Superparenting for ADD

With decades of experience working with ADD children, Dr. Edward Hallowella pediatric psychiatric clinician, father of two ADD children, and himself an adult with ADDunderstands how easily the gifts of this condition are lost on a child amid negative comments from doctors, teachers, and even loving but frustrated parents. Hallowell has long argued that ADD is too often misunderstood, mistreated, and mislabeled as a "disability." Now he teams up with top academic ADD researcher Peter S. Jensen, M.D., who is himself a father of an ADD child, to bring you an upbeat and encouraging new approach to living with and helping your ADD child. The practical strength-based techniques Drs. Hallowell and Jensen present put the talents, charms, and positive essence of your child ahead of any presumed shortcomings. Clearly outlined and organized, Superparenting for ADD offers a specific game plan that includes UNCONDITIONAL LOVE Tune out the diagnosticians and labelers and simply notice and nourish the spirit of your child for who he is. Providing this unshakable base of support will set the tone for all interactions to come. VIEWING THE MIRROR TRAITS There are positive sides of the negative symptoms associated with ADD: stubbornness = persistence; impulsiveness = creativity; intrusiveness = eagerness. By recognizing the mirror traits, you avoid the ravages of shame and fear. THE CYCLE OF EXCELLENCE Use this critical 5-step process to help a child develop self- and social awareness. Nurture an environment in which a child can safely take risks, reserve time to let a child dabble as a way to learn, encourage playful practice, support mastery of a skill (whatever the skill may be), and then recognize a child's accomplishments. IDENTIFYING AND TAPPING THE SOURCE Pinpoint your child's inner, conative strengths, which drive what he naturally and spontaneously does, as opposed to what he is told to do or feels he must do. Your child will do his best when allowed to use these conative strengths. Drs. Hallowell and Jensen fully understand the real and everyday challengesboth at home and at schoolfacing parents of an ADD child. Now this important book shows you how to unwrap the wonderful, surprising gifts of ADD and turn what is too often labeled a lifelong disability into a lifelong blessing. From the Hardcover edition.

Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., was an instructor at Harvard Medical School for twenty years and is now the director of the Hallowell Centers for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Sudbury, Massachusetts, and New York City. He is the co-author of Delivered from Distraction and Driven to Distraction as well as the author of CrazyBusy, The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness, and Worry, among other titles. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts, with his wife and their three children.

www.DrHallowell.com


Peter S. Jensen, M.D., is a world-renowned child psychiatrist, the author of more than 200 scientific articles, and the CEO of the REACH (REsource for Advancing Children’s Health) Institute. Dr. Jensen was the founding director of the Center for the Advancement of Children’s Mental Health at Columbia University and the associate director of Child and Adolescent Research at NIMH, where he served from 1989 to 2000. In 1999 he received the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from NAMI (the National Alliance for the Mental Ill) and was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. He lives in New York.

Chapter 1

Love

THE ESSENTIAL STRENGTH

Nowhere in life do we see love burn more brightly, work harder, and achieve more than in the relationship between a parent and a child. This is real love. Messy love. Nonstop, -never—off—duty love. This love forever changes you. When you have a child, you enter into a permanent state of psychosis. You go crazy. You fall insanely in love with the little baby, whether the baby is adopted or born to you. For first—time parents this love is new and quite unexpected. It’s a feeling we’ve never experienced before. We never knew we could become so selfless, so willing to give up everything for our baby. Buoyed by this lifelong, blessed madness, we plunge into the adventure called parenthood. To assist us in doing the most important and most difficult job in the world-raising a child-our single greatest ally is the protean force nature provides parents called love. And what a love it is! We doctors do not celebrate, honor, and emphasize it nearly enough. In this book, however, we do. Here, in our framework, love initiates and supports everything else. Love is the cornerstone of the model we build.

That’s because love is the single most powerful tool you can use to draw out your child’s strengths. How wonderful that it’s free, instantly available, and all but inexhaustible. It -doesn’t do the whole job, but without it the job never gets done right. Love works unpredictably, in that you have no idea what strengths you are drawing out while you love your child. But if you keep loving and trusting that love, over the years the strengths will emerge. Without love, however, they often do not, or they emerge deformed. So keep your faith in love. Don’t ever give up on your child or on the power of love. Sometimes it is all you’ve got. But no matter how hopeless or desperate you may feel, if you keep on loving, your child’s gifts will appear one day, perhaps to your total surprise and the surprise of the world, like wildflowers growing through crevices in a granite rock.

Trust the process love initiates. Always listen for the song your child is trying to sing. Search for the instrument your child is destined to play. Look for the person your child is trying to become.

Those are not just pretty words. They define what matters most in raising children, especially those who have the fascinating, widely misunderstood trait called ADD. These kids particularly need someone who can perceive and draw out what is wonderful within them. It can be a selfless and frustrating process, one that only the best parents and teachers can stick with. But it is also true that any parent or teacher can be one of those best parents or teachers.

Some kids slide into life easily. They don’t need anyone to listen for the song they are trying to sing because they are born with a song the world already sings, so they naturally join right in. They are born with the instrument they are meant to play. They grow into the wonderful person they are meant to become without a glitch or a crisis. Life is free and easy. They fit in from the start. Good for them!

But then there are those who don’t fit in easily, if at all. They bounce back rather than join in. They cause problems for themselves and others. They become the subject of long conversations between various adults, the central theme of which is “What can we do about ______?”

The answer to that question is clear, albeit rarely stated plainly and emphatically: love them. But there’s a catch: they’re not every minute of every day all that easy to love. Nonetheless, it is love, wise love, smart love, persistent and unremitting love that they need, first and foremost. More than anything else, these kids need someone to detect the beginnings of what’s positive in their oddball, offbeat, exasperating, or disruptive wa

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Excerpted from Superparenting for ADD: An Innovative Approach to Raising Your Distracted Child by Edward M. Hallowell, Peter S. Jensen
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.