Wild Child

How You Can Help Your Child with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Other Behavioral Disorders

Don Mordasini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317789048
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

How can you help the ADD child in your life? Attention deficit disorder (ADD) is one of the most discussed yet least understood childhood disorders today. Here is a book that delivers the answers people are looking for! Wild Child explains the symptoms, thinking patterns, and behavior of children and adolescents with ADD in terms that are understandable by parents and grandparents, yet relevant to the professionals who deal with these children. It outlines specific strategies that you can use to cope with the vast array of behavior, hyperactivity, and inattention problems experienced by children with ADD. The concepts outlined in Wild Child will show you how to bond more closely with children who tend to alienate them, and help children feel better about themselves, aiding them in their quest to master their specific challenges. Because this book is written from the inside, explaining what the symptoms feel like from the perspective of someone with ADD as well as from the perspective of someone with an ADD child, readers will easily identify with the author. This valuable book will help you and the ADD child in your life by helping you to:

• build your personal confidence in dealing with ADD children and teens through knowledge and understanding
• deal with specific problems in your family or patients
• build esteem and sound emotional infrastructures in ADD children and empower them to take control of their lives

Wild Child features:

• tables and motivational charts that illustrate how to work with an ADD child
• checklists that adults can use if the suggested interventions fail with a particular child

ADD is truly a hidden disability, and the children suffering with it are usually labeled wild, crazy, or stupid. This, of course, leads to low self-esteem and underachievement, but Wild Child stresses that new learning can and does take place when proper motivators are applied. This book provides concrete advice regarding what those motivators are and how and when to use them. Teaching adults to empower the children in their care is an important part of Wild Child. Without appropriate intervention, children with ADD frequently end up chemically addicted or in trouble with the law. This book can help prevent these things from occurring. This is a valuable resource for everyone who knows a child with ADD.

PART I:
DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING

Chapter 1

My Struggle As a Parent

I am amazed, me thinks, and lose my way

Among the thorns and dangers of this world.

Shakespeare
King John III

My story begins approximately thirty years ago when I first met Manuela. She was the healthy, happy, rosy-cheeked three-year-old daughter of my fiancèe, Helena. Manuela lived in a storybook town, high in the Austrian Alps, in a village that skiers flocked to from all over the world. Kitzbuehel, the renowned skiing and après-ski life village, had called to me as well.

I was practicing sitzmarks in the snow during Fasching, a time of carnival that lasts approximately three weeks, until the eve of Ashen Mittwoch (Ash Wednesday) at which time everyone nurses their hangovers and catches up on sleep. During this period of reveling, I met Helena, whom I married a few months later.

My first images of Manuela were in the city garden where she would prance about picking flowers. She loved flowers. She would pick them and give them to relatives, friends, and her mother. Manuela was extremely gregarious. Frequently, I would ask where Manuela was; the most common answer was that she was having a kaffee klatsch with one of the neighbors. When she brought flowers to the neighbors they offered her tea, milk, and sometimes sweets. She would chat away, seated in a chair and swinging her legs, while carrying on a very adult conversation. Those are my fondest memories of this beautiful alpine child with big red cheeks who was loved by everyone who knew her.

Shortly after Helena and I married, we moved to Langen, a suburb of Frankfurt, where I had secured work that would support us. I dearly missed the healthy, vigorous climate of the Alps and we returned frequently, as time would allow. Manuela continued winning the hearts of the adults in the apartment building we moved to, continuing her grand tradition of kaffee klatsches purchased with gifts of flowers. City life was different in that Helena was concerned that Manuela sometimes took flowers from the front of cafes and small gardens, but no one seemed to mind.

A few months later, Helena became pregnant with Beate. I stayed in Langen, commuting to Frankfurt for work, while Helena and Manuela moved to Kitzbuehel to be with her family during the later stages of her pregnancy. I visited frequently. However, when my young family was ready to move to Langen to be with me, we encountered problems with passports. I was American; Beate was also American born on foreign soil. Helena was Austrian and was unable to place Beate on her passport, which was the customary procedure when newborn children traveled from one country to another with their parents. It took time for me to register Beate's birth at the embassy, take pictures, and have a passport issued in her name. When passports were finally straightened out, my family arrived in Germany. I enjoyed the girls and my new family life began. Manuela was very protective of Beate; she played second mother very well. The next year was an idyllic one.

My career was not flourishing in Frankfurt, so I moved with the family from Langen to the United States, settling in San Francisco near relatives and friends where I began my career as a stockbroker.

Manuela was of preschool age, so we enrolled her in German class on Saturdays. I remembered how much effort I had put into learning German and thought it would be wonderful for her to grow up bilingual.

The first red flags began to appear. We started receiving confusing reports from her teachers. They said she was a delightful child and very friendly. When she read out loud she read as well as any of the children in the class but she did not seem to learn anything new, and they questioned whether she understood what she was reading.

One day I came home from work and noticed the children playing outside our apartment were calling Manuela “Susie.” I asked Manuela why they were calling her that and she said that she did not know how to tell them her name because she could not tell them in English. At that moment I realized it was important for us to speak English at home so that Manuela would not be at a disadvantage when she started regular school.

I had assumed children would grow up bilingual if left to themselves in the proper environment which is not necessarily so. They may speak both languages, but if they do not have average learning skills, their knowledge of language can handicap them. By this time it was clear that Manuela was not making progress with her class in German school.

