Edge is pleased to report that our board member, Nancy Ratey, was featured in the October issue of Attention Magazine. Attention is the membership publication of CHADD — the leading national organization working on behalf of children and adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
In addition to citing the Edge Foundation as a resource for youth with ADHD, the article also listed “Nancy Ratey’s Seven Coaching Tips” and books which further explore ADHD coaching.
Congratulations to Nancy for her outstanding work on behalf of all people with ADHD. We are honored to have her on our board!
The transition from high school to college is a big step for everyone. When you have ADHD, however, going to college can feel like stepping off a cliff without a safety net. A recent Washington Post articleby Susan Kunzle (10/25/08) chronicled one family’s journey to assuring that their son, who has ADHD, will continue building a successful life after leaving the support of home.
The family in the article was thinking ahead — their son hadn’t left for college yet — but they were anticipating some of the challenges he’d face. College is a big step towards adulthood. This new independence, combined with the academic demands of college life, is tough for most students. But for students with ADHD, these challenges can feel overwhelming.
For the first time, students are completely responsible for how they use their time. They are expected to attend classes and study each day without a teacher or parent to help them stay on track. They organize their own schedules, choose friends and social activities, and figure out when, how much, and even how to study.
Many parents fear that without being able to keep a close eye on their student, they won’t know when a problem has arisen until after he or she has started failing classes. At that point it can be difficult to turn things around.
Here at the Edge Foundation, we applaud families who proactively support their children to ensure their success. We are often asked to recommend ADHD-friendly colleges. What we can tell you is that any school can be ADHD friendly when a student has the support of a coach.
Sign up here to learn more about finding a coach for your child.
A coach provides steady guidance during a time when a young person’s job is to break away from their parents’ support and forge out on their own. The same young adult that won’t listen to their parents’ advice, may be able to hear what they need to do from an ADHD coach. And an ADHD coach can provide feedback and support to build effective skills in the following areas:
scheduling
goal setting
confidence building
organizing
focusing
prioritizing
persisting at tasks
Coaching strategies tailored to individual needs make the most of a student’s strengths. A coach is not a doctor or teacher but rather an advocate who works with you to help you manage life to the fullest.
Students and their coaches talk regularly and check in about academic and personal pursuits.
Coaches can help identify strategies to stay organized, utilize your time well, and stay on track in your classes.
A coach can help remind you to make good choices and take care of yourself emotionally and physically.
A coach also can help you improve the relationships in your life with friends, peers, professors, and family members.
Your coach is there to talk to, strategize with, and advocate for you as long as you need.
Are you ready to find out more about how an Edge Coach can help you be your best? Click here for more information.
If you search the web, you’ll find several schoold out there have designed their programs around serving children with ADHD. There are also colleges and universities that have incorporate academic coaching into their program. Duke University, Landmark College, and the University of North Carolina, for example, offer on-campus coaching to students.
In the end, we believe that children with ADHD can be successful at any school and do any profession that they are inspired to pursue. An ADHD coach can make the journey a lot easier.
To find out more about ADHD coaching please complete our information request form and one of our staff will contact you with the answers to your questions.
As the days grow shorter, it’s easy for all of us to get less active. If you think about it, how much more time do you spend on-line or watching TV during the winter, when in the summer you would be out riding your bike or at the beach.
For people ADHD, keeping active year-round isn’t just a good idea, it’s key in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression and is also known to help with symptoms of ADHD. It’s no surprise that Michael Phelps is able to manage his ADHD without medication – the man’s life is built around exercise.
Studies reveal exercise treats ADHD
There are multiple studies that show exercise is critical to brain functioning:
Inactive Teens More at Risk for Behavioral Problems, Health Day, October 14, 2008. A recent study of teenagers in Finland revealed that inactive boys and girls were more likely to have attention problems than their active peers. It asserts that exercise is a highly effective method in easing depression and anxiety and urges teens to build regular exercise as a lifelong health habit.
ADHD Coaching Keeps Your Exercise Program on Track
It’s hard to start and exercise program, and even more difficult to make it a long-term habit. ADHD coaching can help you stay on track with your exercise goals. Checking in with someone about your weekly exercise goals, can be a way to set goals you can keep over time, stay on track and problem solve when you aren’t able to meet your goals.
The Edge Foundation offers coaches who are specifically trained and experience in working with high school and college students. Sign up and get your EDGE today!
And while your at it, consider exercising outdoors. This week another study shows that a walk in the park is also highly beneficial to improving attention in children with ADHD.
Now it’s your turn, what do you do to keep on track with your exercise goals? Leave a comment and share your success or struggles with other Edge readers.
A new study released by Massachusettes General Hospital shows that girls taking stimulants to treat their ADHD are signficantly less at risk to start smoking, drinking alcohol or using drugs than girls with ADHD who don’t.
This study is one more in a series that show ADHD stimulants are not only effective at treating the symptoms of ADHD, but they have powerful, positive health benefits.
This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and by the Lilly Foundation. When you see a drug company listed as a funder of a study like this are you skeptical that it’s totally true? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment!
Take these three steps to make you a safer driver:
Turn OFF your cell phone. If it’s off you won’t be tempted to answer it or text while at a light.
Drive alone. Your friends are fun, but they are distracting.
Don’t play with the music. Turn on your station before you turn on the car. Fidling with radio and climate controls takes your focus away from the road.
What do you do to keep your focus while on the road? Leave a comment and enter to win our September ADHD Awareness Contest.
Self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur” Neil Peterson founded five companies during his 40-plus year career, most notably Flexcar, the award-winning car-sharing company that recently merged with Zipcar. Peterson’s resume is an impressive list of C-suite positions in both the public and private sectors that also includes heading public transportation agencies in Seattle, Oakland and Los Angeles. Numerous awards, including Time magazine’s “100 Newsmakers of Tomorrow” in Seattle, attest to his success.
But over the years, Peterson says, “no one suspected I suffered from Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder until my two children were diagnosed with ADD and ADHD in their mid teens. It was then that I learned of my own affliction when our doctor explained that ADHD, a complex mental health disorder characterized by inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, is hereditary.”
Embracing the Edge: Stories of Tenacity and Personal Power, Peterson’s newly published collection of personal inspirational stories, recounts how he overcame physical and learning disabilities, as well as life’s normal disappointments, to become a successful entrepreneur, corporate executive and public servant.
Included in this memoir is Peterson’s heart-stopping story about the five-person hiking party he led that survived being swept away by a rogue wave and trapped for many hours in a cave in June 2007 on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The story describes the ordeal with his two children, a nephew and a friend of fending off hypothermia and panic as they struggled to stay calm and focused while searching for an escape route.
In 2006, Peterson decided to do something to help the millions of students struggling with ADHD.Having seen the benefits of personal coaching in his own life and those of his children as an effective intervention strategy and an important part of a multi-prong ADHD treatment approach, Peterson founded the Edge Foundation, an organization committed to providing professional coaches for students with ADHD to help them realize their potential and their passion, and to become tomorrow’s leaders and innovators.
All profits from the sale of Embracing the Edgewill go toward carrying out the vision of The Edge Foundation. To purchase a copy of the book visit the Edge Foundation store.
Last month Michael Phelps proved that people with ADHD can keep their edge and be wildly successful. To celebrate ADHD awareness month, we’d like to ask you “What do you do to keep your edge?” After you take the poll, leave a comment to enter to win this month’s contest. (see details after the poll.) We’ll share the poll results and what we learned from your comments in an upcoming blog. Thanks, in advance, for participating!
Leave a comment and win
A copy of Nancy Ratey’s new book, The Disorganized Mind, will be given away to one lucky reader this month.
It’s easy:
To enter to win, all you need to do is leave a comment on any of the Edge blogs during the month of September. Each comment will be treated as one entry. One comment per blog page.
About the book: The Disorganized Mind provides expert guidance on what you can do to overcome the challenges of ADHD and make the most of your life. Nancy A. Ratey, EdM., MCC is a strategic life coach specializing in coaching professionals with ADHD and an internationally recognized expert on the subject of ADHD coaching. Her work has been featured in The NY Times, Newsday, Wired, and Vogue, and has appeared on ABC, CBS and NPR.
