Sue Scheff: Standing Up for Your Child's Educational Rights

By ADDitude Magazine

Learn your child’s educational rights to get him the support he needs in the classroom.

In an ideal world, teachers and school administrators would be as eager as parents to see that children with ADD get what they need to succeed in school. Unfortunately, teachers are pressed for time as never before, and school districts are strapped for cash. So it’s up to parents to make sure that their kids get the extra support they need.

“The federal government requires schools to provide special services to kids with ADD and other disabilities, but the school systems themselves bear much of the cost of these services,” says Susan Luger, director of The Children’s Advisory Group in New York City. “Though they’ll never admit it, this gives the schools an incentive to deny these services. The process of obtaining services has become much more legalistic over the past 10 years.”

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Sue Scheff: Friendship 101: Helping ADHD Children Make Friends

By ADDitude Magazine

Children with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD) often struggle to make friends. Use these parenting strategies to help your ADHD child build stronger social skills.

Eight-year-old Josh stands alone at the edge of the playground, watching the other kids play. He'd like to join them but has no idea how.

Eleven-year-old Tina sits on the porch steps in tears. From the next block, she can hear the sounds of a birthday party to which she wasn't invited — even though she thought the birthday girl was her good friend.

Fourteen-year-old Tom spends all his free time alone, on his computer. No one calls him, and he calls no one.

Is anything sadder — or more frightening to parents — than a friendless child with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD)? "Parents fall apart crying about their child's situation," says Richard Lavoie, a special-education consultant in Barnstable, Massachusetts, and the author of It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend. "And it's never about academics. It's always about the pain of social isolation their child is facing."

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Sue Scheff: Behavior Therapy for Children with ADHD

By ADDitude Magazine

Seven parenting strategies guaranteed to improve the behavior of your child with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD).

The fundamentals of behavior therapy are easy to understand and implement, even without the help of a therapist. Have you ever given your child a time-out for talking back — or a “heads-up” before taking him someplace that is likely to challenge his self-control? Then you already have a sense of how behavior therapy works.

“A lot of behavior modification is just common-sense parenting,” says William Pelham, Jr., Ph.D., director of the Center for Children and Families at the State University of New York at Buffalo. “The problem is that none of us were trained how to be good parents, and none of us expected to have children who needed parents with great parenting skills and patience.”

The basic idea is to set specific rules governing your child’s behavior (nothing vague or too broad), and to enforce your rules consistently, with positive consequences for following them and negative consequences for infractions. Dr. Pelham suggests these seven strategies:1. Make sure your child understands the rules.

Telling a child to “do this” or to “avoid doing that” is not enough. To ensure that your child knows the rules cold, create lists and post them around the house. For example, you might draw up a list detailing the specific things your child must do to get ready for school.Make sure the rules are worded clearly. Go over the rules to make sure he understands, and review them as necessary. Stick with the routines until your child has them down.
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Parents Universal Resource Experts (Sue Scheff) Safeguarding Teenage Drivers with ADD

By ADDitude Magazine

Young motorists with ADD need to be extra careful on the road.

Here's how they can drive safely.

Motorists with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD) - especially teens - need to be extra careful on the road.

Here's how to help them minimize distractions and stay safe.

Pick a safe car. Larger cars offer greater protection in the event of an accident.

Help your teen with ADD learn to drive. Practice sessions should cover a variety of situations.Ask that he drive with an adult for at least his first 500 miles behind the wheel.

Don't let your teen drive at night.

Most fatal crashes involving young drivers occur between 9 p.m. and midnight.

Don't let your teenager chauffeur other teens.

Remind your teen that he must wear a seat belt at all times ...and that he must never drive after drinking or using drugs.

For more on keeping teenagers safe behind the wheel, see AD/HD & Driving: A Guide for Parents of Teens with AD/HD, by J. Marlene Snyder, Ph.D. (Whitefish Consultants, 2001).

