The brain’s growth is mostly complete by adolescence, but a lot of its vital connections are still being made during the teen years. Next to infancy, adolescence is a period that requires a nutritious diet for healthy brain growth, especially if this brain has ADHD. Diets of the average teenager, however, tend to be sorely deficient in important nutrients and fatty acids.  Teens either eat foods with high levels of hydrogenated fats and saturated fats, or they restrict their food intake in order to stay trim. Here are some ADHD diet tips to help your teenager develop healthy eating habits.

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If there is one ADHD symptom that creates awkward social situations and hurt feelings, it has to be the lack of tact. It’s normal for children of all ages to say what’s on their mind, but those with ADHD are even more likely to have no sense of control over their speech. Regardless of whether or not your child was speaking the truth (and chances are, he or she is probably right), every parent needs to deflect these inappropriate statements. Once the words have been said, someone is bound to get offended and you, the parent, might feel helpless or embarrassed.
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Next to questions about ADHD treatment, many parents turn to me for advice on how to discipline ADHD children effectively.  Although natural treatments will help reduce behavioral problems in the long run, parents have to contend with their children’s stubbornness, hyperactive tendencies, and other misbehaviors today.  Parenting an ADHD child is no easy task. Even the most patient parents end up dropping their compassionate approach for a cycle of nagging, yelling, and punishing, which only seems to make their children misbehave even more.

So how do you get an ADHD child to behave?  As with ADHD treatments, there is no magic bullet or formula to better discipline; each child responds to different techniques. There are a few general guidelines you can follow to keep your child’s misdeeds in check.

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Last week, I talked about how the number of children diagnosed with ADHD has skyrocketed over the last few years, and posited some possible explanations for this phenomenon.  While some might argue that ADHD awareness and overeager doctors contributed to this increase, a new study published in the journal Pediatrics finds that diet and lifestyle parallels the high rate of childhood ADHD cases today.

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If children with ADHD are more likely to get injured in the playground, are ADHD teens of driving age at higher risk for motor vehicle accidents as well?  It seems that the answer is yes.  Teenage bravado coupled with distractibility, impulsivity, and difficulty with self-regulation can make the ADHD driver a force to reckon with on the road.  Even though a teenager with ADHD may have good knowledge of driving rules, applying these rules may be challenging, especially if he or she gets easily overwhelmed by new stimuli, increased responsibility, and distractions from gadgets.

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If ADHD medications like Ritalin are chemically similar to substances like cocaine and amphetamines, does that mean they are addictive? Technically, the answer is no.  Although both Ritalin (methylphenidate) and cocaine stimulate the production of dopamine, Ritalin takes longer to metabolize while cocaine works instantly. For pleasure-seeking recreational users who want the immediate gratification of stimulants, this makes all the difference in the world.  The effects of cocaine wear off faster than Ritalin, causing the user to crave for more drugs to sustain the high. Based on this major difference, experts conclude that ADHD medications metabolize too slowly to be habit-forming – as long as kids and teens take their pills as instructed by their doctor, that is.

But as it turns out, not all teens that use ADHD medications take them as prescribed.  In fact, many of them might not even have ADHD. According to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics, the number of teens who overdosed on ADHD medications rose 76% over the last seven years.

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Summer is no doubt a favorite season for kids of all ages.  There’s no school, there’s no homework, and there’s nothing to do but relax and have fun. You probably think that summer also means a break for you – after all, you don’t have to supervise the kid’s study hour or wake up early in the morning to help them get ready for school. Sounds like a good time to relax and take it easy! That is, until your ADHD kids start complaining that they’re bored or find potentially dangerous ways to amuse themselves.

During the school year, the routine of waking up, getting ready for school, and coming home to do homework keeps many ADHD symptoms in check.  But as soon as the kids are faced with long days of doing nothing, the hyperactive, impulsive, and inquisitive nature of children with ADHD can pose a few problems.  Since ADHD kids require constant stimulation to keep themselves entertained, your child might get bored easily and often.  He or she will probably be more demanding of your time and attention. And since it’s not possible for you to keep your child entertained 24/7, he or she may get into trouble for finding new ways to stay amused. For instance, there was this 8-year-old boy who tried to cut a large tree in the backyard with a hand saw because he wanted to find out the tree’s age.  Fortunately, he was unharmed, but his parents quickly realized that the rest of the summer cannot go by without some sort of plan.

Here are a few tips that will help you plan the perfect summer with your ADHD child.

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Most parents are at a loss as to how to discipline their ADHD child. Your warnings go unheeded, the house rules are ignored, and threats seem to make no difference to their behavior. Managing the behavior of kids with ADHD definitely has its challenges, especially since traditional parenting skills do not usually work on them. But with a little help from experts on ADHD, you might become more effective at helping your child overcome ADHD while keeping their behavior in check. Below are five books that offer handy hints on parenting kids with ADHD.

Parenting Children with ADHD: Lessons That Medicine Cannot Teach

This book offers easily digestible information on how nutrition and certain therapies can improve the concentration, attention span, and behavior control of kids with ADHD. Although the book sometimes advocates the use of medication to treat ADHD, it also offers practical advice on behavior management. The author provides a well-rounded approach to teaching essential life skills, improving school success, and building compassion for others. There are also questionnaires, checklists, and homework at the end of every chapter for easy application.

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Text messaging not only distracts students and frustrates teachers who try to keep their attention. According to a new study, text messaging encourages laziness, impulsivity, and carelessness in adolescents.

Australian epidemiologist Dr. Michael Abramson discovered that text messaging can rewire young people’s brains and train them to become careless. One of the main culprits is a feature called predictive text messaging, where the phone’s software guesses the word the user wants to type and completes it with a keystrokes. It’s fast and efficient, but horribly inaccurate. Experts believe that a developing child’s brain can be vulnerable to this sort of carelessness with frequent use.

In a pioneering study, Dr. Abramson and his colleagues from Monash University in Melbourne examined the cellphone use of 317 non-ADHD adolescents aged 11 to 14. 25% made more than 15 calls a week, and another 25% sent over 20 text message weekly. This data was then compared these to their scores in a battery of computer tests. He observed that students who used text mobile phones accomplished the tests faster, but their answers were considerably inaccurate.

The findings of this study seem to support the observations of cognitive scientist Laura-Ann Petitto from the University of Toronto. She points out that adolescents today are more vulnerable to behaviors promoted by cellphone use because their dependence on these gadgets occurs at a critical age of brain development. During the pre-adolescent and early teen years, the mind is still open, changing, and growing. When confronted by a technology that demands speediness and automatic behavior, it increases the likelihood of making careless errors and impulsive responses.

Dr. Petitto adds that text messaging in particular addresses a brain function that is central to human beings – language. Although text messaging is visual, it also makes use of language, and features like predictive messaging may stunt the language growth of adolescents. Researchers observe that heavy cellphone use makes young people likely to commit spelling errors in everyday words like “occurrence”. They are also more likely to be more tolerant of grammatical mistakes and incorporate these into their lexicon.

Fortunately, young minds are also very resilient. Dr. Pettito says that the bad habits instilled by text messaging can easily be reversed. But first, you need to pry the child away from the cellphone.

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