Tips to Focus

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Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  The age long problem of trying to figure out cause/effect is part of the issue of trying to deal with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD.  Are people unable to calm down and focus because of their brain chemistry, or is their brain chemistry created by their inability to calm their mind?

A recent Center for Disease Control study reported by the New York Times stated that an estimated 6.4 million children ages 4 to 17 in the USA have received an ADHD diagnosis.  From the Times article: “Fifteen percent of school-age boys have received an ADHD diagnosis, the data showed; the rate for girls was 7 percent. Diagnoses among those of high-school age — 14 to 17 — were particularly high, 10 percent for girls and 19 percent for boys. About one in 10 high-school boys currently takes ADHD medication, the data showed.”  Sales of stimulants to treat ADHD reached the $9 billion mark in 2012.

Drugging children to get them to focus and behave seems to be the trend, a very costly trend.   What we have learned in the past ten years with information from FMRI’s (functional magnetic resonance imaging) of children’s brains is how rapidly the brain is changing and developing.  Neurologists call this brain development  “brain plasticity”. 

Children are learning how to concentrate and neural pathways are being created in the brain structure for concentration.  We need to ask: are we using drugs to change behavior or our children’s brains?  Surely there is a better way.

A study using FMRI’s on monks’ brains showed that during meditation the monks’ brains changed dramatically, suggesting that mental training changes the structure of the brain. We can literally change our minds, with our minds. 

Leslie Gunterson, a coach for people with ADHD, recommends several strategies in her complimentary e-book, Rock Star Focus, to help any of us bring our minds into focus.  Coach Leslie’s e-book is available at here:

http://coachforadhd.com/resources/everyday-rock-star-focus/

Rock Star Focus List.  Coach Leslie describes how to make a list of things that are on your mind.  When she began this practice during meditation  over twenty years ago, she had a hard time controlling all the thoughts popping in her head.  For the first five or ten minutes she would sit with a legal pad and jot down those random thoughts, using just one word descriptions. As she made her list of erratic thoughts, she felt her mind calm. After her mediation she would go back to the list and create an action plan.  Gunterson found by choosing the easiest items on the list first, her day would stay focused and productive.  Her clients have also found a focus list to be beneficial.

Portable Circle of Focus.  Gunterson coaches her clients to create a circle of focus, a technique that helps generate focus when it is important.  This is an interesting method of designing a mental space where you can connect to your ability to focus.  Gunterson describes how to envision a circle in which to stand and add your positive qualities, along with the character traits you might need to focus and get a job completed, features such as patience, analytical thinking, playfulness, resourcefulness and more.   Feel the need to focus?  Step into your circle to retrieve what you need.  Once you’ve created your imaginary circle it is easy to put it in your pocket and take it everywhere.

Gunterson offers other techniques such as Anchors Away, Dealing With Those Interruptions, and Focusing on the Perfect Moment.  Gunterson shows us that, yes, we can change our minds to help us focus and live the life we desire. These techniques can be used to improve ADHD medication’s effectiveness and can be used in lieu of a dose when medication is unavailable.

Which comes first the chicken or the egg? 

Learn how to focus first.  The mind can calm the body’s chemistry.  Body chemistry will then calm the mind.  With focused adults surrounding them, our children may be able to create the focus they need to live the live of their dreams.

10,000 Steps

10,000 steps.  A step is approximately one-third to one-half an adult or child’s height.  For example, a person six feet tall would cover 20,000 to 30,000 feet or approximately 4 to 5 miles with 10,000 steps.  In contrast, a child three-feet tall would cover two to three miles with 10,000 steps. 

The idea of 10,000 steps began as a marketing slogan in the 1960’s for cardio-vascular fitness using a pedometer.  10,000 steps is a catchy phrase to help us remember that we need a minimum amount of daily activity in order to maintain a basic level of health. 

Recent research shows that children ages six to twelve probably need 12,000 to 15,000 steps per day to maintain fitness and avoid weight gain.  This translates to the equivalent of two to two-and-a-half hours of walking per day.  Those of us who exercise less than 5,000 steps per day are at risk for diabetes and obesity.

Walking, running, bicycling and swimming promote important aspects of cardio-vascular, aerobic, mental and brain development.  As oxygen levels increase through activity, the work of the body and the mind becomes more efficient and effective.

Our children’s activity level affects not just their physical health but also their brain development.  Exercises that incorporate bilateral movements, where the left arm moves with the right leg and the right arm moves with the left leg, aid in the development of the neuron connections in the corpus callosum between the hemispheres of the brain.  These connections in the corpus callosum are created more easily in the child before the age of six.  Movement and brain development are intricately interwoven for all of our lives.

The right hemisphere of the brain is thought to control visual and spatial function as well as emotion and musical abilities.  The right brain is often referred to as the creative side of the brain.  The left hemisphere is involved with the use of logic, language and reasoning.  The corpus callosum acts as the communication device between the hemispheres, in essence, allowing us to use our whole brain. 10,000 steps (read also as basic activity level) help the brain and body to interconnect.

By lengthening the school day and reducing recess times, in our quest to increase our children’s tests scores, we are giving our children fewer opportunities to build and maintain a basic fitness level.  Electronic devices at home vie for our children’s attention and reduce the time that could be used to take 10,000 steps. 

We need to realize that physical activity is more than time taken away from other learning.   Physical activity aids learning.  A minimum level of activity is critical to our children’s long-term health and development, both physically and mentally. 

Let’s remember that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.  A lifetime of health begins with 10,000 steps.   

Let The Sunshine In

How much of the sunshine vitamin, vitamin D3, do we need to maintain optimum health?

The major biological function of vitamin D is to maintain normal blood levels of calcium and phosphorus. Vitamin D aids in the absorption of calcium, helping to form and maintain strong bones. It promotes bone mineralization in concert with a number of other vitamins, minerals, and hormones.

For many years 400 international units per day was the recommended dose.  That is the amount necessary to prevent rickets.  New research is showing that taking 4000 international units for adults per day reduces by half the risk of several diseases—breast cancer, colon cancer, multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes.  Recommended dosage for children under five years is 35 units per pound per day;  for children ages 5 to 10 years the level is 2500 units per day. 

For preventing these major vitamin D-deficiency related diseases, scientists actively working on vitamin D research now believe that blood concentration levels of  40 to 60 ng/ml, and not the previously suggested level of 20 ng/ml, is the appropriate target concentration of 25-vitamin D. Unfortunately, only about 10% of the US population has levels in this 40 to 60 ng/ml range.

It appears that our collective vitamin–d deficiency affects our health, and thus our health care costs, in a big way. 

VitaminD deficiency has also been associated with insulin deficiency and insulin resistance.  Sixty percent of people with Type 2 diabetes have a vitamin D deficiency and this lack of vitamin D is likely to be a major factor for the development of type one diabetes in children.

Clinical studies show that vitamin D deficiency is associated with the four most common cancers—breast, prostate, colon, and skin.  Obesity, as well as arthritis, multiple sclerosis, fatigue, depression, seasonal affective disorder, and the flu, is linked to vitamin D deficiency.

If you live above 30 degrees north latitude or below 30 degrees south latitude, you more than likely don’t have enough sunlight hours per year to main the ideal blood level of 60 ng/ml of 25 OH-D.  The only way to know your vitamin D levels is to test your blood.  You might need 4-5 times the recommended 4000 international units per day.  If you live in the low vitamin D zones testing every six months is recommended. 

The best way to raise your vitamin D level is not with supplements, but by exposing your bare skin to sunshine. However, getting sun exposure is not always practical or even feasible, depending on where you live. In the United States, the late winter average vitamin D level is only about 15-18 ng/ml, which is considered a very serious level of deficiency.  No wonder the flu hits us hard in the winter when our vitamin D levels are low.

