Edge Foundation Blog

Have you read a number of books about ADHD and they didn’t work?  Did you know there are over 6,000 ADHD books on Amazon.com; which one should you read first?  Don’t you wish someone would tell you the top three books you should read when you are diagnosed with ADHD?

We can tell you some books we’ve found helpful, but we also want you to know why coaching may be a better alternative to ADHD self help strategies, books, blogs or tip sheets.

• The ADHD brain isn’t wired for self-help. A hallmark of ADHD is inconsistency.  One day you can stay on track just fine and the next day you fall short.  For example, you don’t turn in assignments late because you are lazy.  You miss assignments because your brain is wired for distraction.
• People with ADHD usually already know what they need to do; they just have trouble getting it done.  Brain research shows that “what to do” resides in the back of the brain, while “getting it done” is in the front where ADHD brains are weaker.  When staying focused and on track is the problem, self-help books fail because they don’t provide the support you need to work with this weaknesses.
• ADHD symptoms are different for different people: that’s why it’s called AD/HD, ADD and ADHD.  Scientists are still figuring out the different ways ADHD manifests in different people. You don’t need to know all of that, what you need is a program tailor made for you.

An ADHD coach is your brain’s personal trainer

You already know how a personal trainer can take your workout to the next level.  They help you develop your workout plan, encourage you to push yourself and hold you accountable to show up!

Skills are teachable and need to be built from the ground up. An ADHD coach provides you with the support to explore your strengths and weaknesses, identify areas you need to develop, outline a plan of attack, give you feedback as you practice new skills, and hold you accountable to your goals.

Still want to read a book?  Here are a few we recommend.  But we also hope you’ll give ADHD coaching a try.  In just a few months you’ll have learned new skills and strategies that will benefit you for a lifetime!

 ADHD Self Help Book List 

Books for readers seeking to understand ADHD

• Driven To Distraction : Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood, Edward Hallowell & John Ratey, 1994
• Answers to Distraction, Edward Hallowell & John Ratey
• Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults (Yale University Press Health & Wellness), Thomas Brown, 2005

Books for students with ADHD

• Empowering Youth with ADHD: Your Guide to Coaching Adolescents and Young Adults for Coaches, Parents, and Professionals, Jodi Sleeper-Triplett, 2010
• Coaching College Students with AD/HD : Issues and Answers, Patricia Quinn, Nancy Ratey and Theresa Maitland, 2000
• Learning Outside The Lines: Two Ivy League Students With Learning Disabilities And ADHD Give You The Tools, Jonathan Mooney & David Cole, 2000
• Survival Guide for College Students with ADHD or LD, Kathleen Nadeau, 2006
• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, John Ratey with Eric Hagerman, 2008
•  Making the Grade With ADD: A Student’s Guide to Succeeding in College With Attention Deficit Disorder, Stephanie Moulton Sarkis, 2008

Books for parents of ADHD teens and college student

• Your Defiant Teen: 10 Steps to Resolve Conflict and Rebuild Your Relationship, Russell Barkley & Arthur Robin, 2008
• Help4ADD@High School, Kathleen Nadeau, 1998
• ADD and the College Student: A Guide for High School and College Students with Attention Deficit Disorder, Patricia Quinn, 2001
•  Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools You Should Know About Even If You’re Not a Straight-A Student, Lauren Pope, 2000

This week we are pleased to interview Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Katherine Ellison, author of Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention. Both Ellison and her son, whom she calls ”Buzz,” have been diagnosed with Attention-deficit/​Hyperactivity Disorder. After her son was diagnosed with ADHD at age 9, Ellison devoted her professional skills to investigating what genuine relief from ADHD, if any, might be found in the confusing array of goods sold by our modern mental health industry.   This page-turner memoir is engaging, funny, and honest – and packed with helpful insights.

Edge:  Katherine, thank you so much for speaking with us about your journey to sort through the blizzard of information about ADHD.  Why don’t we start with why you wrote the book?

Ellison:  I wrote “Buzz” for many reasons, but mainly to cope with an overwhelming sense of isolation — to give myself the company I craved, as I was struggling to help my son and myself.

There is so much judgment of kids with ADHD and their parents. It’s easy to feel lonely and overwhelmed. Compounding this problem is what I call the ADHD Industrial Complex: the array of pharmaceutical companies and ADHD alternative treatments, many of them questionable, that advertize directly to panicking parents.

