Center of Attention
Newsletter of CHADD of Northern California
Also at: http://www.chaddnorcal.org/newsletter
10 June 2002

CHADD Works to Improve the Lives of People with
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder through Education, Advocacy,
and Support

===== In This Issue =====

About the Newsletter
Calendar of Events
Feature Article: Parenting 101 - Books You May Have Missed
Letters - "Scattered"
Center of Attention Seeking New Editor
Please Tell Us

===== About the Newsletter =====

The Center of Attention is CHADD of Northern California's bi-weekly
newsletter. The newsletter is designed to keep you up to date with
CHADD of Northern California's activities and updates in the field.
It's a step toward bringing the members closer together.

======== Calendar of Events ==========

============================
Marin - 6/11/2002, Tues. 7-9pm
Ask the Coach -- Three coaches to describe how coaching helps those with ADHD.
Town Center Corte Madera Community Room, Corte Madera - Contact:
Beverlee: 415-789-9464
============================
Online - 6/12/2002, Wed. 6-8:00 PM PST
Russell Barkley, PhD - Recent Advances in Understanding and Managing ADHD --
CHADD Online Chat, Internet - Contact: Message Line: 510-291-2950
============================
Alameda - 6/12/2002, Wed. 7 - 9 pm
Tri-Valley Parent Support Meeting --
Thomas J. Hart Middle School, Pleasanton - Contact: JoAnn Matone: 925-484-2173
============================
Contra Costa - 6/19/2002, Wed. 7-9 pm
Walnut Creek Adult General Support Meeting -- Ongoing, confidential
support groups for Adults with ADHD
Kaiser Mental Health, Walnut Creek - Contact: Donna Love: 925-687-4324
============================
Santa Clara - 6/19/2002, Wed. Reg: 7pm, Meet 7:30pm
Silicon Valley Adult, Parent and Spouse Support Groups -- Separate
peer-facilitated groups let you share struggles and strategies with
each other. Includes video.
Also: Election for Board of Directors for 2002-2003
Friends Meeting House, Palo Alto - Contact: Silicon Valley Warmline:
650-949-5472
============================
Yolo - 6/20/2002, Thu. Lending Library 7:15 pm; 7:30 pm to 8:30 pm
County Meeting -- Support Group Discussion or Speakers
Davis Branch, Yolo County Library, Davis - Contact: Yolo County
CHADD: 530-750-3929
============================
San Francisco - 6/27/2002, Thu. 7-9pm
Jane Stecher, LCSW will speak. -- She has in the past organized
parenting groups for challenging and oppositional children at UCSF.
CPMC Pacific Campus, San Francisco - Contact: San Francisco Warmline:
415-442-1944
============================
Sonoma - 7/3/2002, Wed. 7 - 9 pm
Sharing and Support. -- Bring your concerns, questions and
experiences. Everyone is welcome, including parents, spouses and
significant others -- diagnosed and undiagnosed.
Kaiser Hospital Building, Santa Rosa - Contact: Thora Lares: 707-765-4863
============================
San Francisco - 7/3/2002, Wed. 7:30pm
Women's ADD Support Group -- Please Call Lynn to confirm times and
locations before attending.
CPMC Davies Campus, San Francisco - Contact: Lynn: 415-621-1078
============================
Marin - 7/9/2002, Tues. 7-9pm
Ask the Doctor- Dr. William Foote -- A San Francisco psychiatrist,
Dr. Foote has been treating ADHD for more than 15 years.
Town Center Corte Madera Community Room, Corte Madera - Contact:
Beverlee: 415-789-9464
============================
Alameda - 7/10/2002, Wed. 7 - 9 pm
Tri-Valley Parent Support Meeting -- New location: Pleasanton Public Library
Pleasanton Public Library, Pleasanton - Contact: JoAnn Matone: 925-484-2173
============================

===== Feature Article ======

The following article has been published with kind permission from
Betsy Davenport, originally printed in Portland Family.

Parenting 101 - Books You May Have Missed

Betsy Davenport

Bookstore shelves are bulging with them: parenting books. Some cover
everything, or strive to; some are specific to ages or stages; some
are aimed at parents with special religious or philosophical values -
and all are geared to make you buy, and be persuaded.

Spank. Don't spank. Kids are worth it (worth it? What??). Difficult
children, different children. Be the boss; be your child's best
friend.

It can be so boggling, one wants to cast one's eyes heavenward and
shout, Would someone please make up our cultural mind, and let us
know when the decision's been made?

