Kids Awareness Series

Okay!!  Your child is in school and either you are frustrated as their parent, your child’s teacher is frustrated, or both!  You have most likely seen behavioral problems and your child’s teacher has called you telling you that your child is disrupting the classroom and is not listening.  You are at your “wits end” and finally decide after much deliberating to take your child to a health care professional to figure out what to do.  A health care professional tells you that your child has ADHD.  Now what??

Well for starters, let me tell you that your child is most likely just as frustrated as you are with constantly getting in trouble at school for not sitting still and not paying attention to what is going on in class.  Your child may have also been called a “troublemaker”, “the daydreamer” and has probably been generally “labeled” at their school.  At least, we can define what ADHD is and know that there is hope and help for ADHD.  No child wants to stick out from the rest of his/her classmates and they especially do not want to be made fun of.  If a school-aged child knows what ADHD is and has learning and behavioral strategies to help with the symptoms of ADHD, they are better able to deal with it.  This is a critical first step towards coping with ADHD!  Many children with ADHD suffer with low self-esteem due to their inability to achieve the same level of success as their peers simple because they can not focus their attention for any length of time.  This does not have to be the case.  To be continued…