Like millions of other parents in this predicament, I needed to educate myself about ADHD in a hurry and figure out how to help my child, and myself. I was fortunate my book contract gave me carte blanche to call up the world’s leading experts on ADHD and ask for information.

Still, I’m also extraordinarily distractible — so it helped quite a bit to have deadlines built-in for this project.  Not to mention than the scary deadline of my son’s approaching teenage years!

Edge:   What is the most important lesson you learned about ADHD that other parents should know?

Ellison:  If I had to choose, I’d say the bottom line of “Buzz” is that parents have to pay attention to their own neurological quirks before they can genuinely help their kids. ADHD is a strongly hereditary condition, so it’s quite likely that if you have a child with a diagnosis, you will  also qualify (as I did).

I ultimately felt that my challenging son gave me a gift by forcing me to look at the ways I was reacting to the world, and find some way to calm down. I tell the story of all the strategies I used to do that in the book.

Edge:   What are your favorite news resources for ADHD?

Ellison:  That’s a tricky question, since the Internet is full of all kinds of ADHD hype and outright misinformation about ADHD. You need to choose your sources of information very carefully. I stick to mainstream news organizations like the New York Times, but at this point get a lot of scientific papers sent to me, which helps me stay ahead of the news to some extent.  As I sort through the news and write my own stories, I’m posting them on the Facebook page for “Buzz.” Please join!

Edge: What would be the top five things on your checklist for parents of children newly diagnosed with ADHD?

Ellison:  First and foremost, make sure you’re doing everything you can to stay calm, and don’t stint on help to get you there. Being in this position can be incredibly stressful, but you can’t afford to be reactive. So finding stress-relief strategies, and what Harvard’s Brian Little calls “restorative niches” is a must.

•  Learn as much as you can. This includes getting a neuropsychological profile of your child– if you’re lucky, your school will pay for it — so you’re sure of the diagnosis and are aware of any co-existing conditions you need to address.
•  Pay attention to sleep. If your child’s sleeping habits are out-of-whack, that could be causing ADHD-like symptoms, although ADHD and the  anxiety that often accompanies ADHD can also interfere with sleep.
• Don’t be intimidated by your child’s school. Once you’ve educated yourself about ADHD, make sure you’re an effective advocate for your child, and make sure his or her school environment isn’t toxic.
•  Find ways to help your child shine. He or she is getting so much negative feedback each day that it is vital to cultivate strengths that bring in positive reactions.  Very important!!!

Edge:  What did you decide about using ADHD medication for your family? What promising alternatives to ADHD medication did you uncover?

Ellison: I have a long chapter about ADHD medication in the book. It was very difficult for me and my husband to decide to try meds, as it is for many parents. We ultimately tried medication for a year, during which my son did much better in many ways. Then he decided he didn’t want to stay on medication, which is extremely common for kids — doctors tell me the average time on meds is less than two years. So we had to look for alternatives.

Very, very fortunately, my son has gotten into physical fitness, which is helping him a lot. He is now spending more than an hour a night most nights at the gym. There’s a great deal of research confirming the benefits of exercise and ADHD. I also think that neurofeedback was worth it — and there’s some interesting data on how it can help, particularly with anxiety — although I frankly couldn’t have afforded it without my book contract. Last summer, both my son and I tried working-memory training, and there’s very good research on that. I also think it did some good for him, although the changes are subtle.

Edge:  We noticed that you didn’t cover ADHD coaching as an alternative to medication.  Not surprising since coaching is relatively unknown, but effective way to work with ADHD.  After reading the information on our research, what is your view on the promise of coaching to help students with ADHD?

Ellison:  The research looks good! And I do think it’s fairly obvious that good human relationships are key for people with ADHD. The coach relationship sounds wonderful.

Edge: We can’t end this interview without asking “how is your son?”

Ellison: He is now 16, a junior in our public high school, and I’m seeing some new signs of maturity. Last year he joined the varsity tennis team, and on my birthday earlier this month, he bought me roses, which are still on our living room table even though they’ve begun to wilt.

In addition to “Buzz,” Ellison has written four other books including “The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes You Smarter.” Look for her next book due out in 2013 titled, “Troublemaker: From Hyperactive to Harvard, and What My Journey Means for Your Child and the Future of Education.” She has two sons and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Have you read “Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention?” What did you think about it? Do you have any questions or comments about the book?  Leave them in the comments and we’ll be sure she gets them.

