Sleep Deprived Students and ADD

There is a common practice in many, and probably most American homes that is causing significant problems for children. Many people are suggesting a common solution to this overwhelming problem… they are proposing to change our schools. That proposed change will be slow, and I believe that the solution is bypassing the real problem and the real solution. The solution to this pervasive problem lies in the homes of America.

The Problem

The problem that I am speaking of is that many American teens (and many younger children for that matter) are attending school severely sleep deprived. These children suffer lower grades, lack of attention, discipline problems, and other difficulties. Sometimes these sleep deprived children are even diagnosed with learning disabilities like ADD, ADD/ADHD and then given drugs that further compound the problem.

“Sleep deprivation may be undermining teen health! Lack of sufficient sleep--a rampant problem among teens--appears to put adolescents at risk for cognitive and emotional difficulties, poor school performance, accidents and psychopathology, research suggests.”
Cornell University psychologist James B. Maas, PhD, one of the nation's leading sleep experts.

Here is what I see happening. When children are very young, most parents require their children to go to bed quite early. At the time that most children start school a common bedtime would be 8:00 p.m. However as the child gets older the parents start allowing the children to stay up a little later. With each year of maturity, the bedtime gets later and later.

Missing the Forest for the Trees
Here is How the Problem Has Come About

There is one key cause of this problem that most people trying to solve it are missing… while the bedtime for children keeps getting progressively later as they grow older; the “get up time” stays the same. The outcome of this time dynamic is that kids are not getting enough sleep! Almost all doctors and pediatricians will very firmly tell anyone who asks that children going through puberty absolutely need at least 9.5 hours of sleep a night. Most will even say that 10 hours is optimum. (If you don’t believe me do a “Google Search” typing in the words “sleep deprived students” and do some reading.) I am sure that you will be as shocked as I was. We had observed this problem on our own when we were public school teachers, but now, there are hundreds of research studies backing up our observations.

I taught high school and middle school for 30 years and my wife, Barbara, taught middle school for 19 years and we taught in five different school districts and in every one of those school districts the school day started at or before 8:00 A.M. Now, after traveling the nation and visiting schools all across America, I know that 8:00 is a very typical start time. Just a little common sense tells me that in order to get to school by 8:00 a student who rides a bus must get up by at least 6:45. A little arithmetic says that a child who has gone to bed at 10:00 P.M. has only had 8 ¾ hours of sleep. A child who goes to bed at 11:00 is operating on 7 ¾ hours of sleep!

Common Bedtimes

One thing that we knew as teachers was that even 11:00 P.M. was a very common bedtime for our students. We also knew that many were up even past that time simply because of the conversations they had about the television shows that seemed to be their favorites! Our students were often fans of shows that ended at 11:00 and many talked about what they saw on the 11:00 news!

Any student who watched the 11:00 news and then arrived on time at school for an 8:00 A.M. class was operating on a daily sleep deprivation of two to three hours! And then we wondered why so many of our students had a hard time concentrating and focusing on their school work!

Changing the Schools Should NOT Be the Solution

Now, let me go back to my original statement about the proposed solutions to this extremely common problem; many people are proposing that we solve this sleep deprivation problem by starting school at a much later time; like 9:00 or even 10:00 A.M. This will be a meaningless change if the families do not enforce bedtimes that insure 9 ½ to 10 hours of sleep for their children every night . The change in sleep habits must take place in the homes!

"Barking Up the Wrong Tree"

It always bothered me when I was teaching school to find that the very first proposal for solutions to so many problems was to make changes in the schools. Drug awareness and drug prevention have been improperly dumped on the schools. Schools are being held responsible for so many things that should be handled in the home.

Proper sleep habits are not the domain of schools. Schools should have little or no input in how much sleep their students are getting. That is the domain of parents and families. Parents must assure that their own children are getting enough sleep!

Now, I have some concrete suggestion for taking control of the sleep time in your home. If you would like to hear some of these, just check back for my next article in this spot. Or, you can go to this link: ( http://www.whitefishradio.com/SITE/2007/PWD/school3.htm ) and listen to my proposal for taking control of time in your home and most importantly taking control of bedtime.

Is it ADD/ADHD or Just Bad Behavior - Part 3

ADD – Attention Divided by Divorce?

It is interesting to note that ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder, is being diagnosed at ever higher rates these days. Doctors and school professionals seem to find more ADD everywhere that they look. It seems that there is an epidemic of this "disease" that seems to hit young kids.

I would like to weigh in with another of my thoughts on the subject of ADD. I will offer today’s thoughts just so that you have another new idea to chew on. In this article I am not attempting to place blame on anyone. Rather I am offering today’s statements just to cause some folks to think a little bit about their situation just to see if it might be possible to improve the situation of a few children.

It is pretty interesting to me that the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder has risen concurrently with the rise in the national divorce rate! Now, I want you to know that I am NOT claiming any scientific study linking divorce with ADD. I am just saying that I have observed some interesting coincidences between the two while teaching! It seemed that an inordinate number of the kids with ADD were also children of divorce.

