Dooley Noted: 6/10/2014
I know it’s hard to believe, but I was an exuberant youth.
My parents let me watch Friday night videos as a child, and I would go to kindergarten class singing the tunes.
As I progressed through elementary school, I found school to be fun at times but generally slow and boring.
So, I got in some trouble and got detention.
I wasn’t a bad kid. I was a bored kid.
We take our exuberant youths and sit them in a classroom, asking them to shush and be still for 8 hours.
When I was a kid, I knew this was ineffective teaching methodology for anyone fiery, like myself.
I was lucky enough not to grow up in the Ritalin age, where they pump kids full of dextramphetamine if they can’t sit still or god forbid, get bored and rambunctious.
We give them a label: ADHD.
I’ve been lucky enough to treat kids with this label. What they all have in common are the following:
1. They are funny.
2. They are brilliant.
3. They are easily bored.
They don’t fit into a mold, so they get a label.
I’m glad my parents never medicated me. But what about the kids that are actually discouraged from attending school UNLESS they are medicated?
Drugs like dextramphetamines are serious business. If you think they’re quite similar to old fashioned street drugs like meth and cocaine, you’d be correct.
There’s a reason why college kids snort ADHD drugs to study all night.
They work.
They have a price.
I remember teaching one child some focusing techniques, and his parents thought I hung the moon. They had shrugged off the drugs, looking for alternatives.
Why aren’t these offered alongside the drugs? Oftentimes, they aren’t even offered as options. The parents always look at me and say, “Why didn’t we know?”
If you’d like to let your child explore his or her unique mind, you can look to different types of therapy that might help.
Movement therapy can be part of it.
As always, it’s your call.
– Dr. Kathy Dooley
More on Movement Therapy for ADHD:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1353611703000878
Drug and natural therapy descriptions for ADHD:
http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/condition/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder