Power Moms Unite

Inspiring reluctant readers is a challenge- a challenge that becomes bigger and bigger as students become older and reading requirements become larger and more frequent.   Let’s be honest, when you look at it from a student’s point of view, here comes an authority figure handing you, the non-book lover, a huge book which you are not only required to read, but answer content questions. It would overwhelm any non-book lover, regardless of age. 

Consider the use of paperclips to help overcome the anxiety of a large reading assignment.  As I recently asked my 7^th grader, “how do you eat an elephant?”  The answer- “One forkful at a time.”  We break apart the reading of a large novel or text chapter by reading only to the clip.  We repeat this daily or twice a day- depending on the urgency to complete the assignment, until the entire reading assignment is complete.  Anxiety is eliminated or at least lessened- for both parent (usually Mom) and student.  

For more tips like this, attend CHADD’s Parent to Parent Family Training Class, online classes are forming now.

I don’t think anyone would argue against the idea that reading is critical to a child’s life success. Reading provides the foundation for school achievement in all the other academic subjects, including math, science, social studies, writing, and foreign languages. What is discussed far less, is how reading can provided insulation from life’s adversity- be that everything from poverty and neglect to social exclusion by a “girl-clique” at school. Reading can act as a form of escapism.

For a parent of kids with ADHD, this news is good and bad. Reading can offer insulation from the stress of not feeling social success- hooray. On the other hand however, kids with ADHD often struggle to enjoy reading- hmmm… As their parent working to encourage reading, the effort to foster an interest, let alone a love of reading, can feel futile- I admit I have been known to think- “this is impossible- he’s just not a reader.”

Jim Trelease, journalist turned reading advocate, really began the “read-aloud movement,” in 1979 when he published his first addition of the “Read Aloud Handbook.” (There have been 6 editions printed and issued in every language from English to Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese.) He argues that we have to cultivate readers by giving them the tools to love reading. We begin this process by reading aloud to our children.

From my own experience, fostering the love of reading is not futile and far less daunting than I thought. I am now in the teen zone with one of my children and have several tweens in my house: all are readers. But, it wasn’t always this way. Several years ago, I could have done magic tricks or paid them money for each book read and most of my kids would have still refused to read. I am convinced the nightly ritual of me reading to them has made the difference. It has given our family a book to discuss and has added to both our family’s identity and shared experiences.

In this time when money is tight and jobs uncertain modeling a method of escapism is healthy for everyone. It has allowed me to transport my family, teenagers to toddlers to places I might not otherwise been able to take them. We’ve been with Odysseus to Troy. We have been lost in Digitopolis and met both the Mathemagician and the Dyne. We have met all the Greek and Norse gods and met Desperaux before he was a movie star. Currently we are deep in the Louisiana bayou with a hound and pregnant cat.

It is from this shared world of book experiences, that several years later, all my middle school and elementary school aged kids are independent readers, have running book requests from the local library, and express real opinions about what they read. A few items that helped me, help them along their love-to-read journey are included below.  Some are parent guides, other are magazines kept in the bathroom.  Some are primarily picture magazines and others are comic books.  All have contributed to our success, regardless where each individual child’s skill began.  I hope you will find the list helpful.  I encourage you to add your own suggestions as well.  Happy Family Reading, Candace

Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook

NYT Guide to Children’s Books

OWL Magazine

Zoo Books

Boy’s Life

Kids Discover

Bone Series

Diary of the Wimpy Kid Series

Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Series

Children with ADHD often struggle with both poor handwriting and poor organizational skills, which can result in squashed, misaligned columns of numbers.  Often math problems are wrong because the student arranged their columns of numbers incorrectly, not because the student did not know their math facts or how to do the problem correctly. Graph paper can help solve this problem. 

Arrange problems on graph paper, each number occupying a space.  Free printable graph paper is available on-line at http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/.  This site allows you to scale the size of the squares to accommodate your child’s handwriting.

Another quick idea for organizing math problems is to turn loose-leaf paper on its side.  The now vertical lines can help organize columns of numbers.  

“Own it before someone else does,” advice I recently gave my son, new to lacrosse.  Fearing ridicule from his more advanced peers, my 9 year old son was lamenting choosing to start the game of lacrosse.  “Mom, so many of my friends are really good at catching and throwing the lacrosse ball.  They have been playing for years.  What am I going to do when I have to play them and they find out I stink?”

My response was simple, “Own it before they do.”  (Okay maybe not so simple -I was fighting my desire to advise him on how good practice will earn his peers’ admiration.  I decided to address his concerns this time, instead of using a patented mother mantra- which is admittedly easier and less complicated.)  I went with “acknowledge your issues before they have an opportunity to comment.”  Publicly recognizing your personal “elephant in the room.”  You could even make a joke about yourself being a poor lacrosse player.  There isn’t much they can add, and as an added bonus- you get credit for being a good sport for laughing at yourself.  We then brainstormed a variety jokes and approaches he could take to acknowledge his lack of skill.  A few I have included below:

The Acknowledgement: “Guys, I am just gonna warn you, I am a newbie.”

