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Children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are more than 3 times likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and report getting drunk and losing self-control than normal children.

 

If you have a child diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, this statistic need not make you paranoid. ADD/ADHD is a risk factor for substance abuse, but not everyone high at risk for substance abuse actually ends up abusing them. And there are things you can do for you child which will protect him from the temptation to experiment with and abuse drugs or alcohol.

 

Here is what you can do…

 

1. Spend time with your ADD/ADHD child

 

A good relationship with the parents – and especially with the father – helps kids do better in school and stay out of trouble. This is true for all children, ADD/ADHD or not. ADD/ADHD children are more difficult to get along with, even for their own parents, but it is vital that you take the initiative to build a closer and more trusting relationship.

 

There is also a link between troubled family environments and attention and hyperactivity problems in children – children living with one parent or with a step-parent are two times more likely to be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD and be prescribed drugs for attention and hyperactivity than children living with both biological parents.

 

All the more reason for you to build your relationship with your child. Start by spending more time with him doing things he enjoys.

 

2. Provide effective discipline

 

This means a lot of supervision and monitoring and drawing the line when only it is really required, but drawing it firmly. Children need to understand that you disapprove of drug and alcohol abuse, and that they are not free to try these things out. If they do, there will be consequences (for example, like losing the privilege of staying alone at home with friends or driving the family car).

 

This may mean you will need to control your own smoking and drinking (if you do smoke or drink). If you are unable to stop, and if your child asks why he cannot smoke or drink when you do, say you do it because you like the taste. Never say you do it because you need it.

 

3. Help him do well at school

 

One of the diagnostic criteria for ADD/ADHD is that it causes children to do poorly in school – because of inattention, hyperactivity or impulsivity. It will take hard work, but if you can help your child to succeed academically or to excel in any thing he finds interesting, it will help your child feel better and more confident about himself and protect him from the temptation to abuse drugs or alcohol.

 

4. Check drug availability in his school and among his friends

 

Most schools are strict about keeping alcohol and illegal drugs out of their schools. But many of them are tolerant about drugs for ADD/ADHD – one category of drugs that are commonly available and easy to abuse. Find out about the schools’ drug policies and how they handle ADD/ADHD medications. These drugs are frequently stolen and abused – if you see the possibility of this happening, raise the issue with the school management.

 

Know your child’s friends and their parents, and keep track of what they are doing. Unsupervised parties and outings are dangerous – let your child know that, for his own safety, he should remain sober and stay away from friends who are drunk. If he doesn’t cooperate, enforce consequences.

 

5. Help him build a support system for himself

 

ADD/ADHD children have difficulties in social interaction, and sometimes they get along better with older people than with their peers. So cultivate your own friendships and let him see how you handle relationships so that he can learn from you. Get to know your extended family and neighbors, and be friendly with his teachers and those who are good with him.

 

 

Children with severe inattention, or with what are called Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Conduct Disorder often do worse than children with just the hyperactive and impulsive symptoms, and those with these ‘co-morbidities’ are more likely to abuse drugs as well. But all of them can do better when parents are consistently involved in their lives, clearly show what is acceptable and what is not, and help them achieve in whatever they do best.

 

Tags: Attention Deficit Disorder | Attention Deficit Disorder | alcohol and drug abuse | alcohol and drug abuse | kids with ADD/ADHD | kids with ADD/ADHD | ADD/ADHD

Let’s say you, or your child’s teacher, have been having problems managing your child. With the child-raising climate being what it is today, the idea may soon come up: does she have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder? Once the suggestion is made, it may not be too difficult to get a diagnosis because a lot of ADD/ADHD symptoms listed in DSM IV are just extremes of normal, and what qualifies them as a disease is their frequency and severity.

But as a parent, or a teacher, you want something accurate that will help your child. This article is about how responsible, comprehensive testing for ADD/ADHD by someone looking for an accurate diagnosis should work. It is more than the half-hour interview with a checklist and pencil in hand that sometimes (or often?) results in someone being called ADD/ADHD.

I’ve listed out the steps that every doctor or psychologist who diagnoses ADHD should follow.

Step 1: Checking that there is no physical problem

While it is true that most people diagnosed with ADD/ADHD have no physical problem, it is vitally important that everyone being screened for the disorder is checked for a range of physical problems including vision, hearing, sensory integration and thyroid issues, and epilepsy. When the attention-deficit and hyperactivity is caused by these physical problems, you can expect a dramatic improvement with the correct treatment. If absence epilepsy, characterized by periods of ‘absence’ when a person stops movement and stares into space – is left undiagnosed, it may become life-threatening if, for example, the child receives a driving license before he outgrows the disease.

For this reason, it is important that a medical doctor be involved in the process of testing for ADD/ADHD – it should not be just the psychologist working with a pencil and a checklist of problem behaviors.

Step 2: Checking the medical, social, educational and psychological history

This can throw up some important clues about the cause of the attention-deficit or hyperactivity, and again if these causes can be dealt with your child’s behavior will improve a lot without medication. A doctor would want to know about, for example, the conditions of pregnancy and birth, major illnesses or injuries, if the child reached all major developmental milestones at the correct age, and her sleep habits. Do her parents have any mental illness? Did they have learning or behavior problems? Is there any mental illness, substance abuse, or criminal behavior in the family?

He will also want to know how she is doing in school. Does she have friends? How is she temperamentally? Has she difficulty in hand-eye coordination? Has she had episodes of depression or any major traumas? All of these have a bearing on how the problem behavior is to be treated: if she is inattentive because she is depressed, conventional ADHD stimulant drugs are the wrong treatment.

Step 3: Interviewing

Children being assessed usually behave well during interviews, and the psychologist or doctor knows that if they have been sent for an evaluation this good behavior is probably not typical. He is looking for other things when he interviews the child and her parents: an assessment of self-esteem, coping strategies, and the home, social and school environment of the child.

The parents’ consistency and unity in their disciplining, their patience or lack of it, their affection or lack of it – all have an effect on how they perceive their child and how she will perceive herself. When parents are absent, or neglectful, or abusive, many children show all the classic symptoms of ADD/ADHD. Other children may feel lost in school because they cannot understand what the teacher is teaching, or they may be bored because they see no challenge. In these cases consultation with the teacher and parent-skills training will improve life at home and school.

Step 4: Doing the ADD/ADHD tests

There are a lot of ‘tests’, questionnaires and other rating scales, for ADD/ADHD. Many of them are available online, free or for a price. These tests must be always used along with the other steps outlined here if they are not to end up misleading rather than enlightening.

Questionnaires in which parents and teachers rate behavior tend to emphasize the negative, and if he or she is biased or is not in a good mood, a child is likely to end up with a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD. When adults rate themselves in tests for adult ADHD, they usually get the result they want by unconsciously checking the answers they know support their opinions.

Other tests like Connor’s continuous performance test and the Test of Variable Attention (TOVA) claim to measure a child’s performance during an actual task of concentration. But again, lack of sleep, coffee, cola and even practice in playing computer games (because these testes are often designed like computer games) can skew the results. Lack of sleep can also affect the results of brain imaging, and it is because we don’t know much about such variables that most scientists do not accept brain imaging as a definitive test for ADD/ADHD.

If after all these steps, your child does seem to have ADD/ADHD, you need to move on to think about treatment. Does she need medication, or a modified environment, or psychotherapy and social-skills training? But that is beyond the scope of this article – more on that later!

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