Attention Deficit Disorder

[wanderlust]

Hi all,
I was just wondering if anyone knew anything about Attention Deficit Disorder. The doctor has recently told my sister that her 6 year old boy may be suffering from this. Unfortunately they are not vegan but I was wondering if anyone knew of any links between the disorder and diet. She is willing to try anything and I am wondering if it could be caused partly by his diet. Or is there any natural cures as she really does not want to put him on prescription medicine. Thanks!

[artemis]

try this site

http://www.newideas.net/adddiet.htm

[VOW]

Some people have found fantastic results by using the Feingold Diet for children with ADD. And certainly, a healthy diet based on fresh foods and whole grains would be good anyone!

However, your sister and her husband need to look at some family history. Typically, ADD and ADD-related disorders run in families. That is the case with our family. My son has ADD, and in my husband's side of the family, the disorder runs rampant.

Medication is very, very controversial. However, it made all the difference in the world for my son, and I would never hesitate to do it again. Oftentimes counseling is necessary, too.

An EXCELLENT source of information is the ADD Warehouse, at www.addwarehouse.com



~VOW

[wanderlust]

Thank you for the helpful websites - very useful and I will certainly pass the information to my sister. This is great - thanks!

[xmysticprincessx]

Have your sister do as much research as possible on ADD.

A family that I know has a 3 year old son who was diagnosed with autism almost a year ago. The parents did a TON of research online and completely changed his diet. (A lot of what they found was new info that their pediatrician was not completely familiar with. BTW, the mother is some kind of doctor and went to medical websites or sites which included info from medical studies.) I see this boy once every few months, and I have noticed a change in his development and bahavior. His parents said that he is reacting well to everything they have been trying, including the diet. For example, there are some foods that react with the brain chemestry in autistic chidren. I dont know if the cant have some of the following foods because he is allergic or because he is autistic, but off the top of my head I know he cannot have dairy, gluten, soy, peanuts, and seafood.

If I read it correctly, ADD/ADHD are neurological disorders like autism, so maybe a change in diet will be helpful.

If your sister chooses medication like Ritalin, the dose has to be correct or else it will not work correctly. I taught a 13 year old ADHD boy last year who was a handful to say the least. He was diagnosed in 1st grade and was put on Ritalin. His parents eventually took him off of it since he became a zombie. Other teachers I worked with suspected that the dose was too high but that the parents really did not want their son medicated so they were not into finding the right dose. I see ads all the time for new ADD medications, so if your nephew needs medication, the trick may be finding the right one.

Also, when I taught the ADHD student, I found that if he just sat in class for the whole 40 minutes without a break, I would lose him. He would become figitey, walk around the class, disrupt other students, and so on. I started letting him take a break in class. I would rather have him miss a few minutes of class while he took a walk to the bathroom or water fountain and have him pay attention for some part of the remainder of class than have him be disruptive and miss everything but the first 10 minutes. This student was also the type who liked projects and hands on activities, and he did well with those. I tried to incorporate his interests into what I was teaching.

His parents told me about how they do homework with their son: They will have an equal amount of work time and then an equal amount of "play" time. When they first started this, it was 15 minutes homework, 15 minutes play time, back and forth for a few hours till all homework was done. They have slowly increased his time to 30 minutes. It still takes a few hours a night to do his homework. I have tried a similar approach for tests in class. I know that he cannot concentrate the whole class period, so every 10 or 15 minutes or so (or when I see him getting restless), I will tell him to finish the problem he is working on and then take a break. I try to give him as much time as he needs, but he did not use the extra time.

Nothing works 100% of the time. There were days in which I would tutor this student one on one after school and he could not pay attention to save his life, no matter what I did. Then there were other days that I swore I could have seen the little light bulb go off over his head and that he was FINALLY understanding that new concept.

A disclaimer for my last comment: Don't think that I am implying that your sister or anyone is a bad parent or anything like that.
Have everyone be careful not to let your nephew use his disability as an excuse. Once kids learn that they can use the disability to get special treatment or extra goodies, they will use and abuse it.
I know that there are times in which my ADHD student asked to go to the bathroom and I let him even though I knew full well that he was looking for an excuse to get out of class and he did not care what was being taught. I knew that he used his ADHD at times to be "cute" by putting on a show for the other students while I am trying to explain something. (He was like night and day in class verus in tutoring.) I have also seen similar behaviors in other students in the school who had other disabilities. (A diabetic girl in 2nd grade could have written a book on how to manipulate parents and teachers into letting her get what she wanted.)

Good luck. I hope some of this helps.

[wanderlust]

Thanks for that very comprehensive reply. I will certainly pass all this info on to my sister and get her to do some internet research as well! Thanks so much for taking the trouble to reply!

[duckie1978]

My mentor is a homeopath and he has successully treated children with ADD and ADHD using homeopathic remedies. Maybe they could look into it.

My best advice on this is to read every journal article and anything else they can read on the disorder so that way they can make their own decisions, not what the doctor thinks it best.

BTW, the doctor is the LAST person you want to talk about medications! Go to a pharmacy and talk to the pharmacist about medications. Doctors only have to take one class on medicines, they do not learn how or why a drug works, only that "X" drug is used to treat "Y" disease/disorder. Pharmacists spend years studying how and why the drugs work.