Can’t wait to find out if you won to read the book? You can buy Nancy’s book now and support the Edge Foundation at the same time.
To much of the ADHD community, Michael Phelps’s phenomenal swimming at the Bejing Summer Olympics is a beacon of pride and hope.For all the advances in diagnosing and treating ADHD, it remains greatly stigmatized.In chat rooms and bulletin boards people post items like “ADHD is not a disability” as a way of giving support to those who are living with it.Yet, after we watch Michael Phelps, his fierce determination and single-minded focus, it is clear that even the name Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder falls short in describing just what ADHD is.Clearly Michael Phelps has no shortage of attention!
Many people have no idea that Michael Phelps has ADHD, yet he hasn’t kept it a secret.In an August 13, 2008 TimesOnline article, his mother is quoted as saying, “In kindergarten I was told by his teacher, ‘Michael can’t sit still, Michael can’t be quiet, Michael can’t focus.’I said, maybe he’s bored.The teacher said that was impossible. “He’s not gifted,” came back the reply. “Your son will never be able to focus on anything.”
How many people with ADHD are told just that – you’ll never be able to focus on anything!Obviously after Michael Phelps’s summer of 2008 performance, it’s clear that ADHD does not have to stop you from focusing on and reaching your dreams.
Today let’s take a page from Michael’s book and channel our passions.If we do, imagine what we can accomplish.As his coach, Bob Bowman, says, “One of the things I call Michael is the motivation machine.Bad moods, good moods, he channels everything for gain. He’s motivated by success, he loves to swim fast and when he does that he goes back and trains better. He’s motivated by failure, by money, by people saying things about him … just anything that comes along he turns into a reason to train harder, swim better. Channelling his energy is one of his greatest attributes.”
Congratulations Michael on your gold bonanza.And thank you for providing the ADHD community a role model that shatters all of our sterotypes!
Now it’s your turn, what motivates you to succeed?
Note from Edge: September 5, 2008:
Take the Edge poll, leave a comment and enter for a chance to win. Find out more on this month’s blog: Take the ADHD Success Poll
In the July 7th issue of the Wall Street Journal, L. Gordon Crovitz wrote about the formation of the Internet Overload Research Group (Unloading Information Overload).Apparently the internet is so distracting to the average technology employee that Microsoft, Google, IBM and Intel have banded together to try to figure out how to use technology to help keep their workers focused!
Who knew?It’s not only people with ADHD who get distracted!In fact, Crovitz reports that once a person is distracted from a task by an email or a phone call, it can take almost a half an hour to refocus on a task!Now add ADHD into the mix, and no wonder it can seem like time flies when you are on the computer.
People with ADHD are often experienced at using tricks to keep themselves focused.Here’s some of the ideas these companies are exploring. See if any of them sound familiar to you.
Prioritize:Apparently Microsoft has been trying for years to develop a software tool to prioritize email.A low tech solution is to group your email by topic. Then, instead of opening all of your emails as they come in, you scan down your list, and just open the ones that pertain to the project or subject you are working on at that time.
Look away:A Google engineer recently created a tool that will turn your email off for 15 minutes at a time.(Keyword:Google Email Addict).The idea is you turn off email and instant messages for short periods of time and you get more done.This is so easy to do, why is a software tool needed?Many people turn off email and instant message services while they are working on something – especially when writing.If you don’t have little alerts popping up in the corner of your screen all the time, you won’t be tempted to procrastinate when you get stuck by starting to surf one of them down.
Turn it off:Intel and IBM have tried setting aside Fridays to limit emails and other interruptions.The idea is to replace interruptions with focused time on thinking.Wired Magazine’s founder, John Battelle, instructed his staff to stop sending emails during the weekend.Basically, even major companies realize that we don’t have to instantly respond to every request.The world keeps on spinning even if you take a half day away from text, email and cell to get a project done!