Luckily for our budgets, vitamin D tablets cost around a nickel a piece, or about a dollar and a half a month.  A vitamin D test runs between $50 to $75.

The discovered benefits of vitamin D in the past few years may hold a big key to our immediate and long-term health.

Let the sunshine in and if you don’t have sunshine, let vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin, into your daily diet.

Sugar Blues

When we first got married, my husband’s habit was to drink a 16-ounce glass of orange juice for breakfast.  To that we added pancakes with maple syrup.  During my honeymoon year I found that by ten o’clock in the morning I was nauseous and sweating.  After weeks of these episodes, off I went to the doctor, only to discover that I had low blood sugar.  My newlywed diet was too high in sugars so I made an effort to avoid them.  When I succumbed to the siren call of a donut, I felt bad.

As I was in college at the time, I took advantage of the medical library as well as my chemistry teachers’ brains to try to understand the biological processes that occur with the metabolism of sugar.  I learned that sugar, especially in the form of fructose, wasn’t good for me.  At all.

What I’ve discovered over the past couple of years due to personal health challenges, re-emphasizes my early understanding of the trouble with sugar.  Wherever I travel I see young children who are overweight.  Years ago when I noticed this trend, I thought it was about overeating and not exercising.  Too much time in front of the tube, I thought.  But new information informs me that sugar consumption may be the biggest factor in our children’s and our own tendencies to be more heavy than healthy.

Gary Taubes’ writings introduced me to Rob Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California.  Lustig’s 90-minute YouTube video, Sugar:The Bitter Truth, explains the metabolic process of how the body breaks down sugar.  The liver’s inability to break down the sugar in our body creates “metabolic syndrome”, which is a result of insulin resistance, which appears to be a direct result of consumption of sugar.  Metabolic syndrome can affect those of normal weight as well as those who are obese.  Evidence points to the upswing in chronic disease—diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, and more—as being directly related to metabolic syndrome and sugar consumption.

What is a safe level of sugar consumption, you may ask?  The American Heart Association now recommends that you keep added sugars to less than 5% of your calorie intake. That's about 25 grams or 6 teaspoons per day for an average-sized adult.  For a three year old that figure goes down to 15 grams of sugar per day. Lustig also recommends less than 25 grams per day. 

One teaspoon equals 4 grams of sugar.  That’s a sugar cube.  A 12 ounce soda, 39 grams.  A large orange, 23 grams.  A cup of applesauce, 22 grams. A half cup of premium ice cream, 21 grams.   A toaster pastry, 17 grams.  As you can see, it is pretty easy to unwittingly eat more than 15 to 25 grams of sugar per day.  Visit sugarstacks.com to find sugar levels in the foods you eat. 

I encourage you to watch Lustig’s video or read his recent book, Fat Chance.   He gets into some technical information in his video, but don’t let that deter you.  Lustig gets his message across even if you don’t understand the chemistry.  There are shorter versions of his talk available, as well as a children’s version.

Sugar induced metabolic syndrome is causing hundreds of billions of dollars of unnecessary health costs per year, as well as untold heartache in our families when someone is diagnosed with an illness such as diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, or arteriosclerosis.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be addressing profound ways to change and protect the health of our children and ourselves in ways that are virtually cost-free.

Don’t sing the sugar blues.  Find a way to jazz up your diet on less than 25 grams of sugar per day.  

Time Out Or Time To Think?

Isolating children when they don’t meet our expectations of behavior is one method of implementing time-out.  Using time-out may be one of the most popular discipline methods used by parents today.  Carl Larsson, the Swedish artist, did a painting in 1897 of an older boy sitting in time-out.  The time-out technique has been around for a long time, sometimes used in a positive way, but much too often used in a punitive way.

How can we know if our time-outs are punitive or positive?

