Kids And Coping With ADHD

What a day it's been! I had to go to hospital for an endescopy and was really panicking about it. I'm such a baby when it comes to things like that, foreign objects have no place in my mouth in my opinion so throat spray was out of the question and needles terrify me. I knew I would probably end up being sedated so sorted out a babysitter for Kyle and got myself ready to go.

Of course, I forgot how bad Kyle can be without meds, which resulted in me not being able to leave him with the babysitter after all.

Instead he had to come with us to hospital, and we all know how boring hospitals can be right? Well, my fiance and Kyle stayed in the kids waiting room whilst I went to the endescopy unit. Unfortunately a 2.45pm appointment (or any appointment for that matter) just doesn't happen on time.

I'd psyched myself up ready for the sedation but after an hour of waiting I just knew there was no way on earth I could go for that option and hope that my fiance, Hugh, would still be sane by the time I was ready to go home.

What happened? I got brave and managed with the throat spray! I never imagined I would, and now I have a new-found faith in myself. I AM much stronger than I thought I was. Woohoo!!

I'm glad I managed it cos by the time I eventually got out of there Kyle was bored out of his brain and Hugh was tearing at his own hair LOL, luckily enough he was still sane ;)

Anna

This morning we've been working on memory and concentration. An easy way to do that was to get Kyle involved in this post. I asked him to list his top 5 educational programs, his top 5 cartoons and his top 5 passtimes, here's what he came up with:

Top 5 Educational TV Programs
These are all available daily on Discovery Kids

1) Mystery Hunters
2) Croc Files
3) Invention SOS
4) Gross
5) Zoinks How It's Made

Top 5 Cartoons
Top 4 available daily on Nicktoons, number 5 available daily on Boomerang

1) Spongebob Squarepants
2) Fairly Odd Parents
3) Jimmy Neutron
4) Rugrats
5) Tom and Jerry

Top 5 Passtimes

1) Playing Console Games
2) Going To The Beach In ANY Weather
3) Going To The Park
4) Investigating The How And Why Of EVERYTHING
5) Exploring Everywhere

Not a bad little list, although I'm not too keen on his top passtime LOL.

Anna

Just sitting here and thinking over the things I've learned from dealing with ADHD on a daily basis. One of the most important lessons was all about routines. Now if you have any ADHD experience at all you will know that routines can help immensely, but you will also know that the person needing the routines absolutely hates rules! Doesn't exactly make it easier huh? For us, with Kyle being home-educated, it seems to be easier to handle routines than when he was in mainstream education.

At school there were always rigid rules to follow along with the routines, which didn't bode well for Kyle. In fact he totally hated it and played up constantly which is one of the main reasons we took him out of mainstream school. We try not to make too many strict rules, but instead concentrate on sticking with the routines. It has definitely helped us lots.

Looking back on the 2 years (or is it 3? I've lost count!) of educating him at home I can see that he has been having much more fun than he ever did before. Ok, so he still doesn't write, but I'm sure he could if he wanted to. He can write on the pc if he has to, but there's no way on earth he'll even contemplate holding a pen.

When he left school he was a year behind his classmates in reading, yet now he reads at least as well as his 16 year old brother, and almost as well as myself! He's now started learning French. His nan moved to France this year and he's already been there a couple of times with her, both before she moved and for the Easter holidays after she had moved.

One of our routines includes the games console. He gets x amount of time on it, depending on which day it is. The rule there is he now has to play the games using the French language and/or the French subtitle options. It's working too. I know because he keeps speaking to me with French comments and accents hahahaha.

Another of our routines includes TV. He gets to watch tv for x amount of time, depending on days again, but the rule is that half of that time has to be spent on educational programs.

We do exactly the same with the pc. However much time he spends on it is divided between playing games and learning. What he doesn't realize is that most of his time on the pc is actually about him learning as he has to search for sites himself when he wants to play games, and most of the games he plays have some element of education in them.

