"Is It ADD or Just Bad Behavior?"

Another Name for ADD; Call it Intelligence!

Whatever you do, do not try to make your active toddler behave like every other child. If your child is highly active, give your child more to do. Give the active little person ways to make constructive use of that extra energy. You will probably have to plan ahead because you will not be able to think as fast as your highly intelligent child does! You might have to stay up late one day, thinking of ways to challenge that child the next day.

Learning Disabilities Are Real -

But Everything Does NOT Need a Label

Please, please, please, do not jump to conclusions here and stop reading. I am not dismissing learning disabilities as nonexistent. They are real and may come in varying degrees. What I am saying is that with a child under the age of six, it is really foolish to jump to such far-reaching conclusions and make sweeping diagnoses based on those kinds of differences. I believe that in many cases, highly active children are just very intelligent! It takes more to entertain a highly intelligent human being. Unfortunately, most strategies for dealing with thise kids actually involve "dumbing them down" to act like the rest of us slow thinkers! Sometimes we even drug kids to make them act like the rest of us who can only do one thing at a time!



Drugs like Ritilin (Methylphenidate; also spelled Ritalin) may have their place; but certainly they ought not to be the first avenue of action!


Still, with so much talk about Attention Deficit Disorder these days, anyone with a normally active toddler is probably wondering if his or her child is really "normal." It's easy for a worn-out parent with too much on his/her plate to think there must be something "wrong" with this small person who will not wind down. "Who put the Energizer battery in this kid?"


Let's use Attention Deficit Disorder /Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADD/ADHD) as the most common example and discuss it in a bit of detail in a few articles; though you will see over the next few articles, that I detest slapping labels on children. Stay tuned for the next few days as I will suggest tools for dealing with supposed learning disabilities.