If we send a child to sit in the corner or tell them to “go to your room” and our intention is to motivate the child to act differently using shame or guilt, we are using time-out as punishment.  When we try to use guilt and shame to make our children change we fall for the faulty assumption that making our child feel bad about their behavior will teach them how to act differently.  More often than not our punitive agenda has our children sitting and thinking that they are “bad”, or thinking of ways of how not to get caught next time, or thinking of ways to get even.

Positive time-out can help our children learn to calm their emotions and learn to choose how they will behave.  Using time-out as a learning tool gives our children time to cool-off from a frazzling situation and time to regroup to try again.  For the child under six years old, many emotionally charged moments involve being too tired, too hungry or too over-whelmed with a new situation.  We need to deal with those issues with other methods from our parenting toolbox before positive time-out.

What does a space for a positive time-out look like?  First, children should be involved in creating a spot in your home that will help them regain their composure.  This place may be a corner or chair in their bedrooms or your family room with pillows, music, books, stuffed animals, or favorite toys. Let them give their space a name.  A three-year-old student of mine called his rocker his “rock it away chair”. 

Once you’ve worked with your child to create a safe and calming space, let them know that when you see them needing some time to calm down or “rock it away” you’ll say something like, “Would it help you if you could go to your special place?”  If your child says, ‘No,” you can offer to go with them.  If that offer is refused, you can always go to your own space to calm down!  You’ll be modeling how to remove yourself from a situation in order to regroup.

  

The purpose of positive time-out is to help a child learn to calm his or her emotional brain and regroup.  It is not about punishing our children for their behavior, but a tool to help them learn to control their emotions and redirect their behavior, independently.  Using positive time-out should not be the only parenting tool in your toolbox, or the one you pull out first when situations get a bit tense.  Also, positive time-out is more appropriate for children over three years of age, depending on developmental needs. 

If you choose to use time-out, always ask yourself, “Am I doing this to punish or instruct?”  With that answer you’ll know if it is an appropriate parenting tool.  We all—children and adults--do better when we feel positive about the direction we are headed.  Guilt and shame are not the motivators we want to use.

Next Week:  Who Started It?    

Kids Talk On-line Workshops

Do you wish you had the proverbial eyes in the back of your head?

Do you want to help children overcome the obstacles in their lives?

Are you ready to read the road signs of on-track development?

Read more about  

Discovering the Secrets of Observation 

Thursday, May, 2, 2013

Welcome Mistakes

“Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment,” read the sign in the gift shop.   Since mistakes are at the forefront of learning, it is best if we can be friendly with error and welcome mistakes for the learning opportunities that they are.

What have most of us been taught about mistakes? That they are to be avoided, that they are bad, and you are stupid if you make a mistake. Or if you make a mistake you’ll be punished, yelled at, or worse.

The reality is that someone who doesn’t make any mistakes is not alive. If you are living, you will make mistakes. Wouldn’t it be helpful if our children, along with us, learn to see mistakes as the learning opportunities that they are? Wouldn’t it be helpful to learn to be open and honest about our shortcomings in order to learn and grow versus trying to hide our misjudgments with lying and subterfuge, all the while feeling inadequate, perhaps for a lifetime?

How can we, then, be friendly with error?

We can model being kind to ourselves when we make an error. Too many times when an incident occurs we delve into self-deprecation. “I’m so stupid.”   What would our children learn if we laughed at our mistakes and said, “I’ll have to figure this one out!”

When we are sorry for an outcome, either intentional or accidental, we can try to make amends by apologizing. An apology consists of four steps. First, say you're sorry. Secondly, ask how to help the other person get back to normal or feel better. Offer to change behavior, so the incident doesn't reoccur. Finally, ask for the apology to be accepted. 

A sincere apology might sound like this:

''I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to run into you. Are you hurt? How can I help you? I'll be more careful about where I'm going. Will you accept my apology?''

