Well, well, well. When an issue gets on to Coronation Street, the UK’s longest running soap opera on TV, or The Archers on the radio – then you know that it has made the mainstream. So it was kind of heartwarming in ADHD Awareness month, that ITV have chosen to run with an ADHD storyline. Continue reading “Coronation Street gets ADHD”
Tag: ADHD
Mastering ADHD for adults – Dr Hallowell’s Game-changing Workshop in London on 30 September
Anyone who has been touched by ADHD considers US-based Dr Hallowell as something of a guru. And, on the eve of ADHD Awareness month, the Crossley Family managed to persuade him across the pond to talk to those affected by ADHD in the UK. An author of 20 books, a self-professed ADHDer himself, with dyslexia, and a father to two ADHD boys – Ned Hallowell also runs a psychiatry practice in New York, and advocates what he calls a “strength-based” or positive approach to the condition.
At 64, he has some 25 years of experience under his belt, he refuses to see the complex neurological “disorder” as a disability – instead insisting that if he had a choice to have ADHD or not have it, then he’d keep it. Despite dishing out scripts for medication Continue reading “Mastering ADHD for adults – Dr Hallowell’s Game-changing Workshop in London on 30 September”
Why is Negative So Much More Attractive than Being Positive?
Why is Negative So Much More Attractive than Being Positive?
I’ve written on this blog before about Kevin Roberts being the poster boy for ADHD and now have completed his rather good book – Movers, Dreamers and Risk-Takers, Unlocking the Power of ADHD. I like it, ironically, because he is so positive about the whole ADHD issue, something that the Neuroscientists like Russell Barklay are not (“It’s a Neurodisability, why dress it up as anything else?”)
One of the more fascinating nuggets to emerge from this book is that ADHDers create negative dynamics in many areas of their lives because “negative information and stimulation weigh more heavily on the brain than positive information and stimulation, thus creating brain activity”*.
As Roberts writes: “I have come to the inescapable conclusion that I feel more alive when I am being negative. Opposing something gives me more juice than supporting it. We ADHDers create negative dynamics in many areas of our lives… Continue reading “Why is Negative So Much More Attractive than Being Positive?”
Kevin Roberts – Author of Cyber Junkie and Movers, Dreamers and Risk Takers
Kevin Roberts, Author and ADHDer, came over from the States to give a couple of talks at the ADHD international Conference in Liverpool – 10 to 12 October 2013. He is co-founder of The Empower ADD project and a member of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. Officially or unofficially, he became the Master of Ceremonies of the occasion because his mixture of showmanship, humour, positivity and love of interruptions glued the event together. He’s the unoffical Poster Boy for ADHD, because he believe – above all – that teaching people with ADHD to find the fun in life provides a powerful means to success.
Five Fingers to the Face. Back to School for an ADHDer
Five Fingers to the Face.. A modern version of talk to the hand. Surely a song written by an ADHDer for an ADHDer. Useful to use against one as well – if they won’t listen to No…
Four more days to go. And I shall be waving him off on the School Bus. With Five Fingers to the Face.
From Concerta via Ritalin to Elvanse & Strattera, a month’s journey in meds
I wonder how families who have only the NHS to fare cope when it comes to “Child and Adolescent Mental Health“? Our initial meeting with the NHS pyschiatrist left me holding some Concerta 12-hour stimulant medication – and a date for a follow up meeting IN A MONTH. A Month was too long, too long by 28 days almost, as the daily rollercoaster of keeping our son on track began. Continue reading “From Concerta via Ritalin to Elvanse & Strattera, a month’s journey in meds”
Countdown to Meds for my 12 year old ADDer
On Tuesday, we give up with the year’s experiment of keeping our ADHD son unmedicated, and head for the pharmacy. Despite the promises of the NHS with their NICE guidelines suggesting Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Social Skills training, group and individual therapy and parenting classes – it’s clear that NONE of it is available. There is only medication on the NHS, and the rest is down to you the parents to sort. Mental health is appalling in the UK, we just don’t get it.
Of course medication is no silver bullet, I have read too many chat room posts and message boards where adult ADDers talk Ritalin, Strattera, Concerta, Medikenet, dosages, availability – like drug addicts swapping tips. It may or may not work, but the alternative (nothing) doesn’t work either. Continue reading “Countdown to Meds for my 12 year old ADDer”
ADD kids are hunters, the rest are farmers
Childrearing in traditional societies – a lesson for ADD parents
For a year since my 12 year old son was diagnosed with ADHD, I’ve been trying to get hold of the Hunter school in Massachussetts. Recommended by a friend in the States, it’s known for its alternative ways of schooling children with ADD, I have a hunch it might help me find some behavioural strategies that just aren’t available here in the UK. It’s so called, because it believes ADD kids are genetic throwbacks to a time when we were “hunters”, alert to all sounds in the jungle (have I lost you already?), as opposed to our so-called civilised society where we have become “farmers”, able to tend to our corner of the world by sitting still and waiting for the crops to grow. This link to a Radio 4 programme today looks at childrearing strategies in “Hunter” tribes in Papua New Guinea, as opposed to childrearing strategies in the Western world. The programme speaks to parents of ADHD children. Click the letter “C” in the title to listen to the clip.
Better Late than Never 