So there you have it, just some of our routines: games consoles, tv and pc. All working together they make sure he has fun and gets educated in various ways. Of course, the home education consists of tons more than just that, but they are the things we start our day with (not neccessarily in that order) as soon as breakfast is over and the others are in school. Will post more about that next time.

Anna
32 Ways To Keep Kids Occupied

How to Avoid Tantrums in Kids of All Ages
By Anna-Marie Stewart

Let’s face it, kids will be kids and they can’t possibly always be happy with every single decision that is made for them. Even from a very young age a child realizes that he/she is, in fact, a REAL person, with feelings, thoughts and emotions. This often leads to them wanting to do things their own way, making their own choices, or just not wanting to do as they’re told.

Here’s a scenario: your child is sitting happily playing with building bricks, or maybe playing on a games console, totally engulfed in his or her own world, and it’s time for dinner. You ask your child to drop what they’re doing there and then, to tidy up quickly, to leave their ‘happy place’ and come eat. Your child refuses to do as asked, wondering within why on earth you’re being mean and spoiling their fun.

You, on the other hand may think the child is being naughty or obstinate. You remove the toys/games abruptly and the volcano erupts! Your child is throwing a full-blown tantrum!

Now, let’s re-create the scenario: As before, your child is sitting happily playing and you’re about to start making dinner. You give the child fair warning that playtime will be ending soon, in say 5-10 minutes, and that they will then need to put their things away so that they can help you make dinner.

Stick to your time-frame and get the things put away (help if you’re needed), and involve your child in the dinner-making. Depending on your child’s age this could be anything from wiping the table to boiling potatoes or even carving the meat. (Ok, so we may not have huge set meals every day, but you get the idea).

Wow! You just avoided a MAJOR tantrum! Your child is involved and happy, you are happy and non-stressed! Well Done You!

You can do this sort of thing with just about any scenario. Turn it around from something negative i.e. removing child from ‘happy place’ and replacing in ‘upset place’, to moving child from one happy place to another. You just have to make sure that your child knows beforehand that something other than what they are doing at the moment will soon be happening.

Let your child get involved and make sure you tell him/her how much you appreciate their help and co-operation. This way you will avoid the horrid confusion that ultimately leads to those dreadful tantrums.
===============Resource Box===========
Discover how a mom with four unruly kids avoided a
breakdown with this surprise discovery! 12-page guide
reveals 32 ways to keep your kids occupied, happy
and focused. It’s a parent’s dream come true!
http://annamarketing.com/FTS/32Ways.htm
-------------------------------------------------
This article is available for reprint in your opt-in ezine, web site or ebook. You MUST agree not to make any changes to the article and the RESOURCE BOX MUST be included. (c) 2006 AnnaMarketing.com. All Rights Reserved

And yet another lovely day is drawing to an end. It's bedtime for the kids here, and they've been out all day again so both Kyle and Courtney should sleep extremely well. Especially as my friend brought 5 of her 6 kids up to play with them.

Of course, the older ones were out and about in town. Mostly window shopping with 'wishlists' as long as your arm by the time they got back hahahaha.

The days can get long at times, especially for Kyle as he loses interest in so many things so quickly. It was great to have my friends kids here today though, really helped him having tons of things to think about to stop him getting bored.

He doesn't usually mingle too well with 'groups' but we've hung around almost daily with Marian and her kids for the past 2 years and he finally seems to be getting the hang of it :)

Today we took a leaf out of my own book (quite literally from this one: 32 Ways To Keep The Kids Occupied) and organised a 'Treasure Hunt' which was fun for all of us and actually kept us all happy and busy for a while.

We didn't really do much else, but we let them play ball, and splash about in the pool a bit. Oh yeah, and they ran around the garden like a bunch of madmen for a while hahahahaha. I'll be willing to bet it's not just my own kids who are tired tonight ;~)

Took a couple of pics again, this time when they were being Ninjas and Swordsmen etc. Amazing imaginations these kids have, they didn't even have any 'weapons' or anything to play with. Quite thankfully too, as rough as they played I can imagine with anything in their hands they could have possibly done each other some damage LOL.

