Surprising Facts About Kids With ADHD - Helping Us To Choose Our Treatment Plan Wisely

Posted: Feb 07, 2011 |

I have just read a fascinating report on kids with ADHD in Time magazine. It reports on a study carried out by Mark Rapport of the University of Central Florida which shows that in order to concentrate, children with ADHD need to swivel, fidget and doodle all they want. This helps them to concentrate although the precise mechanism involved is not known.

We adults do the same and we doodle through long boring meetings but we are still paying attention. The idea that if an ADHD child sits still he will be able to focus better, is not borne out by this report. Although it is a small study, it points us in the right direction, I feel. Certainly, I know schools where they have bought stability balls to help with ADHD in small kids. Bouncing around on them helps them to focus while doing some cognitive tasks.

The part of the brain which helps us to use our memory is the cortex and children with ADHD certainly do not have enough cortical stimulation to do these tasks. If they fidget or are allowed to move, apparently this helps the cortical arousal, and that in turn helps them with memory to do whatever task they are doing.

Another surprising fact about kids with ADHD is that the effects of Ritalin are limited in helping them with cognitive tasks such as reading. But in the long term, the effect of these psychostimulants is neither decisive nor helpful for behavior. Even if they were, we would not like our children to be on that sort of drug for the rest of their lives. In any case research shows that the effects of these drugs wear off after three years, so it is a very short term and rather incomplete treatment plan, in my opinion.

Yet another surprise about kids with ADHD is that a Swedish study involving 600 children shows that the ADHD kids are four times likely to be bullies than their normal counterparts at school. But another study published in the Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology journal also showed that ADHD kids were 10 times more likely to be bullied. Certainly that would have a double whammy effect on their trying to learn if they are always afraid of what is coming next from the bully in the second row behind them.

So, how do these surprising facts about kids with ADHD help us to decide on what treatment might be the best one? First, we understand that no treatment plan is complete without adopting behavior modification because the effects of the drugs are limited to say the least.

The second thing is that there must be safer and more effective alternatives to medications. This is where homeopathy scores over the conventional treatments.

Kids with ADHD can be helped to cope effectively with life's challenges. We just need to make sure that we have chosen the safest and most effective ones available. To help you do that, I have built a website where I have explained how you can easily do this.

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