Ideas For My Pocket: a Support Group for Families: Stopping Attention Problems in their (Tricycle) Tracks!!

ADHD is a widespread problem in our times. We do not know if it is a nature or nurture issue, but regardless, we parents want to do all we can to prevent our children struggling through school due to the inability to pay attention. And we want to do all we can to prevent their need for the drugs that are a consequence!

Some kids may be genetically inclined to learning disabilities. And all kids have different ways of learning. But regardless, we can help each of our children to learn to concentrate and assimilate what is being taught them. We want to give them all the tools possible for success.

The goal is to develop sustained attention without constant rewards. What can we do when they are very young, to help develop attention skills and prevent Attention Deficit?

1. Guard against “Bucket Babies.”

My first couple of babies were put to bed on their tummies. The doctors told us to do so in order that a baby’s spit up would not choke her. In the morning, very early, my babies woke and pushed their heads up from the mattress. It was an automatic tummy time each day. But as the years went by, the new thought was that we must put our babies on their backs to sleep, as that prevented SIDS. It really bothered me to put down my infants on their backs. When I expressed it to the Pediatrician, he commented, “Oh well. When they learn to roll over, the babies can choose how they want to sleep!” Without the early morning “baby push ups,” we now have to make time to put the baby on her tummy to develop those muscles. We also have to guard against too much time in baby carriers, car seats, and swings.

Of course, newborn babies love to be snuggled tight, so carseats and slings and swings are wonderful for that! But as they grow, more and more they should stretch and move and develop new muscles.

Infants who spend too much time in a “containers” suffer developmental delays, according to occupational therapist Charlene Young, who travels the nation urging parents to do more time out on a blanket. "Extensive time in containers limits movement, which causes problems with development," said Young, and she urges parents to especially give their babies “tummy time” even if they cry! Without it, babies are not developing upper body strength.

Tummy time helps babies develop the upper body strength they will need for the rest of their lives to read, to write, to cut with scissors, and even to climb the playground equipment. "It's absolutely vital for development. It supports neck development, which supports the jaw, which supports talking and eating. It supports the neck, which supports the eyes being able to focus together and scan," said Amy Vaughan, an occupational therapist with Burrell Behavioral Health.

Marianne’s baby screamed whenever she put him on his tummy, so she simply picked him back up. As he grew, he had trouble using a crayon, then a pencil, and scissors too. He always had trouble with buttons and zippers. The therapist told her that it was because he had not had enough tummy time, then had skipped the crawling stage. At 8 years old, thanks to early enough intervention, he is now learning to tie his shoes at last. "If I had to do it all over again, I would not have picked him up as soon as he cried on his tummy,” she decided. “It's very important that he was on his tummy and crawled. At the time, I didn't see any problem with it." http://articles.ky3.com/2011-02-23/tummy-time_28623146

2. Guard against too much screen time, and ideally, none before 18 months old.

Do you do what I do? Use the TV or computer to occupy the kids, to give me a minute!

And then feel guilty about it? Well, when I do set limits, it is so helpful to know some of the reasons why. It helps me "stick to my guns" when the kids beg!

My daughters are so good at keeping the baby away from the screen! They wait to put on a movie til the baby is napping, or in the other room. That too, is difficult to stick to--so it really helps to know the why behind it.

Screen time from TV or video games is hard on a child’s attention skills since it changes the scene so quickly. The child does not have the chance to focus on one picture for a sustained time, but must refocus constantly, which is detrimental to developing attention skills.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says children younger than 2 should watch very little TV. The academy also says that after they turn 2, they should watch no more than 1 to 2 hours a day. Instead, to increase attention skills, they recommend doing puzzles and playing games together. Read to them, and show lots of affection in order to help a child calm down and direct his attention. http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/childhood-adhd/preventing-adhd?page=3

“The kind of concentration that children bring to video games and television is not the kind they need to thrive in school or elsewhere in real life,” according to Dr. Christopher Lucas, associate professor of child psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. “It’s not sustained attention in the absence of rewards,” he said. “It’s sustained attention with frequent intermittent rewards.”

