ADHD

ADHD can be very trying to parents and children. A lot of children with ADHD can be helped by use of caffeine, I know this sounds crazy but I am here to tell you it can make a huge difference. Of course it does not work the same for all children as everyone is different. However it has improved my daughter tremendously and I do not have to deal with all the nasty side affects of most ADHD medicines. I started doing this right before Christmas break as my daughter was driving her teacher crazy. She just takes 2 oz of mountain dew in the morning right before she goes to school this helps her not get so hyper later in the day. From what I have observed it tends to even her out for most of the day. However some days at around 3pm she gets a little cranky so we give her just a bit more so her mood stays even all day. The time might vary for each child so just be aware of how they are doing.
I like the caffeine because I can control how much she gets and when as she does not need the caffeine when she is home as it does not bother me that she is hyper. I do not want her drinking mountain dew all the time and could choose another drink with caffeine but I like to also use vojo mints. She only has to take 2-3 of these and they act just like the mountain dew they come in citrus, berry sour, and peppermint. She likes citrus the best but some other kids might like the others you get them at 7-elevens and other stores you can look them up online under vojo extreme.
I am not completely sure of why the caffeine works but from my research it changes the way the blood flows to the brain or something to that effect so when in most people it makes them hyper it makes most children with ADHD mellow.

Gifted Students

For this post I wanted to discuss various ways to help students who are gifted but may also have a learning disability. My oldest is gifted mostly in math however she does ok in the other areas except comprehension she does not seem to understand what she is reading. This can cause some problems since she can read on a 9th grade level when she is only a 6th grader. I finally got her to tell me that when she reads she does not picture what the story is about in her mind. They finally tested her and discovered that she does not sequence very well when you give her a list of directions out of order. I found this very frustrating as I have tried to get the schools to test her since she was in 2nd grade. Well at least she is not a high school student so we hopefully can help her with this problem.

When looking for any signs I may have missed that would have told me this was a problem. The only thing I could come up with was she had a severe lack of imagination from a young age. She never liked to play dolls or dress up. She only liked books with pictures and when she got to old for picture books she did not like to read anymore. I think if I had tried to get her to play house more or discussed what was happening during reading time, she might have been better at sequencing. I did discover something a few months ago that might have helped her and kicked myself for not thinking of it sooner. It seems so simple and that is felt stories they use pictures but you have to act out what you are hearing with movable figures so they are really hands on. I thought gosh I could have used paper figures for that matter but they are not as durable. I started using them with my other children and the kids loved them. I also discovered from a teacher at my daughters school that I could have done and am now doing this picture with a sentence game. You have a short phrase that is very descriptive and have the student draw what they think it should look like. This has helped some as now she has to think about what the sentence is saying and we can see what she is really getting out of her reading.
Her math is a different problem all of its own. She can do math like a twenty year old so most math for her age bores her senseless. I have struggled to get the schools to challenge her on a higher level but not had much success.