Children, young people and (young) adults with developmental disorders such as ADHD, ADD and autistic syndromes PDD-NOS and Asperger’s syndrome often benefit from tips for concentration, studying and planning. What techniques exist and which programs work best? What other tips are useful to know? Format of this article:

• Article about ADHD, ADD, PDD-NOS and Asperger’s: what can work?
• General tips for ADHD, ADD, autism.
• Mind maps for ADHD and/or autism
• ADHD and nutrition

Article about ADHD, ADD, PDD-NOS and Asperger’s: what can work?

Many people are now already familiar with developmental disorders such as ADHD, ADD, PDD-NOS and, for example, Asperger’s syndrome. Individual differences are very important to consider, but they also make diagnoses difficult: for example, there is a lot of overlap or comorbidity in developmental disorders (e.g. many children with ADHD symptoms also often have oppositional or aggressive characteristics).This article does not include a detailed description of the disorders as this can be found in abundance in other articles, the internet and books. It contains more practical tips and techniques to help children and adults or to learn new strategies. Every child, young person or adult has their own approach, yet many techniques are suitable and helpful for many people. So do some research and see what suits the child and the situation.Despite the many individual differences, what information exists about general tips for concentrating, studying and planning for these children, adolescents or adults?

General tips for ADHD, ADD, autism.

1. Encouraging and rewarding positive behavior and thinking is often recommended. This way you prevent the person from getting into a negative thought spiral. This can arise at home or at school, but can certainly spread to other situations in which he/she finds himself/herself. Due to deviant behavior, it will occasionally happen that people are held accountable for these behaviors and less for positive behavior. Due to concentration problems or difficulty with impulse control, these young people often have more difficulty with everyday matters or achievements that are normal for average young people. To avoid frustration, it is therefore important to emphasize positive behavior and progress or achievements in as many situations as possible in which the person encounters.
2. Supervision and involvement. If there are medication prescriptions, it is important to ensure that the child or adolescent takes his medication. Structure is also highly demanded by these young people. Repeat rules and agreements, schedule as many things as possible, such as homework but also free time/situations, and specify the location, action, people present and duration. Check off tasks as they are completed and reward performance as necessary. Use memos, sticky notes, alarm and/or clock. Give clear and short instructions and try to empathize with the other person’s situation.
3. Provide a good workplace: arrange it in such a way that you can work optimally and concentrate. The requirements can vary widely, but are often very person-specific. So take all requirements into consideration to allow the person to work as efficiently as possible. Remove as many distractions from the room as possible, such as TVs or computers, when they are not needed for work.

Mind maps for ADHD and/or autism

Using Mind Maps for learning is recommended by several sources, and not just for people with ADHD or autism! When making mind maps, someone is creative and organizing, it is also widely used by adults, for example in business or by students. It uses creativity, visual learning techniques, multi-tasking and to avoid the feeling of ‘information overload’. Creating mind maps does not only have to work when studying or making a presentation, almost every situation can be approached with a mind map. What needs to be done or needs to be learned is organized in a clear manner, with colors and terms of your own choice.Many people with ADD indicate that they have difficulty gaining an overview. Mind maps help with this and in addition , irrelevant matters can often be made invisible on mind map programs on the computer, so that people do not get distracted by matters that do not matter. The entire folder can often also be expanded for a global overview. Colors often help with mind maps on paper: this allows the artist/creator to determine what goes where and thus organize topics and priorities.It happens that people with ADD or autism are creatively well versed or can or work a lot with images and objects. Mind mapping responds to this by challenging creativity and creating a visually clear whole. It ensures that the creator gets an understandable picture of the information, made in his/her own way with his/her own words and images. They often learn/remember best when they have a clear visual representation of the information. By mind mapping they work with diagrams, pictures, figures, colors, arrows and abbreviations.This is very good for memory and is also more fun to do than the average extract.How do you start? First read the information you want to master. Write along with the text and note the main topic and matters that are important. This may be a draft, the real mind map will come later. Then grab a sheet of paper, color or open a mind map computer program. The main subject of the mind map will be in the center of the paper or computer screen (there will be some example programs later in this article). Put a circle or square around it and start making the first connections. You create this by making lines (with different colors) from the center outward, to the new sub-topic. These can also have branches with the same color and so your mind map takes on more and more shape.Below are some Mind Map programs:

An informative instructional video that emphasizes the importance of working with mind maps for (young) children can be seen here.

ADHD and nutrition

Studies involving ADHD and food have been conducted extensively. For example, it was once thought that certain dyes could worsen ADHD, but the same claim has been made with sugars. The fact remains that every child is an individual and these population studies are often inadequate in predicting the outcomes of individuals. Administering fish oil to reduce certain symptoms of the above syndromes also does not always appear to be appropriate.In any case, it is advisable to carry out an allergy test. It is also true that not all possible medications work for the child, young person, young adult or adult . The side effects that can occur are sometimes disturbing or possibly worrying. When certain or many symptoms reduce or even disappear by isolating certain nutrients, this is a pleasant solution. ADHD and nutrition contains more information about the research and advanced analyzes of food allergies that they carry out with the results (which are often positive). It should be noted that it does not have to work for everyone, about 20% still benefit more from medication.

read more

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• Learning and concentration in ADD, ADHD and Autism: Adults
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