Parents Universal Resource Experts - (Sue Scheff) Silencing Skeptics: The Truth About ADHD

By ADDitude Magazine

Parents of children with attention deficit disorder often wonder if their kids will stay on ADD drugs for life. A medical expert explains.

I recently diagnosed eight-year-old Aidan with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD). When I met with his parents to explain the disorder, each time I described a symptom, his mother exclaimed, “That’s me!” or “I’ve been like that all my life, too.” At the end of the appointment, she asked me if she should be evaluated, as well.

As an adult, Aidan’s mother had jumped from job to job, and had difficulty meeting household demands. As a child, she had struggled through school, often getting into trouble and getting poor grades. After a thorough evaluation of her chronic and pervasive history of hyperactivity, distractibility, and other symptoms of ADHD, she was diagnosed by a psychiatrist who works with adults.

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Parents Universal Resource Experts (Sue Scheff) Building Social Skills for ADHD Children

Role-playing strategies to help your child get along with others—even bullies

Making eye contact. Not interrupting. Taking turns. If your child with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD) needs help with these and other social skills, you may want to give “role-playing” a try. By testing out various personas, he can see how simple changes in what he says and does can help him get along better with friends and family members.

Role-playing works with almost any child who is old enough to talk. It’s especially good for teaching children how to deal with teasing — a problem familiar to many kids with ADHD.

Consider the case of Joe B., a nine-year-old I recently treated. Joe’s parents sought my help because he kept overreacting to playful (but sometimes hurtful) verbal banter that came his way during recess. On one such occasion, after Joe did something silly, a playmate laughed at him and called him a “turkey head.” Enraged, Joe shoved the boy and burst into tears. He looked like a crybaby.

Joe acknowledged shoving the other boy, but said to me, “He started it.” Joe felt it was the other boy who needed to change. I explained to Joe that he couldn’t always control what other people did, but that he always had a choice about how to react. “You’re the boss of yourself,” I told him.

Talking things over made Joe feel better, and I decided that role-playing might help Joe avoid future incidents. Here are the basic steps I used with Joe that you might try with your own child:

Define the problem. Talk things over until you understand the exact nature of the problem facing your child. Joe’s problem, of course, was that he felt angry and sad when kids called him names—and couldn’t stop himself from lashing out physically.
Acknowledge bad feelings. Let your child know that it’s normal to be upset by teasing. Joe’s parents and I made sure that he understood that—and that it was not OK for children to pick on him.
Discuss alternative ways to respond. Explain to your child that there are many ways to respond to teasing, some good and some not so good. Shoving the teaser was a bad choice. Joe and I explored better options, including walking away from the encounter and saying “I don’t care” over and over, until the teaser got bored. Ultimately, Joe decided he’d simply say, “Please stop it.” He said that gave him a sense of control over the situation.
Reenact the situation. Once you’ve armed your child with socially acceptable ways to respond, let him play the role of the child being teased while you play the teaser. Then switch roles, varying the “script” to explore the different ways in which the scenario could play out. You might videotape the role-playing sessions and review the tapes at a later time with your child to reinforce appropriate behavior.
Celebrate success. If your child comes home announcing that he has used the lessons learned in role-playing, congratulate him. Give him a high-five, and tell him how proud you are — even if he didn’t do everything you had practiced. This is not the time to nit-pick.
Role-playing didn’t help Joe right away. But one day, a few weeks after we began our sessions, Joe was beaming when he came into my office. Once again, a playmate had teased him, but this time Joe hadn’t struck back. “I told him I didn’t care what he thought,” Joe explained.

Over time, as we continued our sessions, Joe got even better at controlling his behavior on the playground. Other children accepted him as one of the gang, and that made him feel good about himself.

Sue Scheff: Discipline Do’s: Creating Limits for ADHD Children

5 ways for parents of ADHD children to establish a reliable structure and solid limits.

Your child with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD) is loving, intelligent, cute, creative — and often wants his own way. He has the talk and charm to out-debate you, and will negotiate until the 59th minute of the 23rd hour. Like salesmen who won’t take no for an answer, he can wear you down until you give in to his wishes.

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