Sincerity with a touch of sarcasm: “You guys will be kind to the new guy, right?”…followed by wide toothy grin…

The Compliment: “Guys, I am really struggling to catch the ball- do you have any good advice or techniques?  How did you get so good at it?”

The Joke: “ I am so bad at lacrosse, my coach asked if I knew there was a net at the top of my stick.”

The “own it before some else does” principle applies to making mistakes too. I recently ranted on my PowerMom Journal blog about “house damage.”  Some of my frustration with the kids was fueled by the lack of ownership my children took- a lack of accountability for their actions both with their possessions, as well in our relationship.  “Own it before someone else does” has become a code phrase my kids utter to each other when something is broken or damaged.

Think about it. As the individual who made the mistake when you own “it,” you take back some control of the situation.  You decide when you will explain what you did.  You decide what you will say to apologize.  You lessen opportunities for someone to misinterpret what happened or read motives into your actions that are simply not your intention.

It’s a simple phrase,  even catchy-  “Own it before someone else does.”  It can put you back in charge, when you feel like you have lost all your control.

ODD episodes at my house look a lot like a truck run amuck- running without brakes, racing past waving construction crews and bright lights blinking “Danger: Road Ends”- all paths ending at a deep gorge. To be honest though, I don’t think the diagnosis matters, kids not coping well all look about the same, and makes the family equally miserable- what matters is sorting though the strategies that can be used as parents to make our family lives, more than livable, but make our homes a loving sanctuary for our entire family.

For our crew, one fundamental paradigm shift we have had to make to keep our trucks off the cliff is a shift we have found to be both simplistic in phrasing but challenging to live: all people will “do well”, if they can. It is the premise of Ross Greene’s work on problem solving. It is a fundamental belief that people are good and want to be successful and loved. When they aren’t acting in a way that will get them love and success, it is because they lack the skills to act in a way that will gain them love and positive reinforcement. When a person does not have the skills to problem solve and achieve in a positive way, they use what skills they do have to get any reinforcement. If they can’t be successful in a positive way, they revert to any way they can feel success, even if it is considered negative or bad by the rest of society -their family and school.

It has taken a long parenting journey with two children with ODD as well as the bravery to confront the soundtrack from my childhood, and honesty to admit my own role in my child’s behavior, to see there are times when I push my child’s out-of-control-truck by either ignoring the warning signs of trouble coming OR by overreacting and becoming inflexible myself. This is where the challenge lies- looking out our roles in our family dynamics. At times, I demonstrate poor problem-solving skills because I am stressed or distracted. Whether it was my own mother’s voice in my head, saying “that child needs a good swat on the bottom,” or my husband’s voice in my head of “when are we going to get that child in line,” or my simply my own struggle to be a parent when I needed to finish an email or finish a phone call, “why can’t they leave me some peace to finish my work,” all of it contributes to my failure to act in a positive direction- to problem solve. I have learned I have skills to learn – to confront my soundtrack and identify my triggers so I can pre-script my reactions, and calm myself so I am prepared to teach the same skills to my child! I need my child to learn to soothe and calm themselves- so they can experience peace and personal success.

In Mary Sheedy Kurcinka’s Kids Parents and Power Struggles, she discusses how conflicts between temperaments within a family can energize power struggles and battles. She defines temperament as the style of an individual. The style is defined by 7 components including persistence, sensitivity, adaptability, intensity, regularity, activity level and first reaction. Read more »

Yesterday, my 9 year old put a CD in the microwave to see if it would glow like it did on Myth Busters.  Last week, my six year old threw his Ugly Doll at his brother, missed and smashed the hall chandelier- it was apparently some throw. Last month, my six and 13 year olds had a caulk battle in my garage that left caulk smeared on bricks, cars and hair.   These are only a few of the highlights in a series of gaffs, including the stuffed animals tied to the boy’s bedroom ceiling fan, multiple doors slammed so hard they cracked and permanently loosened the door knobs, to the kitchen drawer slammed so sharply the front came off- I admit to that one- it was either the drawer or a child- I picked the drawer.  Anyway, all of this points to the added expense of maintaining a house when you live with kids and adults with ADHD.  Lets face it, having ADHD is expensive.

I’ll be honest, abuse of the house, though I am guilt of it as well as the kids, really upsets me, for two reasons.  First there is the morality of it. Somewhere in the pit of my being is the belief that how you treat and respect property is reflective of how you treat and respect yourself and others- so you can imagine how upset I have become as the emotional outbursts and science experiments gone awry have left the house looking unkempt, with small dents in walls, cabinets, and the dishwasher door.  I want my house to be a sanctuary for us all- do sanctuaries have cracked and broken doors and lamps, bricks smeared with caulk? Maybe?….

The second thing that upsets me about the “house abuse,” as I have come to term it, is it is one long constant expense.  No matter how hard we try as a group, something is always broken or lost.  The other week, we finally broke down and bought a new set of flatware after one child admitted to throwing out several utensils to avoid washing them and another child admitted to losing several forks at school, after taking them to eat their lunch.  We were down to 4 spoons and 6 forks, for a family of 7.  (For the record, I keep plastic utensils and junk silverware with the lunch containers- so kids can take utensils- just don’t take the good stuff, has always been the rule.) Read more »