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Using a sample size of 12,118 students interviewed, here's the picture of teenagers in America today:
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"The only factor that was linked with a lower risk factor across the board was a close-knit family, the study found."
A CALL FOR FATHERS Dads, please let me encourage you to change some things in your life. Another recent University study found that the average father in America spends less than sixty seconds per day in conversations with his children! The actual number was 47 seconds per day. Where is the investment in the life of the child? In our work? Our paycheck? What's with us men? Have we as fathers come to think that our kids really just need our money? Our children need us to look them in the eyes and talk with them. We need to actually be involved in the lives of our children and teens. We need to actively raise them, teach them, and shape their character and morals and values. Parenting is a "hands on" activity. So, spend time with your kids. Be available for your kids. Make your kids a major priority in your life. Protect your family. Be involved in your family.
How to be successful My wife and I had home schooled our children for the past ten years. This year, however, they are both enrolled in a small private school through our church. This school requires a lot of parental involvement, and as a result I'm teaching a class to junior high and high school students three days each week. Two years ago I began teaching at this school. At that time I taught an English class where we began the year studying the theme of "Success," or rather "What Is Success?" It has made me much more aware of the concept of "Success." As a parent, how are you defining "success" for your children? As the parent of a child with ADD ADHD, have you changed the definition of "success" for your ADD child? How do you define "success" for yourself as a parent? How have your ADD ADHD children come to define "success" for themselves? Our definition of success is "THE PROGRESSIVE REALIZATION OF MORAL, VIRTUOUS, OR GODLY GOALS" Each of these questions is important for us to think through. Many of us, kids included, only define success in terms of what we have, or what we have accomplished so far in life. Some define success in terms of how society and culture define it, while others have chosen to define "success" through the eyes of God, as best as they can know it. As for me, I define "success" as "the progressive realization of moral, virtuous, or Godly goals." As I look at my kids and rate their levels of success, or rate myself as their parent, I want to keep in mind what, or rather who, my kids are becoming, rather than what they have accomplished in the past. As long as I can see my kids on a path toward becoming productive and honorable adults, then I will feel successful as a parent.
RELAX A BIT I want to encourage each of you to take a long term view in regards to your role as parents. I have received many emails from parents of 4, 5, and 6 year old kids who are having trouble with attention span, or coloring within the lines, or reading, or whatever. Please relax. Focus on getting your child onto a road that will lead them to be productive as adults. Teach your children how to be good fathers and mothers to their own children in the future. Teach your kids how to love and serve other people. These are the major lessons. See life in the context of eternity, and your definition of success will change radically, both for your children and yourself.
Building Your Child's Self-Esteem If we are to define self-esteem as "having feelings of worth or value," then people with adequate levels of self-esteem should display a sense of realistic confidence in their abilities and performance. People with low levels of self-esteem would be expected to display feelings of inadequacy, a fear of failure, a sense of being unworthy, and perhaps depression. According to researchers, most children enter school with a good sense of self-esteem (at least as defined by psychologists) and yet leave high school with a poor sense of self-esteem. What happens in between?