There have always been kids who are as easy to strangle as hug; who
put their parents on the ropes, one way or another, daily. In adults
we call that persistent.

Likewise, there are always children whose gaze on the world is so
penetrating we might be relieved they say little, and we must be
brave enough to look hard in the mirror when they say more.

It used to be all right to be boisterous and energetic, the vitality
of children envied by their elders; now it's uncivilized, and
unwelcome in public.

It used to be all right to be shy, to approach with conservatism; now
it's a character flaw, a sign of low self esteem.

Oh, really?

When, on what day in what year, did a natural awareness that one has
been born into a welcoming world where one will find room for
oneself, become extinct and replaced by having to earn one's place?

Which month, in what season, did the taking of legitimate pride in
work well done become supplanted by a kind of Right to Feel Good
About Myself? And if you think there's a contradiction there, you are
correct.

On the one hand, it's reasonable to be, and feel, lovable simply
because one is in the world; on the other, it does not entitle one to
adulation or praise.

Similarly, when we expect nothing from children, and they decline to
participate in civilized, community living, we explain it by
declaring them to have low self esteem. Then we change the recipe,
add praise, and hope for the best.

Self esteem, whatever it is, was probably - and thankfully - not
something considered by great people in history. Think of Gandhi,
Beethoven, Margaret Fell, Sojourner Truth - anyone with a
recognizable name who has never been on the cover of People Magazine.

It's likely they had no time for self esteem; they were pretty busy
doing the work they discovered they were meant to do.

So let's skip the feel-good stuff, and find a few books that talk
about children as if they were real people with real concerns, and
about the arduous job of growing up in a world which is terribly
conflicted about them. And maybe we can do a little bit to preserve
their best qualities, relieve some of their suffering, and hope they
find their way.

What follows is a very short, annotated list of a few lesser-knowns.
If you want more, write the paper or contact me, and we can do a
column like this again. There are many wonderful books in the world;
these are just the ones that slid off the shelf first.

Your Self-Confident Baby

by Magda Gerber

Now if that doesn't sound goofy, what does? But read, read on, and
you will find a position on parenting and respect for children
presented in a readable (thank goodness!) and original style.

Gerber describes how to convey to an infant that you understand him
or her to be a real live person and not a doll or something to be
carted around and done to. An infant is a bundle of raw humanity, and
this book honors that and provides many examples, vignettes and
how-to's.

When You Worry About the Child You Love

by Edward Hallowell, MD

Now this refers to the worry you have not once or twice, but many
times in the middle of the night; the dread you feel awaiting, daily,
the stories of school; the gnawing in the pit of your stomach that
something is not right, that your child is not okay, not thriving,
and you don't know what to do about it.

Dr. Hallowell has been writing about children and education (and
AD/HD, and human connections) for years; this book was first printed
in 1996. Worries haven't changed, and he tells you when your worries
are legitimate signs that something's not right and needs further
investigation, and when it is likely to be minor.

Early in the book is a chapter on mental, emotional and neurological
conditions parents ought to be able to recognize (kind of like we
learn to recognize an ear infection, or acute chronic headache with
vomiting, or a dangling arm, as serious; and a sniffle, or a
superficial abrasion, as not). This book ought to be on every
family's book shelf.

The Optimistic Child

by Martin Seligman, PhD

This is a fine book written by a man who noticed that many children
growing up in untoward circumstances develop resiliency, optimism,
and even do well in life. Curious, he went against the grain in
psychology (which has usually been more fascinated with what's going
wrong than with what's going right), and made a study of it. He
concluded that just as helplessness can be learned when there is too
little adversity in a child's life, it can be learned when the
challenges surpass their resources for mastery.

But, says Seligman, an attitude of competence and capability, and
resilience for a lifetime, can be learned through the careful dosing
of right amounts of conquerable hardship. His writing is
conversational, and he provides loads of examples of interactions and
practical applications for his methods of helping kids stay on top of
adversity. He's interested in competence. The air feels better
already.

The Moral Intelligence of Children

by Robert Coles, MD

Dr. Coles is at Harvard, and he has written so many books one wonders
if he sleeps, or has elves in his employ. Invariably he is wise,
informed by good research (much of it by talking with real actual
children, and their parents), and above all, he has heart.

In this book he explores how in moment-by-moment interactions, the
daily grind of spilled milk and laundry, parents are sowing the seeds
for moral character: the yes one says to a child's desires, tempered
by the no one says to the child's insistence upon having everything.