We began speaking English at home and Manuela learned it quickly. I began to see that there were different ways to learn but it did not occur to me that she might have trouble in a structured academic environment. Since she was speaking English so well the issue of learning fell to the back of my mind. Before long it was time to enroll Manuela in the first grade, I wanted to enroll her in a Catholic school but was told that she was not mature enough to manage the curriculum. I was quite surprised and made a big fuss about this to no avail.

Manuela attended public school at a time when I was very busy building my career. I assumed she would be fine and paid little attention to school activities. Near her completion of the first grade, Manuela's teacher told us she was not doing well. When I saw the report cards I was extremely upset. If something was not done immediately, she was destined to be held back. I hired a tutor and her grades improved. Following that experience, I decided to monitor her progress more carefully.

The teacher said that when Manuela was left alone she had trouble learning. I chalked this up to Manuela socializing at inappropriate times. I had no idea that she might not be able to concentrate as well as the other children, or that she was at a disadvantage in any way. The fact that she did better with tutors strengthened my hypothesis that they probably did not allow distracting conversation. They were apparently providing a tight structure for her and the more personal teaching was effective because they could work closely with her distractibility and motivate her.

At that time, I assumed all children could learn in a school environment unless they were of borderline Intelligence. I knew children had to put in varying degrees of effort to master a subject, but I thought those children who could not keep pace with their peers were lazy or goof-offs. Less was known about attention deficit disorder thirty years ago. I only wish someone had approached me with the information that Manuela had ADD.

By the time Manuela reached third grade, she was really struggling. This time her social behavior was becoming a problem. She was difficult to manage in class; she was also making friends with other children who had behavior problems.

I thought she was deliberately not working in school. I came from a stern family and was influenced by the ideas I inherited from my parents. Like my parents, I used stern measures in my efforts to motivate Manuela, which created a lot of misunderstanding. A gap grew between us that we never really breached until she became an adult.

I was in a dilemma. What to do? The “Big Struggle” to get your child to do what he or she does not want to do, or does not have the capacity to do, can be frustrating, to say the least. I was bewildered and worn out from cajoling, pleading, punishing, rewarding, and nagging. Nothing I did seemed to work. Unbeknownst to me, I was undermining Manuela's fragile sense of self-esteem. She acquired my perception of her as inadequate and lazy; her self-confidence spi-raled downward. The seeds were sown for her to dislike herself. Low self-esteem had found fertile breeding grounds.

Today, I believe most of the problems our young people encounter stem from their inability to accept and love themselves. Many years passed, however, before this became entirely clear to me in my own family. Both Helena and I thought that if we loved our children enough they would learn love. We showed our love in many ways and were able to give them material comforts that were beyond the reach of many families.

I understand very clearly now that the parents' perception of giving love is not necessarily adequate for the child to feel loved. When a child believes he or she is not loved, he or she experiences the pain of rejection and frequently manifests this pain as misbehavior.

Helena had grown up in Austria and attended school during World War II. At that time, most European children were deprived of the basic necessities. Food was scarce and starvation was not infrequent. She faced austerities that are unknown to us today. As with many Europeans, Helena thought the United States was a land of equal opportunity for all and could not understand why her daughter so casually dismissed all our efforts to get her a basic education. She was at a complete loss to understand how Manuela could throw away such golden opportunities. I was in full agreement with my wife's sentiments. I also thought our situation was unique. I did not know other parents were letting go of future dreams for their children as they wrestled with the challenges their children faced. We were also letting go of our belief that a combination of love and money could cure anything. I had no way of comprehending that Manuela simply wanted salve for her wounds. I did not even understand that she was wounded.

Even further from my mind was the thought that she might have a hypersensitive nervous system that made her more sensitive to her environment, and that studying, remembering, and paying attention were slightly beyond her grasp without professional support.

Years slipped by as Helena and I cajoled, pushed, threatened, harassed, and struggled with Manuela to get passing grades in school. Somehow we all muddled through the next few years. Our problems did not end with poor academic performance. Manuela became belligerent at home, acted out her frustrations on Beate and her youngest sister, Monika, our last addition to the family, and became very difficult to live with.

One insight stood out among all the thoughts I had at the time. We were driving to my mother's house for a Sunday visit and I remarked to Helena that it was more difficult for Beate and Monika, our other two children, to do something wrong than it was for Manuela to do something right. This thought was an epiphany for me and I wondered how God could do this to a child. I remember thinking that this was unfair, and it was the first glimpse of compassion I had for Manuela in a long time.

I soon found out that my not-quite seventh grader was using marijuana and drinking alcohol. I was jolted by the realization that my daughter was using drugs. I thought by lecturing her and grounding her she would be motivated to make better choices. Instead, it only served to separate us further. More problems developed as Manuela found support from other children like herself who had dropped out of mainstream culture.

Throughout this trying time, it never occurred to me that she might be suffering from a known mental disorder. Teachers, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and family, all of whom knew of our problems with Manuela, never suggested that we might consider a psychological evaluation or testing. The evidence is so overwhelming to me today that it seems inconceivable that I did not think of this at the time. But it simply never occurred to me. I was so caught up in the daily clashing of egos that I could not step back and see the larger picture.

What had happened to the beautiful child I had first met at Kitzbuehel, the loving flower child who had taken such delight in pleasing the people who loved her? I cursed the Unite...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• The Haworth Press
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Table of Content
• Foreword
• Special Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Developing Understanding
• Part II: Specific Problem Behaviors (Working with Children Ages Four to Fourteen)
• Part III: Problems of Adolescents and Young Adults
• Index