Head in the Clouds

Meditation for Kids

Parents and teachers tell kids 100 times a day to pay attention. … But we never teach them how.

—Stanford researcher Philippe R. Goldin, quoted in the New York Times

Goldin has a good point. How do you pay attention? Can you teach someone how? Can you teach children how?

Some educators and researchers are trying to teach school kids how to pay better attention by teaching them meditation. My last blog post was about meditation and ADD. Research suggests that meditation can help with symptoms of ADD, at least in adults. But what about in children?

A little  bit of research plus some experience in schools suggests that meditation might help kids as well—on a wide variety of issues, as with adults, and perhaps directly with attentional issues. A 2007 New York Times article and a 2009 SharpBrains post are good places to start reading about this.

Much of the research on meditation is on a type called mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness might help both with primary ADD symptoms and with the type of fallout that can go along with ADD. According to the New York Times article,

Dr. [Amy] Saltzman, co-director of [a] mindfulness study at Stanford, said the initial findings showed increased control of attention and “less negative internal chatter—what one girl described as ‘the gossip inside my head: I’m stupid, I’m fat or I’m going to fail math.’”

Chances are you've heard of Transcendental Meditation as well. A piece in Medical News Today covers a small study suggesting that that type of meditation might also be helpful to children with ADD.

Further research on kids and meditation looks like it'll be worth paying attention to!

The website of the Association for Mindfulness in Education looks like a good place learn more about the topic and watch for research updates.

Stanford researcher Amy Saltzman’s website offers a few guided mindfulness videos for kids, including one on finding the “still, quiet place,” one with simple movements, and one on the “flashlight of attention.” (I love the metaphor!)

Paying Attention to Paying Attention

There’s something hard for me about making the switch from a lively, even cluttered, brain to a quiet brain. Some fear of emptiness or boredom. It’s one reason I’ve gone years at a time without meditating, even though I thought it would be helpful to me. And even though I knew from experience that I enjoy what it feels like to meditate—once I actually get started.

Over the years, as I didn’t meditate, I kept reading about the benefits of meditation. Research suggests it might help prevent heart disease, reduce anxiety, ease arthritis pain, and even diminish perimenopause symptoms—all pertinent for me. I listened to people, too, and heard all about how meditation helped them be more patient, more understanding, more peaceful. 

Then I read about a study out of UCLA. It’s small, but it suggests that meditation might help with the core issues of ADD itself. A type of meditation called mindfulness meditation “improves your ability to control your attention,” says psychiatrist Lidia Zylowska in an interview with ADDitude magazine. “In other words, it teaches you to pay attention to paying attention. Mindful awareness can also make people more aware of their emotional state, so they won’t react impulsively.”

I also read a summary of the UCLA study on the blog SharpBrains, which I highly recommend. “Mindfulness meditation,” writes psychologist David Rabiner, “can be thought of as a type of attention/cognitive exercise program that is focused on improving self-regulation.”

All this made sense to me. “Now,” I was thinking, “I really have to start meditating.” But how do you meditate if you have ADD? If you have trouble sitting still or reining in your thoughts or fitting in a shower once in a while?

Finally, though, I am meditating regularly. It’s not some pure, perfect, time-consuming practice. But it’s a practice. Here’s what’s helped:

• I’ve set my goal really small: meditate at least three minutes a day most days. I usually end up doing more. In fact, the more I practice, the longer I can meditate. (I hear that's why they call it a meditation practice.)
• I track meditation along with the other exercises I do—from hiking to thumb bends—filling in one square in a table with green and the number of minutes every time I meditate.
• I’ve been using online guided meditations to create structure for myself. When a voice guides me, I’m able to stay focused in a way that’s hard for me on my own.

I’ve set up a page on this blog with links to short online guided meditations, a bunch of them, all free. If you’re challenged when it comes to quieting mind or body but want to meditate, check them out. Bookmark the page if you find it helpful. I’ve also put a link to the page on the right-hand sidebar of this blog.

