According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), 5 percent of children in the United States suffer from ADHD.
If you are the parent of a child who was diagnosed with ADHD, or you believe that your child may have it, there are a few facts on this condition that you should know.
It Takes More Than Medication to Treat ADHD
In this article we are not going to touch upon the controversies and arguments associated with adolescent ADHD and medication – that will be saved for a different article. Medication can be helpful in treatment of ADHD, but parents should understand that their child also can benefit from counseling and emotional support from family, teachers, and qualified professionals.
Not All Over Active Children Have ADHD
Just because a child is hyper, it does not mean that they have ADHD. They could just have an exuberant personality. It would take a trained professional to determine whether or not your child is suffering from this condition.
Children With ADHD Don’t Have Trouble Paying Attention
Many people think that children with ADHD cannot focus on anything. This is not true. If you put a puzzle in front of a child or let them play a video game, they can focus just fine. It is the things that they don’t find inherently interesting that they have difficulty paying attention to.
Not All ADHD Cases Are the Same
ADHD is not as straightforward as you may think. Some children with ADHD are interested and engaged in group learning sessions, but when they are on their own, they cannot seem to stay focused. Other children can do their work on their own, but cannot focus during group work in class.
Intelligence Has Nothing to Do With ADHD
Just because your child has ADHD, it does not mean that he or she is not intelligent. There have been children who have grown up to be Harvard professors who suffer from this condition.
ADHD is Linked To Short-Term Memory Problems
Many children with ADHD can remember every detail about last Christmas, but they cannot remember what they had for dinner the night before. This is not uncommon.
ADHD Can Cause Sleep Problems
It is not uncommon for children with ADHD to have trouble sleeping. This is something that the doctor can help with.
ADHD Can Appear Differently
Your child may have thrived in kindergarten and then struggle in the first grade due to ADHD. When they are study something interesting, the symptoms can seem non-existent. This can change when they start learning something uninteresting. This is common with ADHD.
More about Turning Winds Academic Institute – At Turning Winds, transforming lives is our passion. We are crisis workers, interventionists, and constantly aware of how fragile life is. And yet, because of what we have seen, we are also believers–believers in the reality that people can conquer anything, when they have something worth fighting for.
Parents of teens in crisis often come to us in a state of despair and hopelessness, desperately trying to make sense of the road they are travelling. But once they see how we work and discover what we’ve accomplished, they gain a renewed sense of optimism, and given new hope for the future of their child.
We offer a proven therapeutic experience called Adventure Therapy. The power behind this model is its ‘hands-on’ approach, which forces teens to disengage from the distractions which have overrun their lives. Adventure Therapy places the teen in a wilderness type setting, void of electronics, where they are given daily assignments to fulfill, and have to participate with the group in order to accomplish the tasks necessary to move forward. It is a powerful, revealing experience that reconnects the teen to a larger sense of purpose and identity.
