Editor’s note: I’m often disheartened to find that in many cases educators and parents are quick to unquestioningly trust pharma industry influenced doctors about best treatments for children’s mental and health issues without considering or researching other options. Before taking the advice to drug children it is helpful to get insights from health and wellness coaches like Heather Jones DeGeorge and parenting coaches / counseling experts like Laurie A. Couture who have had great success with helping families find mental and physical health and wellness naturally. I asked DeGeorge to share the top five things families can do for children who have symptoms associated with ADD / ADHD. Here they are.
It’s a familiar scenario: Johnny or Jane (but statistically more frequently, Johnny) can’t sit still in class. Add whatever other “disruptive to the learning environment” things you can think up. Now add the at-home tensions. Nobody needs me to paint a picture of what the world calls ADHD these days. We may all have different pictures in our mind, but remarkably, they are likely to all qualify. The teachers and/or the doctors might tell you to remove sugar and food dyes. MIGHT. But at the end of the day, as recently exposed in a New York Times opinion piece by psychology professor L. Alan Sroufe most doctors are going to offer you a medication. Some schools will bully you into believing that they will not evaluate your child for IEP/504 accommodations without a diagnosis—possibly without first trying medications (both of which are illegal—at a Federal level that overrides the state).
