1000 best tips for ADHD Expert answers and bright advice to help you and your child

Introduction

How do I get my child to do his homework? How can I make her brush her teeth without arguing with me every night? What do I do when he lies about the same thing over and over? Why doesn't punishment seem to make any difference? 1000 Best Tips for ADHD is your go-to guide for the challenges your child presents. In this book, you will find the answers to these problems and most other situations you face raising a child with ADHD.

Raising a child with ADHD is tough, really tough. When faced with a problem or impossibly frustrating situation, you want answers, and you want them fast. Here they are! Quick, easy to read, and easy to put into action, 1000 Best Tips for ADHD lets you look up specific answers to the exact problems you are facing and find ways to implement immediate solutions. Because no two children with ADHD are alike, you will not find the usual one-solution-fits-all approach in this book. Instead, you will find a multitude of options so that you can find the one that works best for your child.

And because, as a parent of a child with ADHD, you know that what worked today may not work tomorrow, 1000 Best Tips for ADHD gives you many different ways to solve each problem so that when one solution stops working, you will turn back to this book and find dozens of other options.

As a child psychologist specializing in ADHD for more than twenty years, I know exactly what parents are facing every day. Your child has numerous behaviors that are challenging for both you and for her. No two days are alike. Life with an ADHD child is consistently inconsistent, predictably unpredictable. Simply getting through the ordinary tasks of the day can be a relentless challenge that never seems to get easier. 1000 Best Tips for ADHD will give you the tools you need to make the days go smoother so you and your child stop the battles over behavior and can have the happier, emotionally rewarding relationship you both deserve.

How to Use This Book

1000 Best Tips for ADHD is a how-to manual that is easy to use. It does not require you to read it cover to cover. You can look in the table of contents to find the problem you are trying to manage, turn to the chapter, and find many different solutions. No one tip is better than another. Read each solution, select one you think might work, and give it a try.

Keep a daily log of how it went so you can keep track of the ones that worked and those that did not. If the solution works, keep doing it until it is no longer effective. ADHD children change rapidly, and a solution that works for several weeks or months may lose its effectiveness and require you to come up with a new one. This is not a problem! I know that at some point, whatever solution you initially pick might wear off, so I have given you many other possible solutions. Go back to the chapter, find another solution, and give it a try. It's that simple.

1000 Best Tips for ADHD gives you the many hundreds of solutions I have used in my twenty-plus years in private practice working with families living with ADHD. Each of the thousand tips has been tested and verified to work by the hundreds of families I have helped in my practice. These are the strategies I would suggest to you if you brought your child to my office. We would identify the problem your child is having, and I would suggest the one solution I thought would be most successful. I would ask you and your family to try it for one week while keeping a daily journal of who, where, what, when, why, and how you used the tip.

I would go over the journal with you, and together we would determine if the solution was a success. We would need to make sure, however, that you used it in the proper way and that you did so consistently, every day, and did not change it in any way. Too often parents will tell me "It didn't work!" Despite their promises that they did it perfectly, when we really dissect what they did, the failure is not due to the tip itself, but rather that the parents did not use the strategy properly.

Before you conclude that the solution you tried was ineffective, imagine you are sitting with me in my office and we are analyzing how skillful you were in using it. We do this because I know without a doubt that every solution I have given you in this book works. I also know it is all too easy for parents to blame the solution and hope for a different one that will be easier and take less time and effort to implement. I know you will think this applies to other parents and not to you, but trust me, it applies to all parents. No one wants to admit that a child's behavior problems have anything to do with the parenting. I do not want parents to think about blame, but for children to behave better, parents need to understand that how they parent does affect their child's behavior. Parents do not cause ADHD, but they can make it better or worse.

If you know without a doubt that you tried the tip with near perfection, and it did not result in a positive change, then go ahead and feel confident in trying another one.