Dear Friend of the Edge Foundation:

We are taking this opportunity to thank you for the interest and support you have provided to the Edge Foundation in past years.  At this time of year when many of us are deciding about making end of year contributions, we hope you will choose to support the academic success of high school and college students with ADHD, many of whom are struggling to stay in school and complete their education.  Edge supports these young adults through our research-proven intervention of personal coaching.  Your continued support will help us provide that critical support to every student who needs it.

Edge’s year in 2010 was highlighted by the completion and release of the results of a two year, groundbreaking scientific study on the efficacy of coaching for college students with ADHD.  The study, which involved students on 10 college campuses across the U.S., showed conclusively that Edge Foundation coaching has a very significant impact on the ability of college students with ADHD to regulate their own behavior and meet the challenges of living with the disorder.  As a result of the excitement already generated by these results in the ADHD support community, CNN is taping a segment featuring our study, which will air in January 2011.

As powerful as the study results are, they alone cannot help us make this intervention accessible to all students without the necessary funding. Your tax deductible gift will help the Edge Foundation educate the public about this highly effective intervention and will enable us to help students, who would not otherwise be able to afford coaching on their own, to develop the structure, support and accountability that is crucial to students with ADHD.  With your continuing support, we will succeed at our mission of helping students with ADHD achieve their full academic, professional and social potential.

To make your donation to Edge, please click on this link which will bring you to the support page on our website.  http://www.edgefoundation.org/store/donations/

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Happy Holiday!

Neil Peterson                                                                          Robert Tudisco
Founder & CEO                                                                       Executive Director

P.S.  As a thank you for your contribution of $100 or more, we would like to send you a copy of Embracing the Edge, written by Edge Foundation founder and CEO Neil Peterson.

Editor’s Note:  Edge Foundation’s Founding board member, Dr. Patricia Quinn, has a new book out, Ready for Take-Off. We are pleased to peek inside the book and share some of its nuggets with you.

Edge: There are a lot of other books out there about school and ADHD, what motivated you to write this book?

Dr. Quinn: So often I would hear from parents and their concerns about their teen with ADHD and what would happen when the teen left home for college. Yet these parents would go on enabling and rescuing these same young adults until the moment they drove away from their teen’s dorm in late August. These parents forget that they are not going off with their teen until it’s too late. Although on occasion, I have spoken to a few parents, who do show up at college to do their teens laundry or type a paper.

In order to address this issue, I teamed up with Dr. Theresa Maitland from UNC, Chapel Hill to present an alternative “coaching” approach to parenting. In Ready for Take -Off, our primary purpose was to convince parents they could best help their teens by designing a program to empower their teens and help them gain the necessary skills to succeed in college.

Edge:  What are some of the things parents should look at with their student to determine if he or she is ready to live away from home?

Dr. Quinn: Organization and time management are often the keys to success at college. Making appropriate choices, prioritizing time and tasks, solving new challenges are important skills that teens will need in order to live on their own.  In addition, I have listed some very specific skills below. Ready for Take-Off features two extensive questionnaires, one for parents and one for the teen, to complete to determine what skills the teen has mastered and what skills still need to be developed before leaving for college.

Edge: It sounds like parents can get in the way of helping their children get college ready.  What are some things for parents to do differently with an older child that may have worked quite well as a strategy when the student was younger?

Dr. Quinn: When children are diagnosed with ADHD and/or LD, we often find that it is not unusual for their parents to respond by falling into one of three roles that can prevent their children from learning many important lessons and skills that will be important in college and in life. In Ready for Take-Off, we call these the Parent Warriors, the Parent Repairmen and the Parent Directors.

Like the medieval “knight in shining armor,” Parent Warriors participate in every battle that needs to be fought to ensure that their child is understood, treated fairly and given all the services that ultimately will lead to his or her success.  We fully appreciate that without the “parent warrior,” many teens would never be able to even dream of attending college.    However, the down side of this parenting pattern is that the parent warrior may be so intent on fighting and fixing every bump in their teen’s life that they don’t allow their teen the opportunity to struggle and learn to handle any of the challenges that are part of a normal life.

Parent Directors are naturals at noticing small problems and reading warning signs, at taking charge and problem-solving. Over the years, they may have fallen into the pattern of always directing their son or daughter with ADHD or LD by telling him or her how to get a difficult project done, clean a room, handle a conflict with a friend or even quickly pitched in to help.

