things going on around us happen to trigger old outdated responses,
The next step is looking at negative patterns, our perceptions about situations and experiences that rerun those old traumas and recreate patterns in our life hat can become a life script. In the ADHD child these are patterns of behavioural responses that get repeated and it’s for those times that as an exasperated parent you may say – “They never learn – they keep making the same mistakes!” – it is a behavioural pattern that relates to a trigger which is associated with something in the past and is rerun on a regular basis and we have a natural way of breaking that cycle.
Then we look at the family dynamics – your reaction to your child in some way reflects your own childhood and when this clashes with your child it creates something called a dynamic between you which can change! Understanding those dynamics is a system we look at in HET called ‘Or-Kids’.
The next stepping stones involve learning different techniques for relaxation that all involve natural remedies that have no side effects or no interactions with any drug regimes that your child may already be following. This approach includes working with the senses, e.g. touch and smell with aromatherapy; hearing with auricular candle therapy for those with sensitive hearing problems as discussed earlier. It also includes a colour therapy called Rainbow Journey which not only works with how our ‘colour diet’, effects us physically and psychologically but also looks at the effects of how UV play reduces hyperactivity and improves concentration and focus.
In fact all the therapies that we use have their own little evaluation technique attached to them to show you how effective it is and so that you can profile what is working best with your child enabling you to adopt these simple strategies as a tool box for life.
We look at something called the Amino Acid Codes which are homeopathic building blocks for proteins and provide a basis for cellular support, in response to the emotional data that bombards the cell. This happens when we are under stress, creating behaviours and physical responses, ( see the work of Dr Bruce Lipton for a deeper understanding of how the cell plays such an important part in the way we behave and create life experiences around us.)
Finally, we have mentioned earlier that children fail to achieve their full potential with ADHD – is this really because of the ADHD? Or because of the failure of schools to address the problem and provide access to an approach which does suit the way children exhibiting these symptoms learn best? HET offers a practical solution to this problem with an ECO therapy curriculum that connects home, school and community life, and celebrates your child’s success at every stage.
For more information on what is ADHD or ADD and a comprehensive yet individualised way to deal with it – please explore the materials on this site. Until now HET has only been available to professionals – this interactive site is now taking HET directly to families to support behavioural problems and conditions like ADHD and ADD.
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