This is a good place to start if you’re curious about mindfulness training.
Nearly 10% of all school aged children are being diagnosed with ADHD. Throw in the likelihood that mom and/or dad have ADD or ADHD and whoa! That’s a lot of squirrelly brains running around.
I first started reading about mindfulness for help in dealing with my own anxiety tendencies and I can say – it has been very effective. (I can get through Wally World without feeling like freaking out by the produce department now…but that’s another topic.)
Here’s an article about a mindfulness school that teaches their program to kids and teachers. It has proven to be effective in improving the classroom environment.
For kids with ADHD- here’s an interesting sound bite that was included in today’s newsletter from Attention Research Update.
** Mindfulness Training for Children with ADHD and their Parents **
*****************************************************************************************************************************Mindfulness training is an approach for enhancing mental health and alleviating mental health difficulties that is based on eastern medication techniques. The focus of mindfulness training is to increase one’s awareness of the present moment, enhance the non-judgmental observation of one’s surroundings, and decrease impulsive and automatic responding to events. Research on mindfulness training with adults has shown benefits for depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and eating difficulties. Preliminary research on mindfulness training with children and adolescents has also yielded positive findings, including several non-controlled pilot studies of youth with ADHD.
A study published recently in the Journal of Child and Family Studies provides a more extensive examination of the possible benefits of mindfulness training for children with ADHD and their parents [S. van der Ord & S. M. Bodgel (2012). The effectiveness of mindfulness training for children with ADHD and mindful parenting for their parents. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21, 139-147]. Participants were 22 8-12 year old children diagnosed with ADHD and their parents. The study was conducted at an outpatient mental health clinic in the Netherlands.
Children and parents were randomly assigned to receive mindfulness training or to a wait-list control condition; the majority of children were already receiving treatment with stimulant medication and remained on medication during the study. Mindfulness training consisted of 8 weekly 90 minute group sessions – the child group included 4-6 children and the parent group included the parents of these children. Children and parents were given structured assignments to complete between the sessions that focused on practicing the skills they had learning in each group meeting.
One friend has been using mindfulness techniques for over eight years and she reports:
“We have learned to slow down, be quiet, give processing time, scaffold the thinking process understanding where the child is developmentally is important so you are working within his zone of proximal development,” Penny, mom to a child on the spectrum.
I wish I had learned of this when my ADHDer was little- it would have been very helpful.
I think it’s clear that we can all benefit from taking a deep breath and learning mindfulness!
Filed under: ADD/ADHD, education, Personal development, Resources, Stress and worry | 3 Comments »
