To give a little back story, i was diagnosed with ADHD back in the 3rd grade. The doctors put me on Ritalin and there was definite improvement in my focus, but at the same time it kind of repressed who I was. But if I ever went off of my medication for the weekend when there was no school it would throw off the effects, so I ended up having to take Ritalin every day of the school year. No exceptions.
My mom would make sure that I took 20mg in the morning before school and then I would have to take another 10mg around 1:00 to make sure I can focus the rest of the day. However the issue was that I had to remember to take it! More often than not I wouldn't take it and my parents would get sent letters that I still had a full bottle of meds left.
One morning I had to hurry out of the house and didn't have time to eat breakfast, so my parents gave me some money to buy breakfast at school. I went to the cafeteria and they told me that there wasn't any breakfast left, so they let me have some Zingers, a chocolate frosted cake snack, instead.
Now all of this considered, when I would go to school, I would not be able to focus, I was full of energy, and when I got home I would crash and then not feel like doing my homework or getting anything done. The school would send letters home saying that, "Your child does not complete his homework on time." or "Your child is disrupting class in outbursts." or my favorite, "You need to take the time to work with your child on his focus and attention."
Does this sound like it's entirely the child or the parents' fault?
Back in 1993 ADHD was still a little unknown, so the first thing people tried to do was fight it, like it was some kind of curable disease. ADD and ADHD is not a disease.
And can I say this? It is NOT a learning disorder!
I'm going to start calling people who are blind AVD (Active Vision Disorder) and people in wheelchairs UWD (Upright Walking Disorder.) Okay, maybe not. I think people would get a little offended, but think about this.
The brain of those with ADHD is wired differently than those who don't have it.
Notice the brain on the left. It's of a child who does not have ADHD. The one on the right is of a child with ADHD.
The difference here is that those with ADHD are not stimulated enough. You'll see the decreased brain activity. The problem today is that we constantly try to FIGHT ADHD. Which you simply can't do. I guarantee that the ADHD will win. If you try to heavily medicate, you may win, but the child is now collateral damage. You suck out all the personality and what makes that child unique.
ADHD is not something that can be fought. I did not want to be stuck on meds for it my entire life. So when I was 13 I stopped taking my meds and my parents and I started to learn how to work with it. This is the premise of this blog post today.
We often try to fight ADHD with a few following practices.
1) Just try to focus!
Let's take little Eric in Chidren's Church. He's found a rubber band and starts playing with it in his hands, but the Pastor yells at him to put it away and listen to the message. There's nothing happening on stage for the next five minutes except the pastor is talking and wrapping up his message. Then at the end Eric has no clue what has just been said and goes home not learning a thing. Sure he paid attention for the first 2 minutes, but then the Pastor said something about a video game to tie into what he was wrapping up with, and Eric began thinking about the video games he was going to play at home, and what he was going to eat, and that he likes mac and cheese, but not as much as cheeseburgers, and maybe mom and dad will take him to McDonalds, never mind McDonalds, he wants Burger King, and then he remembers, oh! I have a report to do in school about the king of France, and the other day I learned something in french, and french fries sound good, and I want to go to McDonalds...why is everyone getting up and leaving?
Most people don't realize, but children with ADHD are excellent mental multi-taskers. That's why when we are working on something that's mindless like washing dishes, or putzing with playthings we are all aware of what's happening around us. There is one exception which is hyper-focusing. This is when we are working on something with our hands that we are truly interested in and then we tune everything else out, close off our minds and focus exclusively on what is in front of us right now. This happens when it's a project that we CHOOSE to do.
Physically, when we start a new task or idea, we get this great notion to start a brand new project, but we can easily get distracted and the common thing you find in anyone with ADHD is that there are a lot of unfinished projects because we start something new and leave the old one. (I'll talk about how to work around this effectively in a later post. Don't worry!)
Here's a tip. If a child in your ministry is doodling on a piece of paper while you are delivering simply a message, let him doodle. I can bet you $100 that he will have retained what you were talking about. Maybe not at that exact moment, but later at home he'll remember everything. We're funny like that. Our brains scatter information. So while it may not appear that we are listening, we really are.
2)Sit still!
ADHD has that one extra letter in there, the "H" which stands for "Hyperactivity." Rather than think of this as a disorder, let's think of it as attention deficit in high definition!
We are movers. We like to stay somewhat active. Think of it like this. ADHD kids are like bottles of baking soda and vinegar. If you put a cap on it, it's going to burp, and gas will release, and come out in little spurts. If you try to tighten the cap, the bottle is going to explode. If you take time to take the cap off, the pressure releases naturally.
If a child with ADHD is squirming in their seat, it's beneficial to give them something to do with their hands.
Here's an example.
A while back while I was volunteering under Pastor Keith Schommer, in Green Bay I was walking up and down the aisles, and there was a kid in the back who was making noise and being disruptive. The adults would simply walk by and press their finger to their lips and go, "shhh" as if it was somehow going to miraculously turn this kid into an attention machine. I went and got a piece of yarn and tied it into a circle knot. Nothing too big, but something he can slip over his hand. I then sat down next to him and gave him this piece of yarn while P.K. was delivering his message. This kid did not make a peep. Instead he was fiddling with the yarn and his attention was on that. Meanwhile during the service I would now and then point to the stage and he would look up, and pay attention. I turned the yarn into the distraction, but then I turned the stage into the distraction for the yarn.
This is an example of taking the cap off the bottle. The adults telling him to shhh was forcing the cap on the bottle, and his little outbursts was the cap loosely on the bottle.
The main point I'm trying to get across here is that you need to start learning how to work with kids who have ADHD instead of trying to surpress it. It's a battle you will never win. Your children will get frustrated, and not learn a thing.
Now one common thing I hear from a lot of teachers is, "If I let him play with that yarn, I need to let the other kids play with yarn too!" or "His piece of yarn is distracting the kids next to him."
I could easily turn that around! What if there's a kid with a leg brace in my children's ministry? Should I have him take it off simply because it's distracting other kids? Should I take it away because I'll have to give the other kids a leg brace too?
ADHD is a condition that requires tools and techniques to work around it. It's not a lifestyle choice, but it is a lifestyle none the less. We don't choose to have it. I can't stop my ADHD just so others can feel more comfortable. The minute I started learning to work with what I have, the sooner God was able to use me in the way he called me to be. God doesn't make mistakes so stop trying to fix them!
That being said, here's some ideas for you to share with your volunteers.
1) You should never have to handle these issues on stage. Your volunteers need to be trained to handle children with ADHD. Teach them what I wrote above and how to do it in the least distracting way as possible. A string of yarn is WAAY better than a slamming book!
2) There are things that are inexcuseable.
ADHD is not an excuse. I refuse to let my kids cause trouble simply because they have ADHD. If a kid keeps making outbursts you have to determine if the root is simply ADHD or if it is outright disrespect. If your child is doodling on his bulletin, then that's one thing. If he's writing on the walls it's something else!
3) This post is not about favoritism to ADHD kids.
You would think so, but it's not. Don't pick the ADHD kid to do something all the time because it will help ease the tension. It's not fair to the other kids. I did have to learn how to start controlling myself in public. And that's how I developed and learned about the mental multi tasking. Let them have something like a squeeze ball, but they shouldn't be favored and the other kids forced to work around him. We're all in this together and they have to learn that it's not all about them. These steps above are simply the tools to help your ADHD child learn and succeed in an environment around them.
I hope this makes some sense and gives you some great ideas on how to work with children who have ADHD. The most important rule is that you shouldn't fight ADHD, rather learn to work with it.
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