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Challenges for Our Children… It is estimated that 25-35% of children have Learning Disabilities. At least 5% have Attention Disorders. All too many times during the course of their academic careers these children are labeled by teachers (or parents) as being "lazy," or "stupid." Remarks of this type are typically interpreted by the child as, "You're no good," and the self-esteem levels drop. At least 50% of children will experience the divorce of their parents prior to turning 18 years old. Most children, for whatever reasons too complicated to go into here, will tend to place at least a portion of the blame for the parent's divorce on themselves. Since the parents are typically placed on a pedestal in the eyes of the child, the blame for the divorce cannot be placed on the parents and must be placed elsewhere, most commonly on themselves. This also significantly impacts children's self-esteem levels. There are other important challenges to maintaining reasonable self-esteem, such as merely being "average" in a world that worships only the good looking, the good athletes, and the well-to-do. |
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Too Much Can Be Bad For You… Let me say here and now that inappropriately high levels of self-esteem may be worse that low levels. Levels of self-esteem that are too high lead kids to believe that they are more important than anyone else, and that they should never be frustrated by work or challenges in life. It leads young people to believe that they should always have their way. Inflated levels of self-esteem ultimately discourages children and teens from learning how to work hard, and may well lead into criminal behavior (criminals tend to have high levels of self-esteem, not low levels). Inflated levels of self-esteem also are directly at odds with the development of one's spirituality and relationship with God. After all, who needs to develop a relationship with God when he believes that what he wants is more important than what God wants? The ultimate out come of the self-esteem movement is seen in the New Age doctrine that you are, in fact, God. Yes you. The guy who can’t balance his check book or keep his car fixed. You are God? So they tell us. People are cheated in every important aspect of their lives, emotionally, socially, and spiritually, when their sense of self-esteem is over-inflated. So how can we instill appropriate levels of self-esteem in our children? Briefly, here are five key thoughts . . . First, change the way that you look at this area of life from "self-esteem" to "self-confidence." There is a difference as wide as the sea. To "esteem" someone, including one's self, involves feelings of "reverence" or "awe" or "honor" or "glory." Words have meaning. Let's not get carried away with trying to make our kids feel good about themselves by starting to ascribe to them positions of honor normally reserved for God, and perhaps for Presidents and Kings. The majority of our society's problems are caused by people thinking that they are as important or as powerful as God, or at least that they are more important than anyone else in the world. This is not something that we really want to encourage in our children, or in ourselves. Instead we do want to encourage self-confidence. This attribute becomes especially powerful and beautiful when paired with the virtue of self-control. Raise your children to have these two character traits, and you will have wonderful and successful children, ADD/LD or not. Second…
Encouragement comes when you focus on your child's assets and strengths in order to build his/her self-confidence. See the positive. Even failures can be outstanding learning experiences. Encouragement sounds like this, "I like the way that you did that," or "I know that you can do it," or, "It looks like you worked very hard at that." Encouragement is NOT giving compliments for work poorly done, but under those circumstances it IS inspiring your child to work harder and do better. "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up, according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." -St. Paul (Eph. 4:29) Ultimately self-confidence comes from having accomplished things worth being proud of. Reserve Praise for things well done. Where Encouragement is given for effort, Praise is given for accomplishment. Just say, "That's a good start, keep at it," when the work is not yet worthy of praise. Accept your child for who he/she is. If you expected that your baby would grow into an Olympic athlete with an IQ of 148, and instead he/she is "average" then you might be very disappointed as a parent (most children are "average," which is why they call it "average"). Disappointment is often turned into anger, or at least frustration. If your child cannot live up to your dreams for him or her (and why should they?) then please be careful of your emotions. If you are not careful, your own dreams and expectations for your child will become a wedge between you and your child. Please never make your love, encouragement, or acceptance, dependent on their performance or behavior. Teach Responsibility to your children. Let them try things and let them fail once in a while. Don't keep bailing them out. Victory only tastes sweet if we taste the bitterness of failure once in a while. Trust me, the dog's not going to starve if he misses a meal or two. The newspaper won't come to publish a story on your family if your child fails to make his bed once in a while. Just use these occasions to remind your child that if his dog is going to ever eat again, he needs to get out there and feed it (assuming that's your child's job). Remind your child that he or she is an important member of your home and that he needs to be responsible with doing his chores. Make the consequences for not being responsible fit the crime. And of course be sure to reward/praise your child when he does act responsibly. Behavior that is rewarded tends to reoccur, and behavior that is ignored tends to go away -- so always reward/praise responsible behaviors. Mineral Deficiencies and Behavior David, from England, wrote: >>>I am following your work with great interest as I am trying to get more information about the subject of ADD / ADHD for a friend of mine who was put in charge of such a child at school. She was given no training for this work nor was she given any backup. She was relieved to find that she was not the only one with this problem! >>>Although the child has finally been moved to another specialized school, it is likely that she will meet the problem again and so I am forwarding any relevant information to her that I can find. >>>Best regards, and carry on the good work, David
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From "Sunday Times", July 1997 London, UK Zinc diet reduces violence in youths -- Steve Connor, Science Correspondent "Scientists have discovered a link between violent behaviour and a chemical imbalance in the body that can be treated by diet. It raises the possibility of treating antisocial individuals with special nutrition. Studies carried out on 135 males aged between 3 and 20 with a history of violence have found that such individuals are much more likely to have high levels of copper and low levels of zinc compared with non-violent people. Scientists believe such minerals influence behaviour because the body uses them to make chemical transmitters in the brain." The article goes on to refer to the work of Dr. William Walsh of the Health Research Institute in Naperville, Illinois. Further, "preliminary experiments have shown that altering the diet of violent males can improve their behaviour". "It usually takes two to three months to overcome the copper-zinc imbalance." "Copper and zinc tend to be concentrated in the hippocampus of the brain and the hippocampus is known to be associated with stress control". "Zinc deficiencies in juvenile offenders were also found in an unpublished study in Britain, said Dr. Neil Ward, a senior lecturer in analytical chemistry at Surrey University. "We think that it is a direct result of exposure to heavy metal toxins such as cadmium and lead which prevent the absorption of zinc. The people we studied had a poor diet with excessive amounts of sugar and alcohol, which is also known to reduce zinc absorption," Ward said." "Stephen Schoenthaler, a leading authority at California State Institute on the role of diet in criminal behaviour, said Walsh's conclusions were plausible. "He is more right than wrong...""