The tips are written in no particular order, so use your intuition about your child to feel what might work best. If you work full-time, do not get home until 7:00 p.m., and have three kids to feed, help with homework, bathe, and get ready for bed, then do not pick a solution that involves you having an hour of playtime each night with your child as his reward for a good day at school. Be realistic about what you can and cannot do, and pick solutions that fit your life. This is the beauty of 1000 Best Tips for ADHD: one size definitely does not fit all. You can pick and choose what fits for you and your child.

How Do I Tell If a Tip Is Working?

The most important way to tell if a tip is working is to define what to expect. Too many parents expect a cure, and if not a cure, then at least for the behavior to stop. If the child is not cured or does not stop the problematic behavior, parents conclude that the solution did not work and they go on an endless search for the magic pill or magic technique that will "work."

Many parents' expectations are too high for the reality of ADHD. Perhaps it is because they have been sold the dream by the pharmaceutical advertisements of the smiling mommy next to her child brimming with pride, holding his A+ homework. Parents are told that medication is "effective" for 80 percent of the children who take it, yet they are not told what "effective" means. Parents assume "effective" means "it works" just like other medicines: take a pill, feel better, problem over.

Not so with ADHD. Nothing cures ADHD. Children who have ADHD will have symptoms, at a minimum, through their childhood years, and most likely through adolescence. It is not going away, and no pill will cure it. Nor will any psychological technique, tool, or tip you use.

Expectations for what is effective and what works for ADHD have to be brought in line with the reality of the disorder. The harsh reality is that it is not curable. Nothing you do is going to stop it. But everything you do can manage it. Your goal is to use the tips in this book to manage the symptoms. If a tip helps manage ADHD symptoms, it is effective. If you stop using the tip, chances are the symptom will worsen.

The goal with ADHD is to decrease how often, how intense, how long, and how disruptive the symptoms are. If you use a tip and the problem happens less often, is less severe, and causes fewer negative consequences, then that tip is effective. Over the years--yes, years--the problem will likely go away as your child builds skills of her own, but we are talking years, not weeks or months.

Parents who understand that their children's ADHD is here to stay and who focus on learning how to live with the disorder, rather than fighting it, have a far easier time of it. They focus on making life as smooth as possible, given the presence of ADHD in their lives. They do not live in frustration and disappointment. They embrace their children and use various tips to live with ADHD.

The more you know about ADHD, the easier it is to accept the presence of this uninvited disorder into your life. A solid understanding of ADHD, what it is, what it isn't, what other disorders coexist with it, as well as how to get an evaluation, what medication can and cannot do, and much more can be found in The ADD & ADHD Answer Book: Professional Questions to 275 of the Top Questions Parents Ask. With greater knowledge about the disorder, you will be in a better position to understand the why and the how of the tips presented in this book.

An understanding of a token economy/point system will enhance your ability to use many of the tips in this book. Throughout the book, you will see that I recommend the use of points to reward your child for cooperation. A token economy is a system where your child earns a fixed number of points for each task completed. You may also hear it referred to as a behavior chart or point system. While a behavior chart may include a few behaviors, a token economy is a more comprehensive plan where your child earns points or tokens, such as poker chips, for almost every behavior required of him. Getting out of bed, getting dressed, brushing teeth, eating breakfast, and so on, including the remainder of tasks he engages in from the time he wakes up to the time he goes to bed, are rewarded with points or tokens. The points or tokens are exchanged for privileges, such as watching television or having a sleepover; favorite foods such as pizza or ice cream sundaes; and prizes such as stickers, toys, clothes, games, and countless other desirable items. ADHD children with only a few behavior problems will do well with a simple behavior chart targeting the three to four behaviors they struggle with. Those with a more severe form of ADHD will do better with a token economy that targets their activities, tasks, and behaviors throughout the day and night.

Excerpted from 1000 Best Tips for ADHD: Expert Answers and Bright Advice to Help You and Your Child by Susan Ashley All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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