Some parents don’t act as parent warriors or directors but, instead, they unconsciously “fill in the gaps” and become “repairmen” who fix the damage created by their teen’s attention and self-management problems. These parents have a tendency to “repair”  homework problems by always asking if homework is done, checking on progress on long-term assignments, and forcing their teens to work in the dining room or a non-distracting area when they are “caught” off task during mandated home work hours. By always double-checking in the morning and at night, these parents prevent their teens from learning how to manage on their own – to wake-up in the morning and get to bed each night.

Edge: What are some of the skills students should focus on sharpening in order to be ready for life away from home?

Dr. Quinn: To ensure success, students need to make sure that they have achieved independence in daily living, study and self-advocacy skills. These include being able to:

1. Awaken himself each day.
2. Be responsible for his own laundry.
3. Keep his room and possessions organized.
4. Take any medication needed with few or no reminders.
5. Eat healthy meals and exercise regularly.
6. Manage money.
7. Make good decisions about how to manage stress and to balance time between fun, chores and schoolwork.
8. Set up a study schedule and stay on top of schoolwork without reminders.
9. Organize ideas, write and edit his own papers.
10. Motivate himself to face assignments and tasks that he doesn’t really enjoy.
11. Clearly explain strengths and weaknesses to teachers and other people.
12. Comfortably ask for help or admit when he doesn’t understand something.
13. Find resources or support when he can’t figure something out on his own.

About Patricia O. Quinn, M.D.

Dr. Patricia Quinn is a developmental pediatrician in Washington, D.C.  A graduate of Georgetown University Medical School, she completed a fellowship in developmental pediatrics at Georgetown and specializes in child development and psychopharmacology.  Dr. Quinn has worked for more than 35 years in the areas of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and learning disabilities.

Dr. Quinn is a founding board member of the Edge Foundation an organization dedicated to providing coaches to high school and college students with ADHD.  She is the author of more than 20 books on ADHD for children, adults, and professionals. For the last decade, Dr. Quinn has devoted her attention to the issues confronting girls and women with ADHD and feels a strong commitment to helping them to identify and manage issues specific to their gender.  Her 1999 book, Understanding Girls with ADHD, is groundbreaking in its presentation of this population.

Dr. Quinn is a well-known international speaker and conducts workshops nationwide about ADHD.  She has appeared on Lifetime TV’s New Attitudes, the PBS show, To the Contrary, and on Good Morning America to discuss the issue of girls and women with ADHD.  Dr. Quinn appeared in a video aired on PBS titled, OUTSIDE IN: A Look at Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder.  She produced and appeared in an educational video ADD: Transition to College – Passport to Success for the National Attention Deficit Disorder Association.

Dr. Quinn, a woman and mother with ADHD, has four children, three of whom have ADHD as well.

Last August, Edge interviewed Dr. Patricia Quinn regarding her work with girls and ADHD.  Dr. Quinn, an Edge Foundation board member, has published four books about the special ADHD challenges that women and girls face that are different men and boys.  Some of those challenges include:

• Under diagnosis due to symptoms that don’t echo the male standard for ADHD
• Hyperactivity presenting as talkativeness and emotional behavior instead of the classic “propelled by a motor.”
• Greater disorganization, depression and anxiety than boys.

This fall Dr. Quinn will publish a new book, 100 Questions and Answers about ADHD in Women and Girls.  We thought this would be a good time to ask her a few questions of our own.

Edge: Is there anything about the challenges ADHD girls and women face that has emerged for you since our last interview?

Dr. Quinn: I think we have seen more in the way of confirming the development of eating disorders in girls with ADHD.

Edge: What, if anything, is unique about diagnosing ADHD girls with eating disorders than is different from other girls?

Dr. Quinn: Well first, the symptom of impulsivity seems to be a significant factor in the development of eating disorders in girls with ADHD. Poor self-esteem may also play a role, but one does not see the impaired body image seen in girls with eating disorders in general.  Girls with ADHD may binge and develop bulimia, but not because of a desire for thinness, but rather because of mindless or impulsive eating. Women with ADHD often report that they eat to feel better or for stimulation.

Edge: What should parents do when they suspect their daughter with ADHD has an eating disorder?

Dr. Quinn: Parents of these girls should pursue a complete assessment with an eating disorder specialist trained to realize that ADHD may be part of the picture. Girls will need to be treated for their ADHD symptoms (inattention and impulsivity) in order to be able to follow a program to address their disordered eating. Stimulants not only treat the symptoms of ADHD, but, according to some experts, may actually decrease the urge to binge.