02/August/1997 "Sunday Telegraph", London, U.K. Test Offers Cure for Violent Children by Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent (With reference to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder information) CHILDREN who are aggressive, violent and disruptive at home and school are showing marked improvements after taking a simple £11 laboratory test that can show they are suffering from a chemical imbalance. The urine test detects kryptopyrrole, a by-product of pyroluria, which means the body is depleted of zinc and vitamin B6. These are needed to control mood and behaviour. By identifying the condition, children are able to be given supplements to correct the metabolic imbalance. The Hyperactive Children's Support Group, based in Chichester, is pressing for wider use of the test because it fears disruptive children are being written off as "incurably bad". Sally Bunday, founder of the group, said: "Some of these children are on their last chance at school or have been expelled, or have already been in trouble with the police. All have shown some improvement and in a few cases it has been a remarkable improvement." The test is carried out at the Bio Lab Medical Unit in London. Based on studies carried out in Victoria, Canada, by Dr Abraham Hoffer, a psychiatrist and specialist in schizophrenia, it is then decided what level of supplements to give the child. Tommy Giovannelli, now aged 10, had been expelled from one school by six and was being threatened with a second expulsion at eight. His father, Nick, said Tommy was unable to concentrate, would throw tantrums for no apparent reason and would smash objects in the classroom. It was by chance that Mr. Giovannelli heard about the hyperactive children's group and from them learned of the test. Tommy was found to have zinc levels 55 per cent below normal. Within weeks of giving him supplements and removing all additives from his diet, his behaviour had changed beyond recognition. At Baverstock School in Birmingham, six children have now been given the test. Barbara Parkes, a specialist in teaching dyslexics, said: "I am convinced that the behaviour of large numbers of young offenders is due to poor diet." Andrew, a pupil a Baverstock School, could not concentrate, would beat people up and would talk manically throughout lessons. When the test result came back it showed he had a very high imbalance. Now Andrew has shown a dramatic improvement. "He even asked for extra work for the school holidays," Mrs Parkes said."
OUR COMMENTS ON THE ARTICLES About two years ago I ran hair sample tests on 10 ADD kids to see what I'd find. According to the norms of the lab that did the testing, none of the kids were within the normal ranges. However, none of the kids were alike. Some were high in heavy metals, some were not. Some were low in certain minerals, some were not. I could not discern patterns. However, there was one thing that did stick out. Every child whose parents smoked was very high in Cadmium (a toxic heavy metal) levels. Is this a cause for alarm? I have no idea. But it was interesting to note, and I did ask the parents to stop smoking. Someday when I'm rich and don't have to work for a living, I will take about 100 ADD ADHD kids and get hair samples done and see what we get. Maybe someone out there has already done it?
As time goes on I am becoming more and convinced that nutritional supplements can play a significant role in the treatment of ADD ADHD and other behavior disorders.
We have seen the ATTEND and EXTRESS products make significant contributions to the lives of children with ADHD and ADD. They are products that you should strongly consider.
Lesson Ten: Research, Research, and more Reserach |
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Disclaimer: The information on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder presented here in the ADD Information Library is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to replace the expert and professional advice of your physician, psychologist, or therapist. Always seek help from qualified professionals in the field of attention deficit disorder. Always consult your physician.