One more thing I’ve realized—I tend to get tired of the same old same old, and guided meditations are no exception. I’ll keep adding to the list, and please feel free to share your own finds by commenting at the bottom of the list. Thanks!

What helps you meditate? Feel free to comment below.

My next post will be about teaching meditation to children.

For more on the UCLA research, visit UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center.

One more study: Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania examined “how meditation may modify the three subcomponents of attention, including the ability to prioritize and manage tasks and goals, the ability to voluntarily focus on specific information and the ability to stay alert to the environment,” according to a summary of the study in Science Daily. “Researchers found that even for those new to the practice, meditation enhanced performance and the ability to focus attention. Performance-based measures of cognitive function demonstrated improvements in a matter of weeks.” 

ADD Documentary Available Online Today

Just watched a short documentary about adult ADD by a couple of Canadian comedians. It's fast-moving, funny, and touching and includes plenty of interviews with experts and people with ADD. It's called ADD and Loving It, and it's available to watch free online—but only through today, and I'm not sure what time today. It's about 43 minutes long.

To find out how to view the film in the future, check out  the filmmakers' website, which looks to be a fun and informative destination in and of itself, or the film's Facebook page.

Heck Yes!

Derek Sivers—the founder of CD Baby—has a great idea for people who "often over-commit or feel too scattered." (Sound familiar?) When it comes to decision making, he suggests, forget yes or no. Instead, make it HELL YEAH! or no. Feel the difference?

HELL YEAH! it's worth reading Sivers's blog post about this: "No More Yes. It's Either HELL YEAH! or No." I'm definitely going to be trying out this tool. Maybe it'll even help me with this problem. Or maybe not ...

Thanks to @EricHamm for tweeting about this.

Wrightslaw on the Twice-Exceptional Child

A couple of law professors, Pete and Pam Wright, have a website called Wrightslaw, about special-education law and advocacy for children with disabilities. Looks like a helpful site in general, including on legal issues surrounding ADD. But thanks to @JenLaviano on Twitter for tweeting about a new page on the site, about twice-exceptional students. Lots of good links there!

In case you haven’t heard the term twice exceptional, here’s how the Wrights define it: “Twice-exceptional children are gifted children of above average abilities who have special educational needs—AD/HD, learning disabilities, Asperger Syndrome, etc. Because their giftedness can mask their special needs and their special needs can hide their giftedness, they are often labeled as ‘lazy’ and ‘unmotivated.’"

Wrightslaw could be a good springboard for learning more.

It's Complicated Redux

What are the potential consequences of taking ADD medications over the long run, from childhood into adulthood? Might taking meds facilitate the normal development of the cerebral cortex in children with ADD? But might those same meds also make people more susceptible to depression, anxiety, and cognitive deficits? Psychiatrist Edmund S. Higgins explores the research in a July 2009 article in Scientific American Mind.

On the one hand, says Higgins,

the pills can improve attention, concentration and productivity and also suppress impulsive behavior, producing significant improvements in some people's lives. Severe inattention and impulsivity put individuals at risk for substance abuse, unemployment, crime and car accidents. Thus, appropriate medication might keep a person out of prison, away from addictive drugs or in a job.

On the other hand, says Higgins, the benefits of the meds—from staying out of prison to being able to focus on schoolwork—could come at a cost: 

With the expanded and extended use of stimulants comes mounting concern that the drugs might take a toll on the brain over the long run. Indeed, a smattering of recent studies, most of them involving animals, hint that stimulants could alter the structure and function of the brain in ways that may depress mood, boost anxiety and, contrary to their short-term effects, lead to cognitive deficits.

Don't let the opening anecdote of the article stop you; I'm not sure it really illustrates what Higgins is talking about. I started wondering, Don’t tests like the ones he may have performed yield a fair number of false negatives? And did Higgins listen—really listen—to the boy and his mother about the boy’s difficulties? (Of course, he may well have.)

I also wondered if using the term “relaxation of official criteria” dismisses the possibility that diagnostic criteria could evolve over time to be more helpful. Such “relaxation” might reflect an increased understanding of real differences in how ADD presents—for example, in girls, women, and adults.

