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

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

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.