We’ve discussed how squirming, fidgeting, and moving around can actually improve the focus of kids with ADHD, but were you aware that hyperactivity can also boost working memory? Although hyperactive behavior is normally associated with restlessness and boredom, a new study by Mark Rapport and colleagues in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology suggests a link between fidgeting and improved memory.   Unlike previous research on the subject, which used  flawed methodology like subjective ratings from parents, Rapport’s study used objective methods for measuring hyperactivity and its impact on working memory.

The study required the participation of 12 boys with ADHD and 11 boys without; all were between the ages of 8 and 12.  Each participant engaged in the control activity and the experiment activity. The control activity required children to make drawings of anything they like using Microsoft Paint – a task that requires little working memory.  The experiment activity involved playing two memory games. In the first game, the boys were shown a random series of numbers and a capital letter for 800 milliseconds. The boys were then asked to recite the numbers and letter. The second game involved nine squares. In each round, red and black dots appeared on random places on the square for 800 milliseconds at a time. At the end of the round, the boys had to identify the position of the dots in the order they appeared.

Throughout both activities, each participant wore an actigraph – a watch-like device that measures intensity of movements and acceleration. The actigraph was worn on both ankles and the wrist of the nondominant hand. As the boys accomplished both tasks, the actigraphs took samples of their movement 16 times per second.

In both tasks, boys with ADHD were more physically active than those without. However, both groups displayed a two-fold increase in hyperactivity when they performed memory tasks (relative to their activity level when using Microsoft Paint).  They swiveled around in their chairs and fidgeted more in general.  The researchers suggest that hyperactive behavior might be necessary to stimulate central executive processing, and becomes excessive when children try to compensate for under-arousal. More research is needed to see if increased physical activity also improves performance quality. Of course, girls with ADHD should be included in future studies as well.

So if your child fidgets often while doing homework and other tasks that need focus, let him be. Provided that the actions aren’t destructive, hyperactive behavior can actually improve the concentration and working memory of kids with ADHD.

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Nothing damages a parent’s trust and creates tension more than habitual lying from their child.  It’s normal for kids to tell the occasional white lie, but compulsive lying is a habit that many children with ADHD can’t get away from.  Lying tends to come with ADHD symptoms, especially if the child has not learned to control them.  For instance, a child with ADHD might lie because his distractible nature made him abandon an important task; when asked about his progress, he quickly saves face with a lie.

However difficult it might be to deal with this behavior, try to understand that most ADHD kids who lie don’t mean to be dishonest.  All children (even those without ADHD) keep a few lies in their tool boxes of responses.  It’s just that children with ADHD (and related disorders) take longer to realize that lying is not a desirable trait for relationships and character building.  Disciplining your child for his or her untruths is one way to stop the habit, as is finding a way to treat the symptoms that triggered the lie in the first place. Meanwhile, here are a few tips that can help you get your child to tell the truth.

Learn the difference between lying and exaggeration

Children often exaggerate, and kids with ADHD are no exception – they have colorful minds and view the world differently from other children.  They are also more impulsive and spontaneous when they tell stories or explain situations.  Try not to confuse this with lying; a child’s embellished stories are a sign of a creative imagination rather than the inability to tell the truth.

Don’t call your child a liar

Lying is a frustrating habit to deal with, but try not to verbally or mentally brand your child a “liar”. A liar is part of a person’s essence – it is something a person is.  The occasional lie does not mean your child is a liar.  It is a response your child chose, but it is not a permanent part of who he or she is.

Show the consequences of lying

Take away privileges if you catch your child lying – and stay consistent. For instance, if your child loses two days worth of TV privileges for lying, make sure that he or she goes nowhere near the TV for exactly two days.  At the same time, don’t promise your child lighter consequences if he or she tells the truth. For instance, let’s say your child broke the window and owned up to it, but tries to wiggle his way out of punishment by pointing out that he told the truth.  This is a type of plea bargaining that confuses children. Praise your child for telling the truth, but he should be held accountable for breaking the window.