Edge: Is there anything else you want people to know about girls and ADHD?

Dr. Quinn: Girls tend to suffer silently for many years, and as a result develop poor self-esteem early on. In addition, many develop anxiety because of their untreated ADHD symptoms. Their symptoms seem to sneak up and ambush them and they worry that this will happen again. So, they get anxious or develop compensatory strategies. They may worry and begin checking to see if they have a test they have forgotten about, or a book they forgot to bring home from school.

They can even develop obsessive compulsive personality disorders where they try to control one aspect of their life to the exclusion of others.  I have seen girls with ADHD become perfectionists to compensate for their symptoms. They spend a great amount of time and energy trying to compensate until it all gets too much for them and they get depressed or just give up.  It is, therefore, important to treat ADHD in girls even if they seem to be doing well academically and holding it all together because they may be doing so at a great cost.

I also want to send the overall message that the disorder does not remit but continues to cause significant problems and functional impairments particularly in girls with the inattentive type ADD.

Edge: What would you say, then to parents who are hoping their daughter will just “outgrow it?”

Dr. Quinn: ADHD is a chronic, life-long disorder. Symptoms may be less impairing as we learn to live with them and develop strategies and a life style to better cope. However, girls who demonstrate the most success are those that have adopted a multi-pronged approach to treating the disorder including, medication, therapy and appropriate treatment goals early on. ADHD coaching, like the Edge Foundation offers, can be an important component in learning compensatory strategies and behaviors.  Girls who as adolescents continue to have significant functional impairments are those who are usually not taking medication even though they have briefly made use of other services in and outside of school. These, however, may not be enough.

Edge: What are some of the most common questions you are asked about women and girls who have ADHD?

DR. Quinn: I am constantly asked why girls and women aren’t diagnosed as early as boys. I think this is because girls are not identified by teachers or others. Often teachers are comparing girls’ behaviors to those of boys rather than the performance of other girls. Mothers may be more likely to compare their daughter’s behavior to that of other girls thus may be more reliable at referring their daughters for an evaluation.  Girls are less disruptive and don’t call attention to themselves, so they don’t get referred. In addition girls and women work hard to compensate for their symptoms and to not let others know the problems that they are having.

Edge: Do women’s hormones have any impact on how medication levels need to be prescribed over time? For instance, does going through puberty or menopause mean medication levels need to be adjusted during those periods?

Dr. Quinn: When hormone levels decrease in menopause many women report that their ADHD symptoms increase and that their medications don’t seem to be as effective as previously.  It is often necessary to increase the dose of medications at this time. In addition, I find that during puberty symptoms often worsen in girls with ADHD. A medication dose that worked previously may no longer be effective during this time.

Edge: You’ve been a long-standing champion for women and girls who have ADHD, do you see the rest of the medical profession catching up in awareness or is there still a lot of ground to cover until females with ADHD receive equal medical treatment?

Dr. Quinn: I think that overall the medical profession is doing a better job at recognizing and treating girls with ADHD.  The problem seems to be with educating teachers and school systems about the disorder in females.

Readers:  Do you have a question about ADHD in girls?  Let us know in the comments and we’ll do our best to get you an answer.

Editor’s Note: As you most likely know, Edge Foundation coaches have all completed Edge’s rigorous training for coaches working with students and young adults with ADHD.  We are very proud that Jodi Sleeper-Triplett, adolescent coaching expert, has been instrumental in developing our coach training and mentoring program.  She’s publishing a new book in June, Empowering Youth with ADHD:  Your Guide to Coaching Adolescents and Young Adults for Coaches, Parents and Professionals, and we chatted with her a bit about what you can expect to find inside.

Edge:  You’ve been instrumental at Edge Foundation in designing our ADHD youth coaching training program.  How did training and mentoring the Edge coaches shape your point of view as an author?

Sleeper-Triplett:  My work with the Edge Foundation gave me a fresh perspective on my work and insight into the questions that coaches, clients and parents have about ADHD, the coaching process, and strategies for success.  Each time I was asked a question during my work with Edge, I took notes and used those queries to formulate the information shared in the book.

Edge:  High school and college is a time that most children draw away from their parents or even outright rebel.  How will parents benefit from reading this book?

