Expert: Sharon Crandall - 2/24/2005

Question
I have some questions about two of my kids that are on ritilin.

First, has it been found in studies that if ADD children were place in a loving, structured envirnoment, either in school and/or home, that there was marked improvement?  For example, if one could arrange it, perhaps in the second half of the day (instead of being in a class) give private tutoring to a child in which he not only learns the normal subjects, but the tutor will help the child become more aware of his deficit and teach him ways to deal with it as well as give him a loving, yet disciplined direction.

Also, since there is more than one kind of medicine for ADD and since there appears to be some strong evidence of short term and long term negative symptoms, why not just alternative with different types of medication?

Thanks
David

Answer
Dear David,

I am not clear whether you are a parent or a teacher but here goes.  My expertise in on innate personality traits that affect learning.  In my report/small book, I list all the so-called symptoms of ADD and explain how they fit the description of innate traits.  Here are a few:

Body style - the child with a long torso and short legs is built to move around and is very uncomfortable sitting for long periods of time

Physical Motive/Restlessness - some children are very pronounced on this trait that inclines him to need to move around a lot

Low Concentration:  Some children are built to change focus quickly, rather than concentrate for extended periods, thus easily distracted

Very High Concentration:  Gets absorbed deeply in thought and doesn't hear directions from teacher easily

Wide Tolerance:  Difficulty in focusing on what is in front of him.  Easily distracted, very general, difficulty in getting to the specifics.  Tends to live in la-la land.

Interest:  People are mentally stimulated by either People, Information, or Things.  The People Interest child is very social and has to work extra hard to learn because of the lack of stimulation in that area.  Likewise, the Things Interest is mentally stimulated only by hands on working with tangibles.

High Mental Ceiling:  Gets so involved with the abstract and has difficulty in bringing his high intelligence down to a 1,2,3, level

Low Analytical:  Acts without thinking

Physicalness:  The high inclination to react to everything on a physical level.  Inclines the child to jump, lurch, grab, run, etc. at any stimuli.

In all the children, but one, who I have analyzed have had traits that incline the behavior that is described in ADD symptoms.  

Another very important fact that psychologists know but somehow to not emphasize, is that the frontal lobes do not fully develop until around age 25.  The frontal lobes is where cognitive thinking takes place.  This is where the child is capable of thinking things through before acting.  This means that all children act on impulse, rather than conscious thought.  However, the children who have traits that lend themselves to being more analytical and learning then have the advantage because more of their impulses are to sit down and learn, whereas the child who is built to be more physical and think things through less, are at a distinct disadvantage in the current classroom setting.

So, in answer to your question.  Many of these children have proven to much better in a home-schooling setting because of the individual attention and because the child can learn in various ways more easily.  Children who are failing actually thrive in this environment and are doing well scholastically.  Thus, a half day of private tutoring would probably be very advantageous if the instructor would learn about these traits and help the child accordingly.  

In some schools that understand the various needs of children place a painted line or tape around the desk so that the active child can move around within the lines while doing his work, or work up at a ledge to fill the high need to move around.  In some children, their brains actually work better and sharper when they are physically moving.

Some schools also do physical exercises that help develop the brain.  

I will give you one example of a child who was helped by understanding just one trait.  This child was failing in school even in the early grades.  He was extremely high on the trait of Impetuous, a trait not mentioned above.  The inclination is for the child to talk impulsively without thinking and has difficulty hearing because his mind races ahead to what he is going to say next.  He was taken to a Personality Science practitioner who recommended that the child be made to keep silent for 30 minutes per day. After a day or so, he came running in to his mother exclaiming that there were birds singing in the trees.  He had been so busy with his mind racing ahead that he had never heard the birds sing.  He started improving immediately in school as he learned to listen.  I sorrow when I think of how today he would probably have been put on these dangerous drugs being given to children.

These children can learn discipline but they need to start out with short time periods and build to long time spans.  Also, they can learn by doing things like jumping on a mini-trampoline with tapes playing into earphones to learn many things that have to be memorized.  

Also, some children simply need more hands on learning projects until their brain develops more.  To brand a child as deficit when it is really just innate traits that are also their gifts.  All the above traits are gifts that give the child talents in other directions, rather than being "eggheads".  People with low Concentration have the potential to be excellent as Sport casters, or managers where they need to oversee a lot of operations where he needs to change focus quickly.  

The highly physical person's gifts are obvious in occupations that require a lot of physical activity.  Wide Tolerance is a gift of seeing the big picture and the overall planning necessary for some businesses, plus are usually good at public relations.

I could go on and on and express the gifts of these children who are now branded as being defective in some way when their traits are just gifts that do not lend themselves to sitting for hours in a chair.

I do hope this helps.  Please feel free to respond.  

Sharon Crandall
Certified Personality Consultant