Higgins also refers to a “lower tolerance in society for mild behavioral or cognitive problems.” But what about when you thwart and frustrate yourself, never mind what society thinks? When some of your ADD traits keep you from achieving your own goals? I’m not arguing that meds are the answer, just that it’s important not to minimize people’s individual struggles, even if those people aren’t causing big problems for society.

Despite my quibbles about some of Higgins’s wording, his article is a great overview of the possible risks and benefits of long-term medication for ADD, with summaries of interesting studies. It’s well worth the read.

For more on the complexity of medication for ADD, see a previous post, "It’s Complicated.”

Back to Basics

"Some time ago," a friend e-mailed me, "I read an article on ADD, but I can't find it." How appropriate!

"However," she continued, "I took some notes." Those notes were so succinct and at the same time so all-encompassing that I got her permission to reprint them here. In her words:

[The article] said ADD people need

1. Structure.
2. Meditation.
3. Aerobic exercise.
4. Diet—less carbos.
5. Follow your heart—need passion and interest.
6. Neurotransmitter activity—need stimulation.
7. Recognize there is struggle to shift gears.

That about sums it up! Seven good reminders for us all ...

I Could

OK, I admit it, I’m paralyzed at the moment when it comes to certain aspects of my life. But it’s not due to a lack of mental activity. Here’s a glimpse at the workings of my hyperactive brain:

I could compose music to play on natural objects, like that guy I heard perform percussion on a cactus!

I could compose music for dance, like the woman who composed the dreamy, slightly dissonant piano music for that ballet of Peter Pan!

I could learn how to design sounds for computers, like that guy my sister knows!

I could become a nature photographer, focusing on clouds, water, and mating insects!

I could design birthday-party kits, with archaeological digs for real fossils, King Toot emerging from his tomb to issue goofy curses, and dances choreographed to Hannah Montana songs!

I could start a school for kids with ADD, where learning occurs by means of nature study, invention, dance, and art!

I could set up an ADD counseling practice or coaching practice or support group or at least a Meetup!

I could write my memoir about life as a girl and woman with ADD! Finish my novel about donor insemination, teen pregnancy, alcoholism—and telling and facing the truth! Publish my poetry about things like a praying mantis eating a butterfly and what that has to do with DES and breast cancer! I could finish my children’s stories about a lonely letter H and about an aspen tree who can see with the eyes on her trunk!

I could co-author a book with my ex about our disaster of a marriage and its transformation into a miraculously decent co-parenting relationship! A book about living with your hunter-gatherer biology! A social history of donor insemination! An e-book about genetics and adoption!

I could write magazine articles about delayed sleep phase syndrome, my great-aunt’s internment in the Philippines during World War II, and California’s serpentine grasslands!

I could start a business consulting with HOAs and property managers about organic landscape management! Or apply for grants and start up an organic demonstration lawn, an annual organic garden tour, and an educational program for local landscape managers on effective organic methods!

I could blog about pesticide issues in my county, starting with a post about the yellow pesticide-warning flags that start appearing around the time the yellow flags (Iris pseudacorus) bloom in that swampy area along the Bobolink Trail!

I could start a blog that brings together those of us for whom modern fragrances amount to torture!

The truth is, with my mishmash of education and experience, I could do just about any of those things.

But I can’t do all of them. And, no matter how hard I throw myself at the tasks, I can’t do them all at once. Especially since I’m also raising a lively ten-year-old, trying to keep my baby-boomer body in decent working condition, doing my best to keep house, and, theoretically at least, bringing in some income.

It’s one of the curses of ADD: so many great ideas, so little time—and so little time-management skill.

Phooey.

You can get a sense of my varied, or is it scattered, background at www.kathleenchristensen.com. The truth is, my background does give me a broad palette of interesting skills and knowledge.

And, by the way, I also created a website for my pesticide group: www.pesticideboulder.org. You can tell how current I’ve kept it by the quote from Eliot Spitzer! But the site does provide a lot of good info and links.

After the Garage Sale

See yesterday's post for the before video!

Before the Garage Sale

See my next post to find out what happened!