__ Please take a look at a blog that I wrote that was just posted on a national site where "experts" of different kinds answer questions.  http://www.task.fm/learning-difficulties-in-children

Rich Weinfeld

_Russell Barkley, a leader in the field of ADHD, knows what parents of children with ADHD are up against. He gets it. But he wants to make sure that parents really get it, too. The Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina spoke at an event sponsored by WEG and Alvord, Baker and Associates. Barkley, whose thoughts and opinions about ADHD are sometimes considered controversial, suggested that if parents of children with ADHD understood better that their child/children have a “serious disorder of the executive part of the brain,” that their approach might change for the better.

“SHUT UP,” SAYS BARKLEY, AND THEN BREAK IT DOWN
According to Barkley, parents who have children with ADHD should adopt a specific mantra. Simply put, Barkley says, they need to, “shut up.” ADHD is not an information deficit disorder. “It’s not that if you give them one more piece of information it will finally click,” said Barkley. ADHD is not a disorder of not knowing, it is a disorder of performance, he explains. They know what other people know but they can’t apply it. “It’s not a disorder of what; it’s the using that’s the problem. There is a disconnection in the brain,” espoused Barkley.

TIME WON’T TELL
ADHD is also a disorder of time. That means, “whenever possible, get rid of time,” said Barkley. “Don’t say you have blank number of minutes to do something. They are clueless about what that means. Parents need to be a child’s proxy frontal lobe because their ADHD child’s internal clock is broken. “All future tasks need to be broken into pieces, into baby steps,” said Barkley, “because the future doesn’t exist for people with ADHD. As a parent, you must be proactive, figure out how to create a plan, break down every event, every new situation,” whether its dinner, homework or vacation:
• Create a transition plan. 
• Put the plan on a card with rules on the point of performance.
• Have the child read back the rules
• Tell the child what s/he is going to earn for following the rules in this situation. Offer a reward.
• Explain the consequences of not following the rules.
• Give them something to do. Put something in their hands, these are physical children.
• Give them frequent feedback as they go along.

FORGIVENESS
“You better get good at forgiveness. You better get rid of your expectations because ADHD looks normal but it reduces a child’s age by 30-percent,” said Barkley. “Find a couple of ways for a daily exorcism,” at the end of the day …
• Sit in your child’s dark bedroom and watch him/her sleep.
• Write down everything that went wrong then light a match and burn the paper. Start the next day new.
• Take a photo of the wildflowers s/he picked and hang it up, “because that’s your kid,” said Barkley. “That’s your wonderful kid.”
Remember this, if nothing else. “What matters most about raising a child with ADHD,” said Barkley, “is that someone believed in him, stayed with him and hung in there no matter what to help him get into adulthood.”

By Cari Shane, Writer

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ADHD is a developmental disorder that has been misnamed.  So says Russell Barkley, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina. 

“The name of the disorder, ADHD, is trivial,” explained Barkley who spoke at an event sponsored by WEG and Alvord, Baker and Associates.  “ADHD is a serious disorder of the executive part of the brain,” espoused Barkley, a leader in the field of ADHD, who further clarified that in his opinion the proper name is EFDD: Executive Functioning Development Disorder.

According to Barkley, ADHD is not a psychopathology.  More important, if parents can understand what’s going on “inside” the brain of someone with ADHD, if they can understand what’s driving this disorder, then they will have a much better understanding of how to raise a child with ADHD.