Studies have found that children who spend more time in front of the screen are more likely to develop attention problems later on. In a 2010 study in the journal Pediatrics, viewing more television and playing more video games were associated with subsequent attention problems in both schoolchildren and college undergraduates.

The stimulation that video games provide “is really about the pacing, how fast the scene changes per minute,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis , a pediatrician at the University of Washington School of Medicine who studies children and media. If a child’s brain gets habituated to that pace and to the extreme alertness needed to keep responding and winning, he said, the child ultimately may “find the realities of the world underwhelming, understimulating.” Article by Perri Glass, MD http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/health/views/10klass.html?_r=0

3. Sitting still time.

Lana wanted to raise her little girl to be able to sit still in church, so she decided to devote time daily to practicing just that! Lana started when Stella was an infant, gradually spending more and more time sitting on her lap, with nothing at all to play with. What she decided to do was to turn on a church CES broadcast, since it most closely resembled church, with a prayer, a song, and a speaker. Gradually Stella learned to sit for the entire hour. Actually, this is easier to start doing with a very young baby, Lana found.

Stella and Lana have grown to enjoy their lap time, and little Stella has an amazing ability to pay attention and learn. Even today, when Stella is approaching two years old, she calms when her mother puts her on her lap.

4. Read to them early. Books allow kids to learn to concentrate by developing pictures in their minds.

Becky wanted to read to her second child, 10-month old son Ben, but he didn’t seem to like books the way her oldest had. He was too busy playing to bother with looking at the pages and listening to mom read. “What does he like?” asked Grandma. “Trucks!!” Becky answered. “Does he like sound effects,” she asked. “Yes! He’s always making animal sounds or truck sounds. “ So Grandma found him a board book with pictures of trucks. It also had rhyming text with fun sounding words such as “Roar” and “Brmmm!” Ben could hold and even “taste” his new book, and he would be drawn to the cool pictures of trucks and the fun sounds mom makes when she reads it to him! Gradually, he would come to be interested and then fascinated with what’s in a book!

Toddler Randi loved it when Tina read her a favorite book before bed. But when she read a chapter book to the older kids afterward, Randi complained! It was too hard to concentrate to those long chapters. And there were no pictures! But Tina put Randi to bed, and read to the older ones. Gradually, as days went by, Randi quit complaining and started to listen. Mom would still read her a Baby book first. But little by little Randi could concentrate on the chapter book too! By the end of that long book (“The Yearling” by Marjorie Rawlings), Randi could understand and follow the story! She knew what was happening, and even looked forward to what was going to happen next.

There is a special power in the Book of Mormon to help with reading. I learned that for myself when I helped with the Church’s literacy program. I heard of children with difficulty reading and paying attention, when reading the Book of Mormon a little piece at a time, were time and again empowered and by the end, could read!

5. Talk to them face to face.

Even our newborn babies need to hear our voices talking to them. A kindergarten teacher once told me that many of the children in her class arrive without knowing how to carry on a conversation. They have never been talked to, she said. They had been taken to daycare, then sat in front of a screen at home. Those children have so much to catch up, in order to learn.

King Benjamin said, “I would again call your attention, that ye may hear and understand..my words.” Mosiah 4:4. We too can encourage our kids to listen and tune in, by talking to them! They learn from riddles, make-believe, mind games, and just everyday dinner conversation. And of course, our sharing stories, letters, tender mercies, and words of love.

“Avoid multitasking yourself when talking with your child. Make eye contact when giving instructions,” recommends the Mayo Clinic, for attention problems, “and set aside a few minutes every day to praise your child.”

6. The Bottom line: Give children plenty of experiences. Our babies need a network in their brains, in order to relate to what they will be learning. They need to feel the grass on their feet or a hand full of sand. They need to splash in puddles and climb over a boulder, crunch leaves and crawl under a blanket fort. Our kids should listen to music and language and sirens and birdcalls. They could smell the different smells and taste the different tastes. They could watch a tiny insect and a great big semi.

If there is no network of experience, the new things they are to learn “do not compute.” There is simply nowhere to place the new information. But with a myriad of experiences they have learned to pay attention to under their belt, our babies have a wonderful jump start on the learning track.