Lately I’ve been widening my focus on healing my son. In the past several years we have done extensive work using nutrition, behavioural therapies, and body work (chiropractic, osteopathic, kinesiology etc)
Not everything we’ve tried has been a total success but overall most things have shown improvements – even if in a small way. The change in his health, and behaviour have been awesome and though we still are progressing through, we can say he is a completely different child to when we first started on this path.
Anyway – I’m digressing about what I want to say!
Is it worth it to use ADHD meds? A study was done that followed pre-school children over a six year period has reported to have shown that a whopping 160 out of 180 children continued to meet the criteria for moderate to severe ADHD.
What this is saying is that ADHD meds such as ritalin or adderall DO NOT alter the long term outcomes.
There has been a lot of investigation into the causes of ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome. It was a commonly held belief that it was inherited, or that a certain gene was responsible. Despite years of testing, there is no gene that has been found to be responsible for autism, nor ADHD.
It is now being understood that there are a combination of factors that play the part of causation – similar to the scenario of ’the perfect ‘storm’.
These factors include:
- a physical pre-disposition
- environmental stimulus
- digestive malfunction
- immune dysregulation
- poor detoxification capability
- epi-genetics
I’m not sure about you, but there are so many things in nature that completely blow me away – so many reminders of how amazing the world is.
- here’s another mystery of nature that I wanted to share with you:
For Christmas we gave the boys an old monopoly set that belonged to my husband when he was growing up! All the old British road names are exactly as I remembered them (our family set was the same!). A piece of trivia for you – did you know that Monopoly was developed over 80 years ago? It’s a statement of what a stalwart it is to survive through the massive changes that have happened in that time.
So, pretty much since Christmas we’ve been playing Monopoly as a family almost everyday! Its been great fun, and is an excellent bonding activity. It has brought up lots of wonderful childhood memories for us.
We get so much education from school about how to do mathematics learn about geography and economics but when we have babies, we’re suddenly faced with knowing nothing!! Well – that’s certainly how it felt for me. I kept hoping a User Manual would pop out with that gorgeous little bub – it didn’t come…!
Now I am certainly no expert in parenting – after two children, I know how to look after 2 children! But along the way one does tend to pick up some helpful tidbits, and this is what I’d like to share with you that is particularly helpful for a younger child, who doesn’t have words, or for our kids who can’t use their words.
Rewind the clock back 50 years ago, and Asperger Syndrome was not even heard of.
Back in the early 1940s Hans Asperger , an Austrian paediatrician, first described the condition for children who had difficulty integrating socially. He labelled it “autistic psychopathy”(1) and described it as a personality disorder primarily identified by social isolation. Because his writings were in German they did not get wide exposure for several decades. In the 1980s the term Aspergers Syndrome was loosely used as a description for children with learning and behavioural disorders.
This year one thing has been made clear to me…that is, that our belief system that we live with rules our life.
I have known this for a long time, but it has become crystal clear to me and it has made such a difference.
I love Wednesdays – in the last few months I’ve put aside 2 hours for myself!! Its excellent to do this and I can highly recommend it!
So I prioritise my Wednesday mornings to play tennis! Even though I’m not that good, I love it. The other ladies always are keen to help me, and I’m very grateful to receive any tidbits.
Today one of the ladies recommended a good place to go and get a bit of coaching. She said, “If you make a couple of small changes, you will find it makes a BIG difference to your game”. When she said it, I stopped in my tracks and realised what she’d just said is really profound.
When the email from my son’s school teacher hit my inbox, I cowered inside myself. She was asking me to come in to see her after school. So in I went, with that feeling of dread wondering what it could be this time.
When she started talking about something completely unrelated to my son, I got the surprise of my life. She was calling me in to ask me a question about a project I’m doing at the school! The meeting was nothing to do with my boy! I wanted to grab her and give her a big hug, but figured better of it! She had no idea that I had been expecting her to tell me something about my son’s behaviour!