Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder is a disorder that impacts a total of 11 percent of children ranging from ages 4-17 and about 4 percent of adults continue to have ADHD. ADHD Awareness month is used to educate the parents of children with this disease, and also young adults who may display signs of ADHD and thus can seek treatment.
ADHD can be present in forms from lower to more severe; within children especially. This can lead to behavioral issues and falling behind in school. Teachers within the school systems who see the behavioral issues and the slowness in class attempt to educate the parents of these children, yet this more often than not leads to misguided information. From the misguided information, parents sometimes will not educate themselves on ADHD or even get their child tested for ADHD but rather will just put them on medication which the children may not need.
In one particular case, a teacher of a kindergarten class was convinced, even sharing with the mother, that one of her students, Maysen Dykman, was just “slow and unreceptive to learning.” Maysen’s mother didn’t listen to this teacher and had her daughter tested. It turned out that she did in fact have ADHD.
While speaking with Maysen, she explained how ADHD affected her personally in many different aspects of life. Including how she learned and could combat ADHD and allow for her to be able to go to school and not constantly struggle to focus. Maysen listens to music to be able to focus on tasks easier. It helps her to tune out everything else going on to allow for her to be able to do her classwork and even take tests.
One of Maysen’s older sisters, McKenzie Dykman, explained something that their family calls shiny object syndrome; which is essentially getting easily distracted by things but then coming right back to the original task at hand and then repeating the cycle again. This was how they explained ADHD to people who don’t have any way of really understanding what the disorder is.
“Maysen had behavioral issues from pre-K to about the fourth grade. It was extremely tedious and there was a lot of ‘Maysen don’t do that,’” Dykman said.
Dykman made sure that Maysen wouldn’t be allowed to use her ADHD as an excuse or a crutch of sorts, she combatted this by setting goals for Maysen, she would set timers for Maysen to be able to finish things in an allotted amount of time. This began to set up a sense of structure for Maysen and now Maysen thrives off of structure and schedules, but does not handle change very well.
This is just an example of how a family became aware on their own and were able to combat ADHD through an individualized treatment approach. The ADHD Awareness Month Coalition are holding a video contest where there is a Viewers’ Choice award given.
While the videos have already been submitted, there is still a chance for your participation through voting. Polls will open Oct. 4. Visit the ADHD awareness month organization site to gain more information.
