Occupational Therapy: The non-pharmaceutical way to help your ADHD child.

Here at Spirited Kids we know there is a time and place for pharmaceutical intervention. However, we thought it would be important for you all to know some of the recent data on ADHD diagnosis.

DID YOU KNOW?: A recent study out of Iceland showed that if a child happens to be in the youngest third of the class they are 50% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD! A similar statistic exists in regards to what time of year your child is born. If they happen to fall in the "just made the cutoff" category to start school, they are significantly more likely to receive a diagnosis.

So what does this mean? If your child is socially and emotionally immature compared to the other 2/3 of their classmates they are much more likely to be singled out by the teacher for having "behaviors" or "poor attention".

With all that being said, ADHD is still significantly prevalent in children, especially here in America, ranking in at almost 10% of the child population.

So the question is, what is ADHD and social-emotional immaturity and how can OT help?

ADHD has 3 main signs/symptoms: inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. One could see how this could be hard to tell the difference between that and a typical energetic child.

Whether a child has ADHD or not, OTs can help children build stronger executive functioning skills. This is not only beneficial for learning how to manage the typical ADHD symptoms, but can also be highly useful to any student.

Here are our 3 tips for helping children master their inattention and hyperactivity:

• Break work up into manageable chunks (Time Management)

- The key is taking some time to observe the child working in both preferred and non preferred activities. Keep track of the time it takes before they start to get distracted and then work from there.

• Teach them how to listen to their body (Interoception)

- Taking time to learn what our body is telling us is vital to managing attention skills. Jittery feet, restless bottom, playing with items on the desk. All are signs that their body is trying to tell them something.

Build on the skill (Challenging attention)

- Building attention can be done in lots of fun ways that do not necessarily involve sitting at a desk completing worksheets. Fun multi-tasking is something we incorporate into all of your treatment sessions. Sure your child can play catch, but can they

play catch, stand on 1 foot, and have a conversation at the same time?

Just a reminder that blogs are great but having a one on one conversation with us is even better! Reach out today for parent coaching or to set up an evaluation with your child today!