Children with ADHD often feel defeated and want to give up trying.  Adults can sometimes unknowingly contribute to these feelings; parents, teachers, coaches, and counselors, may focus on the child's weaknesses more than highlighting their strengths.

Recently an article was published in KQED News, Mind/Shift, Five Ways to Help Children with ADHD Develop Their Strengths. The article discusses ways to put the focus back on developing and encouraging strengths. Dr. Sharon Saline the author of, What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew, writes that ADHD children want to feel normal.  They want to be like other children. She goes on to state that, “An informed empathy for ADHD children -- for what they experience on a daily basis -- can inspire parents and teachers to work with these children in ways that will help them grow into responsible and happy adults.”

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A well-balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains is recommended by nutritionists in order to stay healthy and improve cognitive development. There are some foods that have been shown to be more beneficial than others.  One of these is blueberries. Harvard Health states that the natural plant pigments in berries help improve memory.  A study, published in Annals of Neurology, found that women who consumed two or more servings of strawberries and blueberries each week delayed their memory decline by up to two-and-a-half years.

Blueberries, in particular, are neuroprotective and also help to slow down the aging process and fight against disease. Fortunately, blueberries are easy to fit into your diet. You can snack on them anytime or add them to your morning oatmeal. They are also great in smoothies and on top of waffles! 

Since...

Researchers recently reporting in an article by HealthDaily News; Autism, ADHD in One Child Tied to Raised Risk in Siblings, that autism and ADHD are so closely linked that they not only run in families, but each increases the risk of the other in future siblings. Researchers found that younger siblings of children with autism have a "30-fold increased relative risk" of being diagnosed with autism themselves and are nearly four times as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. In addition to the sibling connection, researchers found that later-born siblings have 13 times increased odds of being diagnosed with ADHD.

Lead researcher Meghan Miller states; “This really provides support for the idea that there are shared familial -- probably genetic -- mechanisms that underlie these two conditions and link them together.”

The article goes on to describe more of the specific results and tests...

Data show that boys are diagnosed 3 to 1 over girls.  However, adult data indicate that for every adult male diagnosed with ADHD, an adult woman is diagnosed presenting a 1:1 ratio of diagnoses. It shows that girls are being overlooked, but why?

Research Digest published an article this month titled New Findings Could Help Explain Why ADHD is Often Overlooked in Girls to help answer the question. The research from 2017 investigated possible predictors of childhood vs. adolescent/adult-onset ADHD. The researchers discovered that girls tend to develop ADHD at a later age than boys.

The same team that performed the research cited above, also explored the diagnosis discrepancy in their research paper published in Developmental Science.  The same results were confirmed. During their research, 1,571 children were analyzed from the age of 7-15 each year by their...