ADD and ADHD • • • •
Strategies and Resources for Children with ADD and ADHD

Attention Deficit Disorder is Real
The children who experience Attention Deficit Disorder need help. If you’re the parent of this child, you’re the person God has placed in your child’s life to provide the hope, encouragement, and growth needed to cope in today’s society.

A lot of people who have Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder go on to do great things. They often become leaders, inventors, and public personalities. The challenge is how to raise this child to have the character necessary to be the person God intended. There are many things that you can do, and now is the time to begin. Josh Turansky is the son of Dr. Scott Turansky and he has started a Bible College on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. Josh struggled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder as a child. You might want to listen to the podcast of Josh interviewing his father on the subject of ADD, recorded just recently as Josh looks back on his life growing up.

ADD and ADHD fall under the umbrella of Neurobehavioral Disorders. In short, the brain’s chemical transmissions aren’t functioning efficiently enough to allow for clear concentration to take place. This child then is easily distracted by internal and external stimuli while trying to accomplish simple tasks like listening to a teacher, cleaning up a mess, or going on an errand.

Children who have ADD or ADHD are magnets for correction because they are often doing the wrong thing. They commonly live with a lot of frustration and often have explosive anger. Some children with ADD or ADHD also struggle with social cues, not picking up on the fact that they are annoying or irritating others.

Children Need Hope
One of the greatest ways that you can help a child who has ADD or ADHD is to provide hope. God has a prescription for hope in Romans 5:4-5, “Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Notice that hope comes from character, which comes from perseverance, which comes from suffering. Children need a plan for dealing with the suffering they experience. In fact, suffering can be the key to hope, if the child responds well. Your job is to help your child develop a plan for his or her suffering. Once children begin to respond to suffering with perseverance, then they will see character developing. That character will be encouraging and hope is the natural by product.

The suffering may be working harder to complete a homework assignment. Or it may be standing still in line at the bank. It may be controlling one’s hands at the store; or staying on task to clean up the toys without playing. Suffering happens everyday in the life of a child with ADD or ADHD. Being coached to respond to the suffering with perseverance can make all the difference.

The key is to have a good plan. In fact, once you have a plan for your child then you can help him or her develop the tools to deal with the struggles. Furthermore, once you have a plan, you can increase the pressure so that your child has opportunity to practice the plan, further strengthening the character.

The basis to developing a plan is to focus on character development. In short, you want to raise the character threshold in your child. A threshold is the level at which a child is able to handle a particular challenge such as an irritation, temptation, or distraction. When the threshold is low, the child falls victim to even small challenges, but as the threshold is raised the child has a greater ability to cope.

The Coffee Illustration
If you’re a coffee drinker you understand this concept of a threshold. You like to get that coffee pot going early in the morning so that you can have your first cup before life starts coming at you. Why? Because the caffeine raises your threshold level so that you can think more clearly and respond better to the challenges you face.

A number of medications are available to raise the threshold for the child who has ADD or ADHD. We are not medical doctors so we don’t prescribe medications nor do we evaluate them. However, we do know this. The long-term solution is to raise the character threshold and as you work to develop it in your child you will see significant growth for the long run.

Time is Your Enemy or Your Ally
The plan for character development is crucial. Each child is different, needing specific tools and strategies included in the plan. Some people say, “I’m hoping he’ll just grow out of it,” but most children don’t grow out of bad patterns. They grow into them, resulting in demandingness, manipulation, and poor anger control. If you don’t have a plan then time is your enemy. It’s like a child who breaks a bone. Time is your enemy until you get to the doctor and the bone is set and put in a cast. Once the bone is in the cast, then time is your friend. It takes time for healing to take place. The same is true for character development. It takes time but you first must be working your plan in order for time to be your ally.

So, Let’s Develop a Plan
Creating a character development plan is so important. We have several resources to help you do just that. You’re in this for the long term. Your child needs your help. We have developed several parenting tools that break things down into small pieces. We know that a child who has ADD or ADHD needs instructions in small steps. Our work with kids with ADD and ADHD helped us create the Heart Work Training Manuals and CDs. In these eight workbooks and CDs you’ll find a 5-step Instruction Routine, seven categories of consequences, and a way to end every discipline time with a Positive Conclusion. Your child needs these strategies. They’re simple and give both the child and the parent specific things to do. In that material you’ll also learn how to help children accept no as an answer and how to deal with bad attitudes. The Heart Work Training Manuals and CDs contain some great tools for your plan.

You might also like the children’s program, The Treasure Hunters. It uses Bible stories, activities, games, crafts, and snacks to help children understand tools for things like following instructions, being corrected, and addressing attitude as well.

The Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining, and Bad Attitudes in You and Your Kids book and accompanying CD set provides children with another whole approach to the same issues. This material focuses on honor and helps children learn to think about others and not just themselves. It’s essential that children who have ADD or ADHD become others-focused. Much of the work done and the correction that happens focuses on them but honor helps children think about others and value them as well. The Kids Honor Club children’s program contains 13 lessons for kids that use Bible stories, games, activities, and crafts to teach children how to treat others as special, do more than what’s expected, and have a good attitude.

Lots of Help
As a parent of a child with ADD or ADHD you need a lot of resources. We have a few more you’ll want to look at and maybe consider purchasing. The 4-CD series Parenting a Child Who is a CHALLENGE to Parent contains an explanation of how the brain works, how medication works, and a six-step character development plan. With this series you’ll know how to define the specific areas of need in your child and develop a plan for growth. The book Good and Angry, Exchanging Frustration for Character in You and Your Kids is all about developing character in seven key areas including following instructions, receiving correction, having a good attitude, accepting no as an answer and also addresses problems like being annoying and lying. Another page you might like to look at is our page on helping children deal with anger. The book Home Improvement, The Parenting Book You Can Read To Your Kids takes common parenting problems and helps children understand them from the parent’s point of view. In each chapter you and your child follow a fictional family as they discover a problem in their family and then a helpful solution. The rest of the chapter gives you as the parent practical ideas for using that concept in family life. The book Parenting is Heart Work is a biblical study of the heart and provides you with specific strategies to develop a heart-based approach to parenting instead of relying on simple behavior modification.

You may want to join one of our online parenting support groups, or attend a live parenting seminar in your area. You also may want some help developing a specific action plan for your child by scheduling a phone coaching session with Dr. Scott Turansky. And don’t forget to sign up for free email parenting tips if you haven’t done so already.

We know that it’s not just kids who lose hope, but parents also feel hopeless at times. We want to be there for you. Please take advantage of these resources and look for additional tools by stopping by here often. We’d love to be a continual source of encouragement for you as you do the difficult work of parenting.