From: elg@elgamy.jpunix.com (Eric Lee Green)
Date: 28 Dec 92 23:43:26 CDT
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: Hyperactivity info sought
Distribution: world
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <1992Dec28.113620.1@us.oracle.com>, by apurmal@us.oracle.com:
>      My son has been diagnosed as being hyperactive by a pediatric
> neurologist.

"hyperactive"?

As far as I know, that particular term isn't commonly used anymore. If a
pediatric neurologist uses a term, it is generally "Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder" or something along those lines. Same "disease" as
back when my friend Tom was diagnosed as "hyperactive". Different "cause"
nowdays (back when Tom was diagnosed, hyperactivity was thought to stem
from "minimal brain damage", i.e., brain injury that didn't show up on
X-rays). Nowdays they say it's caused by brain chemical abnormalities,
rather than defective brains, and includes by definition an attention
deficit disorder. I haven't the foggiest notion, myself. All I know is that
I teach kids with this diagnosis, and that they have special needs which I
must meet in order to teach them.

> 1.  Is there a Hyperactivity FAQ for this newsgroup, and if so would
>     someone who has it please contact me?

I'd suggest the ADD mailing list. To be added, send mail to
add-parents@n7kbt.rain.com, with a message body of

    SUBSCRIBE ADD-PARENTS <your address>

> 2.  If you've read books on hyperactivity would you please send me

I'd suggest looking for books about attention deficit disorders. There's
also one entitled _Living with the Active Alert Child_ which you might find
useful.

> 3.  If your child has been diagnosed as hyperactive would you please

I don't have an ADHD child, but I teach them. The kids I teach are those
who did not respond to medication, and who could not function in a regular
classroom. I.e., we're talking about severe kids here. What I find is that
their behavior can be managed such that they can accomplish any task --
under certain conditions.

First, the environment must be extremely structured, such that they know
exactly what to do and no distractions are available to take their mind off
of it. Thus my classroom is fairly business-like and doesn't have a lot of
busy "brightwork" to distract the kids (e.g., my cursive alphabet strip is
just black letters on a white background, rather than the cutesy stuff that
many elementary school classrooms have). An ADHD kid, in order to do
schoolwork, must be explicitly sat down at a desk and not allowed to get up
until the work is finished -- and no other entertainment must be allowed in
the meantime. Otherwise, the kid gets distracted, goes and looks at
something else, and ends up bouncing around like a beach ball from
interesting thing to interesting thing in his room. For motivational
purposes it is useful to reward an ADHD child for working diligently for 3
minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever period he can remain on task for
(gradually increasing the period until it is something reasonable, like 30
minutes). Note that rewards don't have to be chocolate chip cookies or
M&Ms... a hug, or a "Whoa, good working, guy!" can be just as rewarding if
you and your child have a close relationship.

Secondly, from what I can tell, each impulsive behavior must be
individually trained. Ordinary kids generalize -- they "learn self control"
(i.e., they generalize from a few particular stimulae to a whole class of
stimulae and learn the behavior of "stop and think" for that whole class).
ADHD kids do not appear to form such a generalization, or perhaps it simply
takes longer. For example, I have trained a moderate-ADHD child to raise
his hand and wait to be acknowledged, rather than blurting out things in
class. I trained this behavior via positive behavior modification -- giving
him a plastic coin for each time he raised his hand. (He enjoyed counting
them and comparing his count to other kid's count and playing with them and
etc... so I didn't need to make them tradable for priviliges, like I'd
originally planned). He still participates highly in classroom discussions
-- but now he raises his hand and waits to be acknowledged first. BUT: this
one trained behavior did NOT generalize to timeout, where timeout rules are
to sit quietly in the timeout chair in the corner and look straight ahead
(i.e., into the corner). He kept looking around to see what he was missing
every time he got a stimulus. Thus I had to train that behavior seperately
-- i.e., "ignore all stimulae while in timeout". And so on, and so forth.
Behavioral techniques form "habits", which die out very slowly. I've
noticed that in the ADHD children in my classroom, habits die out much
faster than in regular children. Thus I must apply an intervention from
time to time to refresh the habit. Still, it's quite doable.

But that's a far cry from shouting at a kid, "For cryin' out loud, stop and
think before you act!". You can easily train him to "stop and think" before
individual PARTICULAR acts... i.e., make it a habit... and hopefully once
you train sufficient particular acts that way, he'll generalize to more
behaviors... but you can't just tell these kids to control their
impulsivity. It doesn't work. Behavioral techniques do work, but they're
quite cumbersome, since you must train individual behaviors. Environmental
manipulations do work, but must be enforced consistently or else they are
useless. It's not an easy job, in other words, for the people responsible
for the child's well-being. But it's a doable one. I wish you luck.

 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.jpunix.com   Dodson Elementary
 (713) 664-6446                             Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"