Along the many roads this book takes, you'll find parents, teachers
and school chums, and all are part of the moral scenery, the backdrop
against which children become, crudely put, good, or bad. The very
young child learning not to hit the dog; the child of middle years
developing a sense of justice as interactions take place in
classrooms and on playgrounds; the rebellion of adolescence, acted
out against the screen of parental authority, as the outward display
of the internal conflict between a well-developed conscience and the
same primitive desire to have, do and be everything - and throw all
caution to the winds.

This is a book with real meat on its bones. It will make you think,
remind you how much you value your children, and how much you are
contributing, by your every gesture, to their moral fiber and to
their capacity to care for themselves without it costing someone
else. Read it.

Emotion: the On/Off Switch for Learning

by Priscilla Vail

This is so readable, and so obvious sometimes, one wonders how it got
published. But common sense is not so very common, is it; so this
book fills a necessary gap made wide by our inattention to the
obvious. We are busy with soccer, or worried about grades, or
punctuality, when it is not so much what we - or they - do, as it is
their emotional state when doing it, that governs how well they learn
to do it.

A teacher and teacher of teachers for many years, Vail elaborates on
the sometimes hidden, often obvious-but-dismissed, factors in
children's lives that enhance or inhibit their learning. From a dying
pet to peer rejection, teacher disapproval, parental impatience -
this book reminds us of what we can overlook as both enriching and
demoralizing; it is structured with What Parents Can Do and What
Teachers Can Do, and it is positive and hopeful, besides.

And, there will be no mid-term, no final exam, no paper to write and
no thesis. Just your children, running the world the way we have all
taught them to do.

Betsy Davenport, PhD is a therapist and parenting consultant. Contact
Betsy at 503-241-3727 or BIDaven@...

Note: this article also appears on the web page with links to these
books on Amazon. See http://www.chaddnorcal.org/newsletter

======== Letters ==========

"Scattered" by Gabor Maté

I would like to add to the excellent comments by Lew Mills on the the
book "Scattered" by Gabor Maté.

Reacting oppositionally to a threat to one's autonomy is a very
widespread phenomena between parents and their children. Respecting a
child's autonomy is an important challenge for every parent.

This is a completely separate issue from AD/HD. Of course the problem
can be greatly intensified in parenting a child with AD/HD, as their
resistance to any curtailment of their freedom to follow their
impulses is so much stronger, and they tend to lack the executive
function which would ally itself with the parents efforts.

I have the experience, however, of inheriting AD/HD and being raised
by a parent who did not threaten my autonomy. We had no oppositional
issues. Nonetheless I have struggled with extremely severe
disadvantages all my life as a result of AD/HD.

I think Mate's placement of this dynamic as a central interpretation
of AD/HD is not only erroneous, but an obstacle to better
understanding and treatment. A psychologist recently told me that she
refuses to treat AD/HD children because she feels the parents are
simply handing responsibility over. This perspective revealed to me
a profound lack of appreciation of the chaotic, frustrating,
exhausting and most of all, heartbreaking, experiences of being a
parent of an AD/HD child, none of which are simply escapable by
sending one's child to a therapist.

We need to keep the focus on the neurophysiological core of AD/HD,
and clearly separate dynamics which may come into play, but are not
intrinsic. Parents of AD/HD children need more recognition of their
quiet heroism, not to be held responsible for causing their child's
difficulties.

- "Carol and Oliver" by e-mail

==== Center of Attention Still Seeking New Editor ====

After a great run as editor, Sheetal Pandya has returned to work and
is leaving her post as editor of the Center of Attention Newsletter.
We are all very appreciative of what she has done and wish her the
best of luck in whatever comes next for her.

This also means that the position of editor is open. The job involves
collecting interesting and relevant articles, news, book reviews or
whatever, or cajoling and coordinating the writing of such by CHADD
friends and members. There is no "layout" or "production" involved.
It is just a job for a good and curious researcher to go out and find
the stuff that is most interesting to our members. Deadlines are only
every other week and material can be submitted early if desired! You
get to be published under the charming pseudonym of "CHADD Dimples"!
Group efforts with several editors would also be very welcome.

If you are interested, please write to CHADD_Dimples@....

===== Please Tell Us! =====

We thank members for their responses to the Newsletter. Any comments,
suggestions, or criticisms will be greatly appreciated. Please
continue to help us make this newsletter more beneficial to you all.

We also invite readers to share their experiences with us and other
members. Please feel free to write to us about anything that you
would like to see published.

You can e-mail your comments to us at CHADD_Dimples@....
Simply replying to this e-mail will also send your message to the
right place.