Then, I read a number of articles and essays that said that some cases of ADD could be linked to the child not being paid attention to by adults, parents, and teachers. It occurred to me that some of what I was seeing diagnosed as ADD/ADHD could be attributed to the child just seeking attention from adults! As a matter of fact, as we were running some of our early Parenting with Dignity Classes, we found that many parents told us that their children’s Hyperactive Behavior really decreased when they did the assignment for Lessons 5&6 in our curriculum!

When parents offered regular messages of unconditional love to their children, they found that many of those kids decreased their hyperactivity. To us that said that Attention Deficit Disorder for some kids was just a deficit of attention being paid to them by adults.

I know that was true in my classroom. Many kids who showed some of the characteristics of ADD like apparent lack of attention span and inability to concentrate changed markedly when I found time to give them some undivided attention of a positive nature!

Divorce and Lack of Attention

“So what does this have to do with divorce?” you ask. Well, stop and think for a second. Many children of divorce find that their parents’ attention becomes rather divided and random as the divorce is taking place and the parents are working out their differences that sometimes include contentious child custody issues.

As a matter of fact a few years ago, a father from the Boston area contacted me wanting me to support some Father’s Rights issues back there in Massachusetts and among other things he made the comment that many of the divorced fathers were noticing ADD issues with their children.

Be Careful to Give Positive Attention to Children

So what is the point? Just this… if your family is or has gone through a divorce, be extremely careful to give your children lots of positive attention and expressions of love! I am not proposing that all ADD could be traced to divorce or lack of positive parental attention. All I am saying is be on the lookout for opportunities to give your children added attention at times of stress. Just be aware of any Deficit of Attention that your child may be experiencing.

Is it ADD/ADHD or Just Bad Behavior - Part 2

Why am I including an article on learning disabilities in a Blog about parenting? Two reasons: first, because so many parents come to me wondering about kids and hyperactivity; second, because the success rate for teaching coping and adapting skills for learning disabilities goes up exponentially if the process is started early.

Fear Factor

I receive so many questions about Attention Deficit Disorder and I find that many parents are so frightened about it.

The BIG Mistake

The biggest mistake I see so many parents making when it comes to ADD/ADHD and other learning disabilities is thinking that diagnosis of a learning disability and labeling of a child with the name of a "disease" somehow helps in some way! To me that is as foolish as going to the doctor and having him tell you that your child has Strep Throat without doing anything to help the child get over the infection!

It seems to me to be a universal dilemma to find someone who has been diagnosed with ADD who has been given NO tools for coping with the diagnosis!

I meet kids and adults all the time who tell me, "I (or my child) has been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD."

I always ask, "What is your number one strategy for dealing effectively with your situation?" Most everyone answers with a blank stare. Someone has diagnosed a problem but done little or nothing to teach compensation or adaptation skills!

A Clear Definition - Hard to Find

When I ask for a definition of ADD/ADHD from these parents who are scared of it, everyone seems to give me a different definition. Not many people have a clear picture of what they are dealing with. As a matter of fact, I spent three entire days on the Internet, trying to find a clear definition of ADD/ADHD. I found myself in the same fix I was in as a teacher. I saw an extremely vague label being used to make decisions about teaching children. I went to 33 websites dealing in various ways with the syndrome, and only one had a definition of ADD/ADHD I could use to identify whether a child had it.

It's not too surprising that this man offering a clear definition was also the one authority who had solid procedures for helping a child adapt to this unique way of perceiving the world. That one wonderful article helped me understand why so many people have trouble working with kids who are diagnosed with ADD/ADHD.

I have since met that author, Dr. Ned Hallowell, who wrote the article, and Ned and I share many beliefs about raising self-sufficient, self-reliant kids. Dr. Hallowell has not only studied ADD/ADHD, he has it!

A Real Authority

So, to me, he's a real authority. He helped me to understand I was not wrong to think of ADD/ADHD as a unique level of talent and exceptional intelligence. In fact, the "disease" has been one of the major contributors to his success!

With his permission, I have included a link to his website where you can go to read about his amazingly successful work with children with ADD/ADHD. http://www.drhallowell.com/

The main point in today’s article is that before taking any action after suspecting that a child has ADD (or any learning disorders for that matter) you must decide what definition you are going to use to define what you are talking about.

Next, and of most importance, you must commit to never labeling any difficulty that you may perceive your child to be having, without finding some tools for teaching that child to deal with whatever you perceive to be a problem.

The Only Important Question

As a parent, the only important thing to establish is “How am I going to help my child to adapt and learn to use the abilities and capabilities that they have to be an independent and self-reliant and capable person!”
(I must go on record as saying that using drugs as a first approach borders upon irresponsibility. Drugs can have a role in treating some learning disabilities, but they ought to be used as a last resort and they must be carefully monitored. Often the side effects can be worse than any natural difficulty your child might be experiencing.)

Check back for my next article in this Blog, as I will offer some very specific techniques for teaching a child to use their special capabilities! (If you would like to read more please get my books, Parenting with Dignity, and Parenting with Dignity; The Early Years.

"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.