Does anybody have an ADD child?

[Exalted Shrimp]

My son has ADHD and I am looking for some ideas on handling this in HK. He is falling through the cracks education wise. I'm not able to pick up and go back to the states at this time. Kathy

[Seb's Dad]

Kathy

No I dont, but I have read about it a fair bit in the past. The medical community is sometimes criticised for being too quick to diagnose ADD. In some cases what is considered ADD ends up being pent up energy. I have read cases where parents have introduced more structured exercise regimes and the kids often settle down and/or become more focused when needed.

For what it's worth you might want to look into it.

Regards

Charles

[JJC]

Depending on the age of your child, you need to contact Matilda Child Development Centre or Watchdog. Both schools are on the Island and provide excellent care for children with a variety of special needs.

[Exalted Shrimp]

At the moment I am dealing with the education department If my son was mentally retarded or autistic he could go to a nice school with lot,s of resources. They dont have a category for him. I want him there where he can have the educational benefits he needs. He is behind his class and has been offered 1 hr a day at school if not on meds. He isn't because the one that he tried wasn't the right one. At some point he will be able to have 1 and a half hrs per day red cross training school in Tai Po. Only other offer inpatient care for 1 year in Tai Po hospital which is ridiculous considering he's not a danger to anyone. I'll keep fighting! Kathy

[loraine]

I know that autism is not the same as ADD, but you might try contacting Autism Partnership (located in Central), they have a unique approach to handklng children who have difficulty attending and offer home tuition as well.

[emilyc]

You may wish to try getting some good advice from Glen Doman institute, www.iahp.org, in Philadelphia. They run courses for parents to home school their children. In their graduate course, they talk about how they use PHD (activity programs such as swimming, brachiating, crawling etc) to help ADD kids and some of them become "normal" after 6 months.

[tehnaz ragi]

Hi Kathy,

I am a special needs teacher at Watchdog Early LEarning and Development Centre. Your son has to be below 5yrs of age to apply there and there is a long waiting list. However, he will get the necessary support there.

If he is over 5yrs, some ESF schools, Springboard at KIS, and many other international schools have support units. This is the international English medium curriculum.

There are also other specialists/services in HK. I have attached a compilation for you. Hope this helps. If you need any more information, please feel free to contact me.

[hkjlee]

The followin is an excerpt taken from Glenn Doman's Website:

"Learning problems" is not a diagnosis but rather a description of a collection of symptoms that includes hyperactivity, reading problems, language problems, math problems, writing problems, behavior problems, and a host of other symptoms. These are all typical of brain-injured children.

There are more than 300 different labels that are commonly used to describe brain-injured children "dyslexia", "ADD" (Attention Deficit Disorder), are amongst these . The vast majority of these labels are not proper diagnoses but rather are descriptions of symptoms of brain injury.

A proper diagnosis describes where the injury exists in the brain, the degree of the injury to the brain, and the extent of the injury to the brain.

To be successful one must treat the brain, where the injury actually exists.

For full text and related articles please visit http://www.iahp.org/institutes_repor...ems/index.html