Show your children that it is fine to ask for assistance when an error in judgment occurs. Throw the ball accidentally into the neighbor’s yard? Call on the phone or knock on the door to ask for the neighbor’s help in retrieving the ball. Model that making a mistake doesn’t mean that the mistake maker is bad or irresponsible. Show that trying to correct our error, being accountable, is a first step in using our mistakes to learn and grow.

Let’s be friendly with mistakes and show our children how to laugh and learn from errors, how to apologize and how to ask for help.

Next Week: Time Out Or Time To Think?   

Kids Talk On-line Workshops

Do you wish you had the proverbial eyes in the back of your head?

Do you want to help children overcome the obstacles in their lives?

Are you ready to read the road signs of on-track development? 

Read more about  

Discovering the Secrets of Observation 

Thursday, May, 2, 2013

Know Who Your Children Are

            Summer nights, years ago, right before the news there was a public service announcement: It's 10 o'clock, do you know where your children are? 
 

            What I'd like to hear today is this: Do you know who your children are?

            When parents or grandparents contact me asking for advice about how to handle a child who is being defiant, lying, disrespectful...the list goes on...I usually respond first with, "Did you ask your child why they are behaving in this way?"

            To understand our children, to know who they truly are, we have to watch, we have to ask questions, and we have to listen to those answers even if we might not care for the responses.  

            Usually children who are having difficulties feel a bond of trust has been broken with an important adult in their lives. This can be a difficult thing to hear in reply to our questions.   A difficult child is a discouraged child. There are four key ways we discourage our children with negative expectations, focusing on mistakes, perfectionism and over protection.  

              If we can ask "why" five times we will usually uncover a fundamental truth or root cause of a problem. In the process we may also discover what our children are thinking and feeling. We might uncover our children's values, their hopes, their dreams, which may or may not be our hopes, values and dreams for them.  

            We also have to respect our children and their potential to learn and grow from the challenges they face.   "I trust you will make a good decision," is a powerful statement of respect to our children. We have to have faith that our children will respond with ability when the time comes. We need to believe that our children are miraculous beings living on a planet that hurls through space at 1.3 million miles an hour in the Milky Way Galaxy. Our children's potential is cosmic in its proportions.  

            Eight year-old Sarah lied to her parents. Sara didn't tell the truth about taking a bath, eating her breakfast, turning in her homework and other things. Jim and Martha used the five why's technique to try to discover what Sarah was thinking and feeling.  

            "Sarah, your teacher called and said you hadn't turned in your homework all week long," Martha said. "Why would you tell me that you did your homework and turned it in?"

            "Because I didn't want to turn it in," Sarah said.  

            "Why wouldn't you want to turn in your homework if you had finished it?"

            "I just didn't," said Sarah.  

            Seeing that this line of questioning wasn't productive, Jim said, "Did you realize that by telling your mom and me that you turned in your homework when you didn't, that you lied?"

            "I didn't lie."

            "Why would you say you didn't lie?" said Jim.

            "Because no one asked me if I turned in my homework. I didn't lie. I didn't say anything," Sarah said.

            "Why wouldn't you tell us about your homework?" Martha said.  

            "Because you'd get upset."

            "Why do you think we'd get upset?" Martha said.

            "Because I don't want to go to mean old Mrs. Jones class next year. If I don't turn in my papers I'll flunk and I can stay in my class."

            In a few minutes Jim and Martha had uncovered some of Sarah's thinking and feelings in a way that a lecture or punishment could never do. Know who your children are by using respectful methods of watching, questioning and listening to understand their hopes, dreams, values, thoughts and feelings.  

Next Week: Welcome Mistakes  

Kids Talk On-line Workshops

Do you wish you had the proverbial eyes in the back of your head? Do you want to help children overcome the obstacles in their lives? Are you ready to read the road signs of on-track development?  Read more about   Discovering the Secrets of Observation  Thursday, May, 2, 2013