Trafford Publishing: Heads Up Helping!! Teaching Tips and Techniques for Working With ADD, ADHD, and Other Children with Challenges

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Heads Up Helping!! Teaching Tips and Techniques for Working With ADD, ADHD, and Other Children with Challenges

by Melinda Boring

175 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0145; ISBN 1-55369-332-9; US$18.50, C$22.50, EUR14.70, £10.20

Heads Up Helping is packed with proven techniques and practical teaching tips for parenting and educating children with ADD/ADHD and other challenges. Melinda Boring writes from the unique perspective of an experienced homeschooler, professional speech/language pathologist, and mother of three children - two with ADHD.

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About the Book

    Heads Up Helping is the story of a mother's journey as she observes her son's special learning challenges and responds with love and dedication. Drawing on her years of experience as a speech pathologist, Melinda begins her pursuit of educational methods and materials that will help her son achieve the potential she is convinced exists. With fierce determination, Melinda sought information to help her son Joshua both accept himself and find areas in which he could excel despite his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), social difficulties, and sensory issues.
    Over time, and with much experimentation, Melinda recognized which strategies, materials, and instructional approaches were most effective for her son and other children. By becoming an astute observer and student herself, she gradually distinguished those techniques that worked most frequently out of the multitude of ideas she tried and those successes are shared in depth throughout her book.
    Melinda offers practical strategies from both her personal and professional experience in helping children with auditory and visual distractibility, sensory issues, fidgeting and hyperactivity, daydreaming, and social communication difficulties. She offers teaching tips and information on how to effectively reach students in ways that are compatible with brain-based teaching techniques. The suggestions for modifying curriculum and adapting the learning environment are easily implemented and applied.
    With heart-wrenching honesty and with humor, Melinda's real-life examples reveal the trials and joys of teaching and parenting a child with challenges. Heads Up Helping is sure to be a wealth of encouragement and practical support for parents, teachers, therapists, and others who are devoted to helping all kinds of special children.

For more information please visit www.headsupnow.com

    "Heads Up Helping by Melinda Boring is a quick and easy read offering practical tips and ideas with every turn of the page. It will be a treasure trove for any parent interested in home schooling a child with ADHD. I especially like this book not only because it offers lots of solid suggestions but also because it does so in the context of REAL family life. No challenges are sugar coated, but hope and joy still permeate this terrific book!"

Lisa Simmons
Director, Ideal Lives Project
www.ideallives.com

    I have just finished your book. It has been a long time since I have been able to finish a book in one day but your book held my interest and I found time to stick with it to the end. Josh is so much like my son Jeremy (age 9 and in the third grade) that I could just cry. Only three days ago on Monday, I was in tears trying to understand how I could help Jeremy. I had tried many things over the last three years of home schooling. Some worked, some didn't work, but all left me exhausted. I have seen him make progress and I have long felt that he does better in our home school environment, but the struggle to get work completed in a timely manner has been an uphill battle. On Monday night I cried myself to sleep in frustration over how difficult he had been in school. Mondays are always the hardest day of the week and with it being the end of the year, I am experiencing burn out and exhaustion. I prayed with all my heart Monday night.
    It was no accident that you sold me a copy of your book on Wednesday. It was an answer to prayer. After reading your book I am filled with new ideas and new hope. I had been avoiding the idea that Jeremy was ADHD because of the negatives associated with the label. I now see that addressing ADHD head-on is required in order for us to use some of your ideas in our home school and in order for us to move forward. Not only did the book help me see some of your ideas in action. Josh used the timer and ear plugs the whole time. He completed each test carefully. He was wonderful when it came to clean-up time also. He pitched in and helped with tables and chairs. It was so encouraging to see a nice, polite and helpful young man with ADHD.
    Josh is very special and my heart warms with the thought that Jeremy can be like him when he is Josh's age. I have felt all of the feelings you describe in your book from the sense of isolation when well intentioned nursery workers report to me about my son, to the exhaustion of burnout, to the humbleness before God, and also the awe of seeing just how wonderful and creative Jeremy is. I thank-you for writing this book. I think it would make a wonderful book on tape. Please feel free to call me anytime if you would like to see if an idea would help other ADHD kids. I think trying new ideas will help Jeremy and my other son Bobby (not ADHD but creative & enjoys variety) and me stay excited, interested, and hopeful about home schooling. Good luck with your workshop at the CHEO conference. May God Bless you!

Pam Williams
Powell, Ohio

    "Melinda opens the door to her world and invites us in to experience what life is really like with ADHD. Offering practical solutions that are easily applied this book will take you on an emotional journey that will arm you with the tools to help both you and your children."

Andrea King-Dalton
recreation technologist and mother of three www.kidztime.ca

    Being new to the world of having a child evaluated with AD/HD, I found Melinda's informal writing in Heads Up Helping well suited for parents and/or teachers who interact with AD/HD children day in and day out. The determination to help her children succeed is evident in that she always looks at each situation differently and comes up with a solution that will get the best out of each child. Taking into consideration that each child is unique, what works for one may not work for the other, the book offers new ways that parents and teachers can connect with children with AD/HD and sensory issues.
    Heads Up Helping offers alternatives to medicating children with AD/HD, to deal with things like distractibility, fidgeting, and hyperactivity, such as using a Therapy Ball, sitting disks, and fidget toys. Although geared toward home-schoolers, Melinda offers teaching techniques and classroom aids that can help children focus on the task at hand in any learning environment. Also included are ways to improve social behaviors and communicating skills, which our children will need to be successful adults.
    I am both encouraged and inspired after reading all the different ways a parent/teacher can help children with special needs face learning and life with a "heads up" attitude. Having a child who looks at the world a little differently will just require me to look at the world a little differently. One cannot find better testimony than through Melinda's eyes. She's living it and thankfully, sharing it with others!

