The holiday season is often accompanied by a unique set of stresses and pressures. For families of children who have ADD or ADHD, these seasonal stresses can verge on the overwhelming.

To help families have the happiest possible holidays, BellaOnline's ADD editor, Erika Lynn Smith, offered the following tips:

• Choose carefully what you and your family is involved in over the holiday season. One does not have to attend or accept every invitation that comes along. Life is short, decide who or what is important and then graciously decline those invites you do not feel will do anything but cause additional stress and disorder in life.

• Keep it simple and low key whenever possible. Most people with ADD are sensitive to lights, sounds, textures. A busy, crowded shopping center may soon cause sensory overload, leading to irritability, and decreasing ones ability to focus on finding what he or she came for in the first place.

• If feeling overwhelmed, remember to take care of your needs first, everything else can wait. Often we place the most outrageous demands on ourselves, pushing ourselves to the brink of exhaustion, determined to make this the best birthday, holiday, party. The reality is we end up tired, irritable, and unable to enjoy what we worked so hard to achieve in the first place.

Labels: tips, stress, holidays

Posted By: Aspen/CRC 0 Comments

The holidays are stressful for most families, and they can be particularly difficult for families of kids with ADHD. In Dr. Kari Miller's Nov. 15 examiner.com article, mother and author Deborah Merlin offers some suggestions to help reduce stress for all family members:

• Use the family gathering as an opportunity to build strong family ties as well as childrens self-esteem. -- ADHD children are often told everything they do wrong, and tend to have low self-esteem. An effective way to remove negative feelings from a family dinner is to have everyone take a turn listing either a positive comment or something they're grateful for about each person at the table.

• Be alert to food sensitivities and allergies. -- Food allergies are often common with people who have ADHD. Dairy allergies caused my boys countless ear infections and visits to the doctors office.

• Encourage your childs creativity! -- I helped my twins get in touch with their creative side by making sure we had plenty of construction paper, crayons and patterns for turkeys and pumpkins so they could make place cards and decorations.

Labels: stress, prevention

Posted By: Aspen/CRC 0 Comments