What Parents Need to Know
August 2009
By Joe Bissen
August 2009 Sponsored Section  Rick Lavoie has been an administrator, educator, and nationally recognized speaker on learning disabilities for 37 years. He’s best known for the video “How Difficult Can This Be? The F.A.T. City Workshop,” where viewers experience the challenges kids with learning disabilities face every day. His message to parents: It takes a family. | What to expect after the diagnosis.
“You go through a series of emotions—guilt, anger, isolation—and it makes things very complicated. It can often cause great discord in the family and an inability to communicate because Mom and Dad might be at different stages.”
Don’t forget your marriage.
“You’ve got to take really good care of each other. You tend to focus so much on the child, as you should, but you need to also take good care of each other because it can be a very dangerous time for the marriage.”
The waterbed theory.
“For a family of five, it’s like five people lying side by side on a waterbed. Whenever one person moves, everyone feels the ripple. I tell parents, you don’t have a special needs kid, you have a special needs family now. Take care of each other, take care of the siblings, certainly invest yourself in professionals, but never ever lose your own seat at the table.”
Some practical advice. If your child is perfect for the pediatrician but a challenge at home, make a video of the behavior and bring it to the next appointment. “Oftentimes, doctors think Mom and Dad are overreacting.” |
 Russell Barkley knows attention deficit hyperactivity disorder better than anyone. A clinical scientist, author, educator, and speaker, he’s spent 35 years researching ADHD and has co-authored or co-edited 23 published books relating to the diagnosis and treatment of a very common (and commonly misunderstood) disorder. | How you’ll know there’s a problem.
“When you’re getting reliable feedback from several sources that your child is having difficulty, usually getting along with other kids, or sitting still, or following through on things. You need to take that seriously.”
Why fathers are more reluctant to acknowledge ADHD
“Fathers tend to be more tolerant of boyishness and a little more reluctant to engage the mental health system than mothers are.”
The reverse stigma.
“The stigma of ADHD actually has declined markedly in the last decade, thanks to media articles and the CHADD organization and others that have tried to take the stigma out. Typically, we find that parents overestimate the stigma. If anything, what we’re seeing is almost a reverse stigma. People are saying, ‘Oh, there really isn’t a disorder. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.’ I tell parents that your biggest problem is going to be convincing people that there is a problem.” |
 For years, Roberto Rivera was told there was something wrong with him. He was labeled “learning disabled” in high school and grew up in a broken home with an abusive, alcoholic father. He dealt drugs for a time.
It wasn’t until he connected with hip-hop culture, he says, that “I found my voice.” A graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison who created his own major (Social Change, Youth Culture and the Arts), Rivera today is an accomplished businessman, speaker, filmmaker, and performer hoping to activate and empower other kids in the margins. | Cultivate the good instead of lingering on the bad.
“My main message is to see the good in kids, to encourage that and go beyond this whole idea of ‘putting out the fire.’”
Don’t lock out media.
Recognize the powerful influence music, movies, and video games have on your kids and teach them to examine it with open eyes. “Get kids to think critically, to filter out all the negative things they’re getting from their iPods, from videos, from the Internet.”Encourage community service.
“Give young people opportunities to lead. One way to do that is through community service programs, maybe at their church, mosque, or temple. Once they start critically seeing what’s going on in society, once kids start thinking out of the box, they become empowered.” |
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