Sleeper-Triplett:  Parents will learn how a coach can be a great partner for high school and college-aged children.  Coaching allows parents to step back from the day-to-day routine and nagging and allows the young person to be more independent.

Edge:  Over the years were there common questions you’ve fielded from parents about coaching?

Sleeper-Triplett:  Parents need a deeper understanding the coaching process.  They need better insight into what their role is in the coaching process.  They want to explore how boundaries are established within the coaching relationship.  And they want to understand what makes a coach qualified to work with young people with ADHD.

Edge: And how do you respond to parents who are skeptical that coaching won’t make a difference for their students?

Sleeper-Triplett: It’s important for parents to understand that coaching is different from other services, especially therapy.  Many parents have struggled with their ADHD adolescent over time management, organization, and self-advocacy and social skills.  These are all areas addressed in coaching in a non-judgmental manner, allowing young people to feel more confident and ready to stretch themselves to a new level of success.  Not everyone is cut out to benefit from coaching.  So the book also includes a information about how prescreening is used by coaches to ensure a person is ready for coaching before they sign up and invest in the process.

Edge: Writing a book is a huge undertaking of time and energy.  What inspired you?

Sleeper-Triplett:  My clients and coach trainees are my inspiration.  Watching the positive changes that coaching can have on young people and helping coaches to learn new skills is really motivating to me.  I have been encouraged and supported by coaches, therapists, educators and friends to put my work on the page.  Once I committed to doing it there was no turning back for me.

Note:  Empowering Youth with ADHD:  Your Guide to Coaching Adolescents and Young Adults for Coaches, Parents and Professionals will be available in September, however, preordering is now available at Amazon.com.

Click here for more books on ADHD.

Last week we wrote a post about executive function and ADHD inspired by John Medina’s book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. Each of Medina’s 12 Principals are based on scientifically-proven facts about how our brain works.

Take a look at the 12 rules and you’ll see that much of what he talks about are familiar Edge Foundation topics. Want to get a great preview of what his book covers? Visit Brainrules.net where Medina has free, on-line tutorials covering the important information from each chapter.

We agree that the principals outlined in the book are important insights into living to your full potential with ADHD.  When looking them over, we noticed a few common themes we’ve shared in the posts we have written over the last couple of years.  Here’s our take on each brain rule and how it plays out for ADHD:

Exercise – Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.

Treating ADHD with exercise
Spark: Reduce ADHD symptoms with exercise
ADHD and anxiety:  Non drug treatments everyone can try

Survival – Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too.

Wiring – Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.

Executive function and ADHD success/
Succeeding despite learning disabilities/

Attention – Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things.

Fidgeting helps ADHD people stay focused

Short-Term Memory – Rule #5: Repeat to remember.

Long-Term Memory – Rule #6: Remember to repeat.

Sleep – Rule #7: Sleep well, think well.

ADHD students need to take their sleep seriously
ADHD and sleep
ADHD, anxiety and the sleep connection

Stress – Rule #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.

Improve your focus with water

Sensory Integration – Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses.

You can do more to manage ADHD
Fidgeting helps ADHD people stay focused

Vision – Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.

Gender – Rule #11: Male and female brains are different.

Girls with ADHD face special challenges

Exploration – Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers.

Did you read the book or learn anything here you didn’t know about how the brain works?  Let us know in the comments.

You may have noticed that the Edge Foundation has never taken a position about whether or not to use of medication (ex. Ritalin, Adderall etc.) in treating ADHD symptoms. The reason for this is simple: we believe that whether or not you take medication is a personal decision that each family must make after consulting with a qualified doctor. It is not our place, nor the place of people who aren’t living with your ADHD to have any say in the matter.

Yet, there are plenty of vocal opponents to ADHD medication. You don’t have to look far to hear the criticism that we are overmedicating our children in this society. We say to them, walk a mile in ADHD shoes before you start to criticize. Judith Warner has done just that.

Author discovers over medication is a misconception

When best-selling author Judith Warner landed a book deal, she believed that American children were overmedicated. Surprise – turns out she was wrong! What she discovered instead was that this common misconception couldn’t be farther from the truth. “Not only has Warner never met a parent who lunged for the medicine cabinet to dope up their kids, but some fought the medication route as long as they could, to the detriment of their child,” says Kirkus Reviews, Dec 01, 2009.