Here's Kyle, Simon and Adam playing Ninjas. Look at their stances! Something tells me they watch too much tv or play too many console games LOL.

How do you get kids to be quite on hot, sunny days? That's right, feed em ice lollies :~D

Oh yeah, and it works just as well on grown ups too :~D

I do have a few more good pics of the boys playing, but I need to edit them for size etc before I can upload them to the blog. Will see if I can get round to doing that some day soon. Right now I'm off to sit with a well-deserved cuppa!

Anna

We've certainly been blessed with the weather again so far this year. Almost even better than last year, which is just totally amazing as we rarely see a lot of hot sunny days where we live. We definitely try our best to make the most of it though, because there's no telling how long it's going to last. We grill out in the back garden lots, eat tons of salads, use the gazebos when the kids need shade, and play around in the paddling pool if it warms up enough ;)

We did have the pool in the front garden at first, but it totally wrecked the lawn so we put it in the back garden. Unfortunately the back is extremely uneven, so it didn't quite work as well as planned, and ended up a tad lop-sided LOL.

The only non-fun part about the heat is that Kyle tends to get over-heated and hot and bothered, so we have to constantly think up new ways to combat that. Usually it has to do with water, and this year we made up a new 'game': We hang the hosepipe on the washing line and set it to shower! hahaha, the kids LOVE running through the water whenever it gets too hot for them, and the grass gets a greatly needed drink at the same time ;~)

We took a few pics in the back garden today of Kyle and his puppy Sherbert (she's a 6 month old crossbreed, Alsatian and Rottweiler and totally dippy LOL) enjoying the weather. Sherbert even joined Kyle in the pool which was just hilarious for us onlookers :~D


Here's Kyle after running through the water from the hosepipe for the first time today. I'm guessing by the look in his face that it was a tad cold LOL

In this picture Kyle is finally warming up again after being totally soaked, and as you can probably tell by the huge grin he's feeling great!

Sherbert had just been for a walk with Christophers friends and came back hot and botherered but ran to say Hi to Kyle as soon as she got home. These two are just about inseparable.

This final pic is of Sherberts first time ever in the pool. As you can see, I wasn't lying about it being a bit lop-sided hahahahaha

Wel, that's it for this time. Kyle is now in bed and hopefully dreaming of all the fun he's had today. He was pretty worn out so hopefully he'll sleep past 6am in the morning ;)

Until next time....

Anna

It's been a while since I last posted, mainly due to me being unwell, but also as I've been extremely busy at home. Kyle has had a tough year, and with that it's been rubbing off on the rest of the family.

He was doing good on Ritalin, it seemed to be helping him concentrate more, but it never lasted more than a couple of hours. He decided he wanted to come off the Ritalin as in his words 'it doesn't last long enough', and he wanted to see what it would be like to not use it. His choice, by all means, so that's what happened. He came off Ritalin and went back to being the way he was before (as outlined in my booklet My Star Kyle which you can find links to here on my blog).

He's now decided that when we go to see the specialist next time he's going to ask if he can re-try Ritalin, or maybe something different. Boy is he grown up for his 9 years or what??

I've said all along that it will always be his choice which route we take, as long as it makes things better for him and he feels happier within himself, then I'm happy too.

In the meantime we'll keep trying our hardest (both of us) to concentrate on his home education as much as we can without making it too boring and too much hard work. Luckily it's summer again and we have lots of nice days so we can go out and 'do learning the fun way without pens and paper' as he says ;)

Until next time, feel free to check out my latest ebook which is perfect for the summer holidays when kids tend to get bored:

32 Ways To Keep The Kids Occupied http://annamarketing.com/FTS/32Ways.htm

Will post again soon
Anna