Your child’s ADHD symptoms may be showing you the path to better treatment.
As an ADHD parent, you’re concerned about the effects of the condition on your child’s life – not the least of which are learning difficulties. It’s one thing to deal with what sets your child apart, but when it means your child can’t learn alongside his peers, it makes the issue more complex and troubling.
But a recent study shows that when it comes to learning skills, it might be best to simply let ADHD children do their thing – fidget, squirm and stay active.
The study compared 29 boys with ADHD, aged 8 to 12, to a control group of 23 boys of similar age without ADHD. Both groups were subjected to tests of learning, comprehension and reading.
The more the ADHD boys were allowed to move during tests, the better their results. When the boys in the control group were allowed to move, their results got worse. Ultimately, the boys with ADHD who were allowed to move around performed better than the boys without ADHD who moved around.
ADHD children “have to move to maintain alertness”, says Dr. Mark Rappaport, the study’s co-author and head of the Children’s Learning Clinic at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. “The message isn’t: ‘let them run around the room,’ but you need to be able to facilitate their movement so they can maintain the level of alertness necessary for cognitive activities.”
Dr. Rappaport recommends that ADHD children should be given “the necessary means by which to engage in controlled, non-disruptive movement while they work on classroom or home activities that require executive control.”
For example, Dr. Rappaport suggests that ADHD children might perform better academically if they were allowed to do their school work on activity balls or exercise bikes.
What Does It All Mean for ADHD Parents?
Primarily, the study suggests that traditional treatments, including ADHD medications and behavioral modification, are misguided in their focus on reduced movement in ADHD children.
In addition to findings that prove the efficacy of brain training for ADHD treatment, the new results are yet another reason to seriously question the use of drugs and chemicals, many of them with side effects that are worse than the symptoms they are supposed to treat, on children with ADHD.
Learn more about powerful, safe, effective and drug-free approaches to control or even eliminate ADHD symptoms. Call Maxi Mind Learning Centres at 416-858-9868 today for a free initial consultation. A Maxi Mind solution can be customized to suit your child’s needs and your family’s budget.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/22/kids-adhd-treatment_n_7110910.html
http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/childhood-adhd/news/20150421/freedom-to-fidget-helps-kids-with-adhd-learn-study
