Health Guidance

Have you ever imagined that your child can be found guilty of a drug related offense or an associated law-breaking crime? Perhaps the best penalty according to the law would be for the court to sentence him to jail, but the law also permits the judge to commit such sentence to community service and or the attendance of a rehab treatment program.

Taking drugs and other banned substances harm you physically. If a patient continues to secretly take drugs while undergoing a drug rehabilitation, the applied rehab therapy would surely be unsuccessful. This is why inpatient drug rehab program, which keeps close eyes on the patient, is considered better than out patient rehab facility.

The drug rehabilitation program given to a teenager is targeted towards detoxifying his body so that he will stop craving for the substance of abuse while also educating him on the dangers of drug taking. As the child finishes his drug rehab program he becomes exposed to the dangers of drugs and learns to prevent himself from any drug activities that endanger his life.

Continue reading ‘Rehab Treatment For Teenage Drug Abuse’ »

Does your child find it hard to get out of bed in the morning? is he sleepy during the day, falling behind in school or just plain cranky?

Although we all need enough sleep to function well during the day, children especially need their sleep, because it’s during sleep that body produces growth hormones. These hormones are essential for healthy development.

Continue reading ‘Are Child Sleep Problems Affecting Your Family?’ »

If we are thinking of a plan for treating ADHD, the most important aim or objective will be in improving the life of the child at home and at school. Also, the overall objective in the long term will be to eliminate as far as possible inappropriate behavior and have realistic aims as to improving behavior overall.

We may think that including medication by psychostimulants in a plan for treating ADHD may be a good idea- however, research is now showing that although some relief of symptoms is obtained, in the long term there is now conclusive evidence from The University of Buffalo which shows that after about three years, the effects of these medications tend to wear off.

In the short term plan for treating ADHD, these stimulant meds may actually give a lot of relief from symptoms and that is why they are so attractive to many parents. Strangely enough, while stimulants will hype people up and make them more energetic, in ADHD children, they seem to have the opposite effect and can actually calm hyperactivity and increase the attention span. Continue reading ‘Plan For Treating ADHD – What is Best For Your Child?’ »

Positive Behavior Supports can be useful to parents working with children with Autism. It combines real rewards that the child is interested in with strategies to teach a variety of behaviors or skills. The skills can be educational or self help skills.

Initially we must think about the things our child will work for. We need to think about our childs’ favorite things. It might even be something as simple as a single skittle or a single piece of a cereal our child does not get very often.

Sometimes particularly with candy or cereal you may want to discontinue having that particular brand on a routine basis and have it only for the reward we will use. Some children with Autism can even tell mom or dad what they will work for.

Ideally parents will look for the one or two behaviors or skills that they would like to work on. It is difficult to work on more than two at a time because we all can quickly become overwhelmed with too many things going on at once. Continue reading ‘Autism and Positive Behavior Supports’ »

Autistic teaching can be a challenging topic for parents who have recently received a diagnosis for their child and have stepped into exploring the expansive world of autism and what it means. This short article aims to help you overcome that feeling of overwhelming emotion and give you some direction for planning your child’s teaching program.

When you first receive the diagnosis of “Autism Spectrum Disorder” you probably go through a mixture of feelings and have a ton of questions. One of the big questions in the background is that of teaching. How will your child be able to learn if he or she has problems with the basic skills needed to learn? Here are ten important points you should understand and explore as it applies to your child. These ten points not only help with autistic teaching, they help you better understand your child’s needs.

1. Autistic children are visual. They like nouns. Verbs are more of a challenge and must be demonstrated. This is an important point in autistic teaching.

2. Charts and sequence learning helps. If your child is able to read, use written steps to teach tasks. Write down anything with more than three steps. Continue reading ‘Autistic Teaching – An Eight Point Primer For Parents of a Child With Autism’ »