Be honest about your doubts

If you’re not sure whether or not your child broke the window, be honest. Say, “I don’t think that’s how it happened.” This way, you don’t accuse your child of lying outright; you are simply sharing what you think about the situation.

Don’t assume that your child is lying

It’s hard to trust a child who has lied more than once, but try not to assume that your child is lying every time.  Your child will lose the motivation to tell the truth; there’s no incentive for being honest if you’re going to assume that what he or she says is a lie.

Transforming behavior takes time

Lying is a habit that won’t disappear overnight, especially if your child is still adjusting to treatments.  Don’t focus on eliminating the habit; instead, look for small improvements in your child’s behavior. As your child’s symptoms improve, he or she will regain more control over behaviors and actions, and the lying will eventually diminish.

Do you find yourself changing your child’s sheets too often because of tiny “accidents” that happen at night?  While there is little scientific evidence to show that one causes the other, doctors and experts observe that ADHD and bedwetting (or enuresis) often occurs together.  Will bedwetting go away if the ADHD symptoms are treated? Or will it require its own interventions?

Every one of us has wet the bed at least once in our lives.  When a baby’s bladder gets filled, the muscles contract automatically and the baby urinates.  As the baby grows up and his nervous system matures, the circuits that connect the brain and the bladder helps a child realize when the bladder is full.  The child is now capable to delay urination until he reaches a proper place to void the bladder.  Often, children learn to control their bladder during the day before they can sleep through a dry night – it’s normal for night-time accidents to occur every now and then.  But when a child is still unable to control the bladder after the age of 5, he or she meets the diagnostic criteria for enuresis. There are four kinds of enuresis, but for now we are interested in nocturnal enuresis, or nighttime bedwetting.

The causes of nocturnal enuresis are not known, but it could be a combination of various factors – delayed neurological development, an over-production of urine at night, or small bladder capacity.  Sometimes, enuresis is caused by emotional trauma or anxiety.  Research shows that having ADHD is also a risk factor for enuresis.  A study in the Southern Medical Journal looks at a large group of 6-year-old children with ADHD to another group of 6-year-olds without the disorder. They found that the kids with ADHD are 4.5 times more likely to experience daytime enuresis and 2.7 times more likely to experience nocturnal enuresis.  Similar papers have observed higher rates of enuresis in children with ADHD.

Although enuresis tends to decline after age 5, some children may require separate interventions for the condition. Treating enuresis will involve evaluating the child’s current physical and emotional state.  From there, one of the following interventions will be done:

Behavior modification

Limit your child’s liquid intake at least two hours before bed time and remind your child to urinate before going to bed. Praise your child for sleeping through a night without bedwetting, but do not punish your child if an accident occurs.  When your child wets the bed, make him or her responsible for changing the sheets.

Hypnotherapy

Some therapists have had success using hypnotherapist to help children learn to control their bladder or cooperate with behavior modification techniques.

Neurofeedback

A therapy called neurofeedback can correct any deficits in the brain’s wave patterns, which will help your child control his or her bladder. This is useful not only for treating enuresis, but for ADHD symptoms as well.

Diet

Research shows that food allergies or the chemicals in food can cause ADHD symptoms, including bedwetting. Going on the Feingold Diet (or any ADHD diet that will eliminate the allergenic food) reduces incidences of bedwetting and ADHD symptoms.

Chiropractic care

Some cases of enuresis are caused by misalignments in the tailbone or sacrum. The tailbone starts out as five separate segments until the child reaches puberty, at which the fusion of the tailbone segments begins. It’s possible that a misalignment of the tailbone segments can irritate the nerves connected to the bladder, thereby sending mixed signals and causing uncontrolled urination.  Chiropractic care has been able to treat the spinal causes of bedwetting.  In fact, in the last decades, I have taken care of dozens of children with enuresis alone and children who had a combination of ADHD and enuresis.

