Clinical symptoms of ADHD.
1. Attention deficit.
Children have difficulty concentrating and always stop halfway through something, even when playing games. Any audio-visual stimuli in the environment can distract their attention. After the child enters elementary school, the symptoms are more obvious in the classroom, sitting in the classroom is always looking around, distracted, concentrating on the lecture time is very short, they can only sit comfortably for a moment, whether watching comic books or watching television, then have to get up and walk.
2. Over-activity.
Children are often active from childhood, and some are even particularly active in the fetal period. With the development of body functions after birth more restless. After learning to walk, they don’t like to sit again, and after learning to climb stairs, they crawl up and down constantly. When they enter kindergarten, these children are not able to sit on the small stool at the normal required time. When they arrive at school, most children have increased restrictions on their activities due to constraints, and hyperactivity is more pronounced in children with ADHD. They are constantly moving during class, even getting up and walking around the classroom without permission. As soon as school is over, they rush out of school like arrows. Even at night, they are often tossing and turning, grinding their teeth, and talking in their sleep. About half of the children with ADHD will have uncoordinated movements and will not be able to do fine motor movements such as tying buttons and shoelaces, and will not be able to use scissors.
3. Perceptual impairment.
manifesting as visual-a-motor impairment, spatial location perception impairment, inability to discriminate between left and right, frequent backward shoe wear, auditory integration difficulties and visual-auditory conversion difficulties, etc.
4, emotional and behavioral disorders.
Children with ADHD are emotionally unstable, extremely impulsive, have weak restraint on their desires, dance and forget when they are excited, and lose their temper and cry when they are slightly frustrated. They often take the initiative to argue or fight with their classmates at school, and behave impulsively without regard to the consequences. For example, they may jump from a high place regardless of the danger, or grab a glass of water when they want to drink, regardless of whether the water in the glass is cold or hot. These impulses sometimes lead to some disastrous behavioral results.
5. Social maladjustment.
The child often shows a stubborn personality, unwilling to be constrained by others or rejecting small partners, so it is difficult to get along with other children of the same age, and has to often find children younger than themselves to play.
6. Learning difficulties.
Although most children with ADHD have normal or near-normal intelligence, their academic performance is generally poor. Since they cannot pay attention in class and do homework, their moods fluctuate easily, which seriously affects learning results. Some disorders in perception can also cause some learning difficulties, such as visual-auditory conversion disorder that makes reading difficult, while spatial location perception disorder and left-right discrimination cannot make children have difficulties in learning arithmetic equations and some arithmetic symbols. Learning activities such as writing, drawing, and crafts can also be severely affected by these perceptual impairments, and a significant percentage of children with ADHD are repeaters.
How to identify ADHD Many parents cannot tell the difference between whether their child is naughty or ADHD. In fact, the following three aspects can be identified.
1, attention: children with ADHD in any occasion, can not focus for a longer period of time, even when watching “Little People’s Book”, “cartoons”, can not concentrate; but the naughty children are different, in looking at the “Little People’s Book”, “cartoons”. But the naughty children are different, in watching “small books”, “cartoons”, can pay full attention, but also hate other children’s interference.
2, the purpose of action: naughty children often have a certain purpose for their actions, and have a plan and arrangements. Children with ADHD do not have this characteristic, their actions are more impulsive and disorganized, there is no end.
3, self-control: naughty children in a serious and unfamiliar environment, have the ability to self-control, can be quiet, no longer noisy and chaotic; ADHD children do not have this ability, often accused of “do not know what to do”.
What should I do if my child has ADHD?
In the past, ADHD was mainly treated with medications such as Ritalin, which could focus the child’s attention for a short period of time and relieve the symptoms of excessive activity, but could not eradicate the disorder and had to be taken for a long time. Therefore, many studies have now confirmed that long-term efficacy can be achieved through biopsychological treatment.
The main treatment methods are the following.
1. Self-control training.
The main task of this training is to let the affected person learn self-behavior control through some simple and fixed self-commands. For example, a simple question for the child to answer, the child is required to command himself to complete the following four actions before answering: stop —— stop other activities and remain quiet; look —— see the question; listen —— hear the request, and finally speak to answer. This method can also be used to control some impulsive behaviors of the affected child. For example, when taking a child across the street, a series of actions such as stopping, looking and listening are required to be completed before crossing the street. Since the commands come from within the child during training, the child’s self-control can be greatly improved once the actions are set in place. In the self-control training should pay attention to the training sequence, task content should be simple to complex, task completion time should be short to long, self-command should also be less to more.
2. Relaxation training.
Using this method to treat hyperactive behavior in children is a new attempt in recent years, and the effect is quite good. Since the body parts of children with ADHD are always under tension for a long time, if they can relax their muscles, the hyperactivity phenomenon will improve. Relaxation training can be done using general relaxation methods or using biofeedback methods under the guidance of the doctor concerned. Training time should be concentrated, can be a series of days, from the morning training until the evening, during which the rest of the time in addition to the child’s meals, rest, the rest of the time to train according to the plan. In the implementation of relaxation training, relaxation for 15 minutes every hour, the child as soon as the relaxation requirements to give material rewards. The remaining 45 minutes can be arranged for the child’s interest in the game, but once the relaxation time must end the game.
3. Support therapy.
This therapy is not effective on its own and is mainly used in combination with other treatments to help the child to relieve emotional depression after frustration and lack of self-esteem caused by learning difficulties. In the implementation process, parents and teachers should encourage the affected children, help them build confidence, and reward them once their condition improves.
4. EEG biofeedback therapy.
Biofeedback therapy is a new type of psychotherapy technique developed on the basis of behavioral therapy. The technology is through the EEG biofeedback instrument will be the child’s body physiological function signal tracing, and converted into “sound”, “light” signal. By recognizing the “signal” to coordinate the body functions, the child can increase the self-control ability, prolong the concentration time, mobilize the child’s initiative, form good behavior patterns, and improve and eliminate the symptoms in the specific, objective and interesting game training. Through relaxation, pleasant thoughts and attention activities, the proportional composition of the brain waves is changed so that the EEG changes in line with the learning requirements and is reinforced by repeated training, and gradually becomes normal brain electrical activity training method. It is mainly used to train the intentional attention of children. It is reported that the long-term effect of improving the attention of children with ADHD is better than drug therapy.
5. Sand tray therapy.
Many children with ADHD are accompanied by certain psychological and emotional problems, sand tray therapy for children with ADHD has a better efficacy, can control hyperactive behavior in the process of placing the sand tray, training children to focus, while for some other psychological and behavioral problems of children can be well corrected.
In addition to the above methods, parents should also pay attention to clarify the nature of the disease, avoid using a rough, indifferent, discriminatory attitude toward children, children with ADHD, should start not to put forward too high requirements, step by step, gradually improve the requirements, in addition to more concern for the needs of children, guide their emotions and behavior, let children participate in social activities and physical exercise, in contact with other children patience Persuade, to discourage some aggressive behaviors, make the child’s life regular, especially when the child is studying and eating, do not distract them, and develop the habit of not having two minds.