Summer Slide...

How do you prevent the summer slide at your house?

By Artaxerxes (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

No, not a fun water slide.

You know, the one where all the great information and skills your child learned during the school year dwindles and is forgotten in the months of no brain stimulation?

Some ideas that my family's done or that I wish we would have done...

Read

I am a big believer that kids should read every day. I don't care if it is a comic book or a 1000 page novel. As long as it is age appropriate, kids should read.

• You can have them read signs along the road or the map at the zoo. 
• Kids can read below their reading level to work on speed and just enjoy the story. 
• They can read at their level (or one a little challenging) to work on increasing their reading abilities. 
• Visit the library often. 
• Take turns in the evening with the family reading out loud together - like people did before television. This builds family bonds and is an inexpensive fun activity that can become a fun family tradition.
• Ask about what your kids are reading. Can they summarize what they've read? What do they think will happen next? How would they have ended the story differently?
• Gather a group of friends and start a summer book club. Pick a few good books, and meet once a week to talk about them.
• Check out the many places that offer summer reading rewards, such as your local library, bookstore, or school.

Games

Games and puzzles are another great way to build thinking skills.

• Board games can work on colors and counting for young children, and problem solving and strategy building for older kids. They also work on social skills (such as waiting your turn and being a gracious winner or loser). 
• Computer games can be great learning opportunities, despite all the warnings to limit screen time. Too much of anything is not healthy - we need balance in our lives. Monitor screen use for age appropriate activities and limit times, but allow intellectually stimulating games sometimes. Many computer games allow kids to learn from their mistakes and master skills in fun ways.
• Age appropriate puzzles, sudoku, cards, and word games are a great way to learn critical thinking, build vocabulary, and keep math skills sharp. 

Question

• Throughout the day you can ask your kids questions that require thinking before answering. Instead of letting them give just a simple factual answer, ask how they came up with it or how they feel about something. 
• Let them help you pick out meals for the week, taking into consideration the nutritional components of a healthy meal. Ask how they would like the broccoli to be served.
• If they help cook, you can have them convert a recipe to double it for a neighborhood picnic.
• Describe the weather forecast and plans for the day and ask what clothes would be appropriate with that in mind. 
• Ask kids how they feel in response to things that happen throughout the day. 
• Play a game of what if? How would something that happened have turned out if they did or said something differently at any given moment? (One rule: you can't change what others do or say in real life, so you can only change what you would do or say in the game.) Think about the response other people would have had (such as "What could you have said that would have changed the outcome when Billy cut in line at the slide?" Or "What Sally would have said if you said ___ instead?) or ask about what physical events would have changed (such as if they threw the ball to Bob at first base instead of to the pitcher or if they jumped into the cold pool instead of entering slowly).
• Ask if there's another way to do something, since there are usually many options to get to the same place or conclusion. Maybe there's an alternate route to take to the zoo since there's an accident on the road you usually take. (This also works well if they get the wrong answer, such as on a math problem.)

Play and explore

• Outdoor play is amazing for kids and their development. As they climb, roll down hills, build forts, or do whatever, they are working on motor skills.
• Playing with other children helps develop healthy social skills. When kids are always told what to do (school, sports, other scheduled activities) they never learn how to be independent, which can harm them in the long run.
• Play school. Kids love to be the teacher and teach others!
• Visit a museum, zoo, or historical site.

Music and dance

• Kids love to put on shows for friends and family with acting, singing, dancing and playing instruments. This can be impromptu fun or a more organized neighborhood event where they make posters to announce the show and even make tickets to give out. 
• Older kids will love to shoot videos of themselves and share online. Be sure parents review what is posted and it is appropriate for the type of posting (public vs private). 

Create

• Coloring, chalk art, painting, building with blocks or Legos ... so many options!
• Design a "dream" bedroom and show how even small changes can update the room.
• Make a map of your town of all your favorite spots: home, parks, grocery store, the zoo...
• Have kids make up their own game, complete with game pieces and rules.
• Design new outfits from dress up clothes (or actual sewing for older kids) and put on a fashion show for friends and family.
• Build an art gallery over the summer. Make paintings, paper mache, clay models, whatever suits you! Put it all out for display at the end of summer and invite friends and family to see the art!

Volunteer and give to charities

Volunteering not only helps others and makes our world a better place, but it also fosters a humble heart and can help develop skills we might not know we have. It puts us outside our comfort zone sometimes, which builds us into a better person. By focusing on helping others, we become happier.