My experience has shown that children who are suffering from both ADHD and enuresis respond better to our holistic approach than children with enuresis only. From my perspective, enuresis combined with ADHD are merely symptoms of underlying imbalances in the brain function- we call it a functional disconnection syndrome – that can be treated naturally with an approach such as the Unritalin Solution.

The inattention and hyperactivity plagued by children with ADHD place them at higher risk of getting injured while crossing the street, riding a bicycle, or playing in the playground. They are also more likely to injure more than one part of their body, receive concussions and other head injuries, or get hospitalized for accidentally ingesting poison. Although the average child is also likely to receive these injuries at least once, children with ADHD experience these accidents more frequently. Often, the extent of their injuries tends to be more severe and result in temporary disability or admission to intensive care units.

Researchers peg the occurrence of these accidents to the ADHD symptoms at play and other co-morbid disorders that occur with ADHD. For instance, a child with ADHD may engage in high-risk games without thinking of the dangers, or cross the street without looking for oncoming traffic. For ADHD teens that drive, car accidents and other traffic violations are a real concern. In fact, some studies observe that young drivers with ADHD are more likely to have their license suspended due to accidents and traffic violations. Other high-risk behaviors for teens with ADHD are engaging in premarital sex, drug experimentation or abuse, and dropping out of school.

Of course, the more serious accidents tend to occur if the ADHD is left untreated or if the treatment is insufficient. It’s not enough to simply medicate children and teens for ADHD; one must implement a holistic treatment and teach them injury prevention tactics. Experts recommend taking these safety precautions around children and teens with ADHD:

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In this study, Psychology Professor Mark D. Rapport discovered that children with and without ADHD can sit relatively still when painting on a computer or watching a star war movie.

However, when asked to perform a more complex task, all children became more active. But children with ADHD became significantly more active, moving around in their seats and fidgeting with hands and feet. Children with ADHD became significantly more active – moving their hands and feet and swiveling in their chairs more – than their typically developing peers during those tasks.

The study suggests that children with ADHD become hyperactive to stay alert while doing complex tasks, such as using their memory.

“We’ve known for years that children with ADHD are more active than their peers,” said Rapport, the study lead researcher, whose findings are published in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. “What we haven’t known is why.” “They use movement to keep themselves alert,” Rapport added.

“They have a hard time sitting still unless they’re in a highly stimulating environment where they don’t need to use much working memory.”

This study is very informative. For more than a decade, in the field of chiropractic neurology, we have suggested that ADHD is a result of improper stimulation or activation of specific brain areas. Our brain is mainly stimulated by signals coming from the postural muscle and the spine. So, to activate our brain, we need to activate (move) our body and muscles [the pull of gravity forces the postural muscles to constantly adapt; this is the primary source of information to the brain].

So when all children need to concentrate or stay alert, they increase movement. But since children with ADHD have parts of their brain that is less active than “neurotypical children”, they need to move more!

This is the same as an adult who has been driving for a long time. When fatigue starts to kick in, they move around, fidget or even sing to stay alert.

As chiropractic neurologist, we use the body to increase stimulation to rehabilitate the underfunctioning brain areas and strengthen them. Once those areas are stronger and function better, kids do not need to move as much to activate them. Their hyperactive behavior decreases.

By the way, adhd medications do the same thing, except that they do not truly rehabilitate the brain. This is why their effects stop and the child needs to take medication all the time.

Dr. Rapports suggests “When they are doing homework, let them fidget, stand up or chew gum,” he said. “Unless their behavior is destructive, severely limiting their activity could be counterproductive.”

That’s good advice. But a better advice is to seek help with a chiropractic neurologist so that your child’s weakened brain areas can be rehabiliated naturally once and for all.

To find a chiropractor specialized in chiropractic neurology, go to:

www.acnb.org