ADD/ADHD coping tools or resources

[LNN]

I have a friend whose son is struggling in school due to ADD issues but she does not want to medicate if at all possible. Does anyone have any tools, ideas, books, or websites that have been helpful?

 

For my DS, squeezing a rubber ball while he read helped. Letting him tap a pencil in the table while he did homework - things that kept his hands busy - seems to help his brain focus. But I never found any great resources. It was all seat-of-the-pants. Wondering if anyone had come across any treasure troves...

[smartyjones]

not sure what the issues are. . . i reallly found the book "When Labels Don't Fit" helpful. I'm quite sure that's the title, i can find the author if you need. when i read it, I was looking for help more with ODD than ADD but it has some good explanations and some good specific techniques.

 

at that time also, ds was doing a lot of sensory stuff -- a lot of twirling, throwing, spinning items. my mom sewed him some pockets of various materials to keep his hands and feet busy. he really liked them and it did help him if he was supposed to be paying attention to something, he could put his hands in them and it did seem to help to focus him. i also got a few squishy balls

 

 

[MomWithOCDSon]

I'm not sure how old the boy is, but there's a great book out called "ADHD and Me," authored by Blake E.S. Taylor, a now-college-age boy who's suffered with ADD/ADHD ever since he can remember. He tells his own story and anecdotes from his "distracted" life from a young age, right up through high school. And at the end of each chapter, he has hints and ideas from a kid's perspective about how to deal and adapt to keep your head in the game, so to speak. I really enjoyed it, and so did my DS (he read it at age 12).

 

For parents, I really like "Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World: Unlocking the Potential of Your ADD Child" by Jeffrey Freed and Laurie Parsons. Freed is an academic and teacher, and Parsons is the parent of an ADD boy. Freed's point is basically that, as many of us here would ascribe, ADD is mostly a label made convenient for teachers and administrators to place on our kids when they have learning differences that aren't readily adaptable to the historically left-brained-oriented educational system in the U.S. He explains how our kids are literally evolving . . . thanks to our increasingly visually-oriented world in which they're given black, white & red mobiles over their cribs and Baby Einstein videos from birth . . . to be more right-brained creatures/learners, and how many other systems, particularly the educational in many states, have yet to catch up and modify to address and hold the attention of these right-brained learners.

 

He also has exercises and techniques in the book for helping your right-brained kid better navigate the world, especially in school. I credit Freed with teaching my DS to read; he was in an exacerbation in second grade and having a really hard time learning via phonics and that "part-to-whole" (sound out each sound, each syllable and put it together in a single word) method, so we worked at home with Freed's "whole-to-part" techniques (based on right-brained kids having exceptional memories), and DS grabbed hold and literally took off. He became a happy, avid reader instead of a shy, reluctant one.

 

Hope those are helpful!

[LNN]

Great suggestions - thanks! My friend's son is in 6th grade, but I'm wondering if a whole-to-part might also help my son. His reading has greatly improved this past year as he's getting healthy, but he missed developmental chunks while he was so so sick in 1st grade. So certain skills, like decoding and scooping chunks of words, hearing/spelling middle sounds in words, the things he missed in earlier grades, are still a struggle for him, even tho he's mastering 3rd grade skills right on time. So we need to continue to do some remedial work to strengthen his foundation. He doesn't always respond to the teaching techniques being used. Amazon here I come...

 

Smarty- were the pockets stand-alone pockets of cloth or were they sewn onto a vest or what? can you elaborate?

[smartyjones]

Smarty- were the pockets stand-alone pockets of cloth or were they sewn onto a vest or what? can you elaborate?

 

 

my mom sews a lot so she has many boxes of various materials. the pockets she made were various sizes -- sewn on three sides with one opening -- just stand alone pockets. the best one was made from a bumpy dishcloth. we are homeschooling and were using them at home so it may not be so helpful b/c i think you're talking about an older child in school so there may be peer issues there. another good one was a velour type material. there was also a sock that is bumpy and was a little tight on his hand/wrist. sometimes he'd just rub his hands in them, others he's slide around on the floor with them. it did really help him with focus.

 

i first tried my relaxing eye pillow that has little beads in it. at first, he liked it, squishing it around but then it became a type of lasso -- so it was more trouble than it was worth. this may be something that could work in school as a kind of small incognito sensory thing that he could squish around but wouldn't be too noticeable.