As a parent of two children with ADHD, I need all the help and strategies I can get to help my kids be successful. This book was great for me as a parent. ADD is described in the book as having a race car brain with bicycle brakes. I told my kids this and we all agreed it is an accurate, positive description. ADHD runs in the family so for our little family of four we could potentially have four race car brains inhabiting our home and leaving tracks of debris all over the house. Welcome to my chaotic super creative life.
One of the things I am going to do this year is educate the teachers of my children better and work on improving their 504 plans. This book contains a section that you can photocopy especially for the teacher that gives positive, instructions for helping your child be successful. I am totally photocopying this section.
If you know any kids with ADD/ADHD most of them believe they are stupid, lazy, disorganized, angry, no one likes them, etc... It is always negative feedback from their teachers, bus drivers and their own opinion in many cases is negative. My biggest goal is to be positive this year, as it is so easy to fall into negativity and as a teacher and a parent negativity really hurts kids. This book does an excellent job of taking a so called negative trait and showing the reader the opposite positive trait that any parent would be proud of. So instead of saying your child is stubborn use the positive trait, persistent instead. The authors takes about 10 traits and explains to the reader the positive and negative aspects of each component. Very helpful.
What I didn't like about the book is that the authors talk about the Kolbe model and suggest you and your child as well as their teacher take an online test to determine your preference but what they don't tell you is that it costs fifty dollars. What I find frustrating is that these tests cost to much for the average person and I wonder why they can't be priced more reasonably or even offered for free. Most parents who have kids with ADD/ADHD need help now and paying a lot of money isn't always the best option.
What I have found to help me is having my kids see a child psychologist once a week as well as reading blogs, the ADDitude magazine and books. Here are a few websites I would suggest:
www.additudemag.com
www.letsgetfittofocus.com
Blogs I like:
A Mom's View of ADHD
Life in our ADHD family
I really love my kids and my crazy ADD life.
My older son has ADHD so I know exactly where you're coming from. I have worked very closely with his teachers and he has done pretty well. He's in the third grade now. One thing I had to stop was the counseling because I can't afford it when his medicine costs me over $50 a month. That is with insurance! I'm hoping to get him back to seeing her again soon. It seems to help more if they receive some kind of counseling. I am bookmarking those sites and will definitely check them out. Thanks for sharing!
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