Robyn M. Harper,
Partner and Webmaster, Mom To Mom Chat.com
www.momtomomchat.com

    Teachers will benefit through Melinda's personal approach to children with learning challenges. It is a realistic look on how we should be supporting children in their journey through learning and through life.

C.Deubner
Title One Reading-Reading Recovery Teacher

    I just read your book "Heads Up Helping!!" I enjoyed it very much and will recommend it in the next class I conduct on ADHD in Oct. You made the book very user friendly for folks new to the "world of ADD/ADHD." I'd like to personally thank you for the time and effort put into writing the book. It will be a nice addition to the literature already in the market place.

Karen Myers,R.N.

About the Author

    Melinda L. Boring was born and raised in Ohio. She received her undergraduate degree in Education from Miami University and her Masters degree from The Ohio State University. Melinda has seventeen years experience as a Speech Language Therapist, working primarily with children. She has also been homeschooling her children for nine years. For the past three years she has presented workshops at Homeschooling conferences and various groups in Ohio.
    In 2001, Melinda founded Heads Up! (www.headsupnow.com), a company designed to provide expert information and products for parents, teachers and therapists who work with children with hyperactivity, distractibility and sensory issues.
    Melinda lives in Grandview Heights, Ohio with her husband, three children, a large dog and two cats.

Excerpts

I remained convinced that my son was bright in some ways, and I also knew that this was not readily apparent to others. This was especially true when Josh was seen in a group setting. I did not want Josh growing up believing he was inherently inferior to others. I did not want him negatively mislabeled because he was different than most his age. I wasn't sure exactly what was causing the differences with Josh, but I was committed to helping him succeed in every way he could. (p. 18)

Often I would be in the midst of teaching when Josh would suddenly ask, "What was that?". Josh had a need to identify every sound he heard - and he seemed to hear sounds that most people were unaware of unless they were concentrating intently on hearing them. Not only did Josh hear the sounds, he felt the need to identify their source immediately and often imitated the sounds he heard. I had to laugh one day when I heard a vaguely familiar noise and realized Josh was imitating the sounds of our neighbor's leaf blower! He could also make a close approximation of a vacuum cleaner noise, although such loud noises bothered him and he often covered his ears in the presence of loud sounds. By imitating noises and drawing my attention to even the softest of sounds, Josh demonstrated that he was highly attuned to some auditory stimuli even from a young age. (pp. 40-1)

When Beckie was three years old, I took her to a craft show with me. I knew that there would be many items at her eye level, so before we entered the room with the craft booths I instructed Beckie to "Look with your eyes, but do not touch anything." Beckie looked up at me with a combination of sadness and bewilderment as she said, "But Mommy, to touch IS to look." Finally, I made the connection and realized that Beckie was a strongly tactile learner. She had been giving me cues all along. (p. 58)

Beckie's fidgeting took the form of continuous movement. Even while sitting in a chair, she was continually changing positions. She rarely sat with good posture, feet flat on the floor. She shifted from side to side, sat on one foot or both feet, and squirmed. Sometimes I would catch her sitting on the arm or even the back of the chair, which was especially disruptive during mealtimes. She constantly fidgeted even while sitting on my lap, although she frequently sought out the opportunity to sit with me. Her relentless wiggling and writhing made it increasingly uncomfortable to hold her. (p. 73)

I have found two general approaches to working with my hyperactive children, and tend to alternate between them as I see what works on a given day. The approaches can be categorized as those that attempt to direct or subdue actions, and those that attempt to provide a release or outlet for the bursts of high energy that occur. (p. 86)

There are times when my children are giving indications that they need to be in motion, and I am reluctant to stop the educational flow for another break. I have a number of activities that allow for movement to be incorporated while still working on an academic task. This accommodates my goal of accomplishing a set amount of work while also accommodating their need to move around. (p. 90)

Even though Josh could tell time, he didn't have a good internal sense of time passing. When he was engaged in a highly interesting activity, time seemed to speed by. Likewise, a low interest activity felt like hours to him when in reality only minutes had passed. The timer with the visual display helped him see for himself the passage of time. It was also an objective source difficult for Josh to argue with, unlike his responses when others tried to persuade him regarding the passage of time. (p. 99)

I wouldn't say that Josh completely lacked social skills as a youngster. It was more a matter of his responding to people in ways that were neither predictable nor conventionally accepted. Josh genuinely liked people and showed great interest in their activities. But certain social skills that came naturally as part of development in most children eluded him. (p. 107)

My own preferred style both for teaching and for learning is to advance in a sequential manner, starting at the beginning and following a linear progression to the conclusion. I like to finish what I start before moving on to another subject area. Whereas Josh loves experimenting, possibilities, risk-taking, and alternatives, I like details, predictability, and structure. In other words, Josh and I could not be much more different in our approaches to tasks. My way of learning did not work for Josh, and just led to frustration for us both. Beth could learn from my step-by-step way of teaching, but fortunately she could also adapt to learn alongside Josh as I made changes in how I presented some subjects. In order to truly connect with Josh as a teacher to a student, there were a number of alterations I needed to make. (pp. 138-9)

Catalogue Information