• Kids, tweens and teens can find many opportunities to volunteer during the summer months. 
• It can be as simple as playing with young neighbors while their parents do yard work or run to the store, help with a neighbor's pet and newspaper while they are out of town, or pick up trash on a family walk. 
• Teens can find volunteer positions in many places. In my community that may be with their church or synagogue, at Deanna Rose Farmstead, hospitals, animal shelters, Harvester's Food Bank, and many more.
• Kids can write letters to soldiers, make blankets for sick or foster kids, pick up trash at a park, plant a tree, make a care package for a soldier, and many more.
• Anyone with long hair can donate hair to kids in need through ChildrenWithHairLoss or WigsForKids.
• If your family wants to financially help a sponsored child in another country, check out Unbound. Your child can help write letters to that child and learn about that child and his/her life from letters received.
• As a family: go through closets and dressers to find clothes, games, books, and toys that are appropriate to give to your favorite charity. To see how charities rank, check out CharityNavigator and CharityWatch.
• For more ideas, check out DoSomething.org.

Science

The internet makes doing science experiments easy! Check out my Pinterest Science board for ideas.

Make a bucket list of things to do and start doing them!

Why We Should Cherish the Gift of ADHD

Ok, so I know most parents of children with ADHD will read this title and think I'm crazy. Kids with ADHD wreck havoc on family life. Spouses with ADHD can do the same. How in the world can we cherish ADHD? It involves impairments in executive functioning... how can anything causing a broken executive functioning system be cherished?

photo source: Shutterstock

First, we must realize that everyone has gifts. ADHD has many variables in the way it shows up, so people with it also have many variations in gifts. But they do have gifts. I want parents, spouses, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncle, neighbors, teachers, and more to understand the value of these gifts and help children (and adults) recognize the benefits that people with ADHD can have. I'm not saying life for them is easy. It's not. They struggle with many things other people can easily manage. But they still have gifts. I want kids to grow up building their confidence by using their gifts, not by measuring their failures when they don't conform to norms.

People with ADHD tend to think outside the box. They have lots of energy. They are often very creative. We all think of their inattention and poor focus, but they also hyper focus on things they love. If they become passionate about something, they can sustain attention and work on it for long periods of time. If they use this hyper focus wisely (with setting time limits so they can do other daily activities) they can become an expert in that area. For young children the hyper focus tends to be on "kid" things, like trains or video games, but as they get older, allowing kids to experience activities that interest them will give the opportunity to find a life passion that could turn into a fantastic career.

"ADD people are high-energy and incredibly good brainstormers. They will often happily work 12 to 15 hours by choice. The business community should not fear ADD. Instead, they should see that they have a potential gold mine here.” - Dr. Kathleen Nadeau, psychologist

With all that good, we are more quick to see the negatives. Kids can lose their drive and ambition if they are not supported along the way. School is not favorable to kids with ADHD. Kids must follow rules. They need to color in the lines. They need to do all the steps in the order the teacher wants. Doing things someone else's way is not easy for kids with ADHD.

For example, kids need to learn the steps to solve a mathematical problem. They need to solve the math problem the way the teacher did it and show their work. They lose points if they get to the right answer but didn't show their work or if they get there a different way. The teacher might assume they cheated to get the answer, but some kids just skip steps. To me that might just show brilliance. They can skip steps. Their brain just "gets" to the right answer. I never could figure math out without being told how to do it, but there are kids out there who can. What a gift! Unfortunately they feel dumb if they can't show the steps just like the teacher taught. And it would be quite typical for a child with ADHD to have a brain that thinks this way if math is that child's gift. What a shame that our schools tend to make these kids feel inferior because in the end they might resist working on math and will never reach their potential.

For a fun look at ADHD that will continue to show you the better side of the diagnosis, check out this short documentary, A.D.D & Loving It. I promise it will have you laughing, but you will get a lot of great information from respected ADHD experts.

If your child struggles with the diagnosis, consider reading about real people who have done well despite (or due to) ADHD (link with many articles about successful people with ADHD and other learning disorders). Have them read Percy Jackson (link to a book review). He's a fictional character with ADHD and dyslexia that kids can look up to.

Throughout history many successful people have had ADHD. Your child with ADHD can also become a leader, an inventor, an artist, or an otherwise excellent contributor to society. We just need to help them find their gifts and work on their challenges so that they can flourish. Support them so they do not lose self confidence. Celebrate what they do right more than harping on what they do wrong. Encourage them to develop their talents. Help them find ways to accommodate for their struggles and to learn tools to help with some of the executive functioning problems they have. Cherish them!