Warner’s book, We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication, ended up being a thoughtful exploration of how we can help our children live successful lives using all of the tools we have at our disposal – including medication. We hope Warner’s book will help assuage the shame, fear, guilt and embarrassment felt among many people who have decided to use medications as part of their ADHD treatment plan.

Medication doesn’t cure ADHD

And we also want to underline the importance of understanding that medication is not a cure for ADHD. “Medication should be viewed as a useful tool to help individuals with AD/HD make positive changes in their lives as a part of a multi-modal approach which should include positive behavioral management and supports such as ADHD coaching,” says Edge Foundation Executive Director, Robert Tudisco. Tudisco is much more concerned about the diversion of AD/HD medication to individuals who have not been prescribed to use them by a doctor such as sharing them with friends to help them pull an all-nighter, or failing to safeguard prescribed medication that is stolen on campus and either sold or taken by individuals without medical supervision. He is currently working on an article on the subject to be published in Attention Magazine later this year.

The important thing for parents and students alike to know is the best person who can know whether or not medications are for you, is you (along with your physician’s guidance.) And as for those who are misinformed, operating under popular misconceptions, or trying to sell a product, we encourage you to get the facts from a qualified physician and point them in the direction of Warner’s book.

Do you dread January’s New Year’s resolutions? Does it feel like just one more opportunity to let yourself down? This year try something a little different: think small, make only ONE resolution.

The Kaizen Approach to Self Improvement

Unless you work in a manufacturing business, you probably haven’t heard the term kaizen. Kaizen is a Japanese quality management philosophy that directs continual improvement in all aspects of a business – from the CEO to the assembly line.

In his book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, Robert Maurer takes the kaizen principal and applies it to everyday life. As the title suggests, Maurer recommends focusing your energy on taking small steps towards your goals instead of rushing and attempting to accomplish them in one big bite.

This might seem counterintuitive for the ADHD brain that can find it boring without going “all in” on a New Year’s resolution. But total immersion is hard to sustain and often leads to failure. We’ve all done it. Resolve to exercise 6 days a week. And we do, for the first week or so. But by the end of January, other parts of our lives have gotten in the way, and our “perfect record” is filled with holes. And by February we are discouraged and it’s easier to “forget” our goal than to keep failing at it.

Small Goals: Big Accomplishments

Maurer, a Kaizen expert, suggests setting small goals for yourself. Even large goals, like a doctoral thesis, can be broken down into a series of tiny steps that you take each and every day. Take piano, for example. Instead of trying to learn a whole piece of music on the first sitting, many musicians break down a new composition into a series of measures or bars. They work on these discrete units of music until they nail them. Only then do they move onto putting them all together. If you practice only one measure a day, you can still quickly learn an entire piece. But try to learn the whole thing in the first sitting and you’ll tire, your focus will lag, and discouragement can quickly follow.

Make Only One New Year’s Resolution

So instead of focusing on the big picture, try setting one or two small, achievable goals for yourself each day. Let yourself enjoy how great it feels to get those steps accomplished every day. How would the New Year look different to you if you just made one New Year’s resolution for yourself?

“I commit to doing one thing every day to achieving my intended purpose.”

There’s been so much attention the past few  days about whether Ritalin is effective for treating ADHD, you may have missed the news that fidgeting can help manage ADHD.  That’s right, fidgeting actually helps kids with ADHD stay alert.  Time Magazine reported last week that a new University of Central Florida study shows that ADHD kids move around in order to help them stay focused.  In fact kids with ADHD may actually learn better when they are fidgeting!

Teachers in Minnesota and Wisconsin have been experimenting with flexible desks that allow children the option to either stand or sit at them.  The New York Times reported that researchers from the University of Minnesota have been studying the impact of these flexible desks on the academic outcomes of children using them.

Finally, a study published in the journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology shows that doodling actually improves your ability to remember details, rather than indicating your mind is wandering.

Here at Edge, we know that fidgeting can be used successfully to help manage ADHD symptoms.  In 2005 our Executive Director, Sarah Wright, co-authored, Fidget to Focus:  Outwit Your Boredom: Sensory Strategies for Living with ADD.  Next month we’ll tell you more about this book that started it all! In the meantime, take a look at these reports – perhaps they’ll give you ideas of things to do at school or work to improve your focus.  An ADHD coach can also help you discover which strategies work best for you.

Did you already know that fidgeting was a way that helped you focus?  Tell us about it.  We’d love hearing from you about how you keep your edge!