Choose wisely:The University of Chicago Law School has had to block the Internet from the classroom.Well, duh, if you are surfing the web, sending emails or texting, do you really think you are learning anything in class?You may as well have skipped that day! If you are in a class or meeting with someone, it just makes good sense to focus on the person or task at hand.
Nice to know that the rest of the world gets distracted by technology, doesn’t it?What have you done to keep your focus on school or work and not get distracted by texting, RSS, Twitter or phone calls?Please leave a comment about what’s worked for you.
Do you have piles of paper everywhere? Do you trouble finding the right piece of paper when you need it? Don’t worry, you aren’t alone.
Getting your paperwork organized can be an overwhelming task if you’ve procrastinated too long. The key is getting caught up, then having a system in place so you don’t fall behind again. Here’s one way that can help you get through the piles quickly - in just three days.
Start by setting aside three days to focus on your paperwork. Friday, Saturday and Sunday are great times for getting organized.
Day 1: Paperwork central
Pick a place that you will keep all of your paper work on. This is your “Paperwork Central.” It can be a section of your desk, an out of the way place on the floor, or the dining room table.
Go around the house and round up all your papers and bring it to your Paperwork Central.
Don’t forget your backpack, purse or front seat of the car.
Get all your paper - newspapers, bills, junk mail, assignments, magazines, homework, notes, letters, everything. About the only paper you don’t want in this pile is your books.
This step should take you about 15-30 minutes. When you are done, congratulate yourself, you are getting organized! Does the pile look overwhelming? Don’t worry, we’ll get through it quickly on Day 2.
Did you find anything important when rounding everything up? Choose one thing, and do it now!
Day 2: Quick Sort
Go through every piece of paper and sort it into one of these piles:
a. urgent
b. bills
c. to do
d. save (filing)
e. reading
f. recycle
Do not spend time reading or thinking about each piece. It’s easy to get distracted here by thinking about each thing. Don’t! Just keep thinking, “All I’m doing is sorting stuff into piles. I have time to take care of this later.”
Set a timer; see how fast you can do it. Your job is to stay focused on sorting and do this step quickly. This step is about getting organized, not doing any work.
Don’t get distracted by the urgent pile. Your job right now is getting things sorted.
Take the recycling out right now. Doesn’t it feel great to get rid of that huge pile!
Put your reading pile somewhere you’ll look at it… in the bathroom, on the coffee table, by your bed.
This step may have taken you as little as an hour, or much longer if you’ve really let things go. (Hope not!) Take a break if you are getting stressed. It’s important that you feel like you control your piles - they aren’t controlling you. So take a break when you need to and come back later to do more.
When you are done with your sort, pick one urgent matter that you uncovered when doing this step, and take care of it now.
Day 3: To Do List
Go through your “to do” pile and make a list of what is in it. This is your To Do list. It’s easier to look at a list than having to shuffle through the pile every day.
Prioritize your list and put the most important items at the top of your page, the less important ones go towards the bottom.
Post your list on your fridge or somewhere else you’ll see it.
Look it every morning and pick the things you want to get done that day.
Having trouble getting started? Start with the easy stuff. Again, you are in charge of your list, it isn’t in charge of you!
This step should take no more than a half hour. All you are doing is writing down your to do list. When you are all done, pick at least one high priority or urgent item and take care of it.
Be sure to cross stuff off your list when you do them. And reward yourself when you’ve accomplished 10 or 15 of your items. You’ll never have a finished to do list. So it’s important that you celebrate keeping on top of it.
Congratulations! You’ve got your paperwork under control. And along the way, you’ve started taking care of your “To Do’s.” Now it’s time to keep it that way.
CREATING A SORTING SYSTEM THAT WORKS
Now that you are organized, stay that way. Every time you bring paper into the house, whether it is mail, or school work, or something else, bring it to your Paperwork Central location and sort it right away.
Don’t drop it on the dining room table if your Paperwork Central is in your bedroom.
Do open all envelopes - especially for your bills, and recycle what you don’t need to keep.
Do add items to you “to do” list as necessary and look at it each day to stay on top of it.
You don’t need to buy fancy organizers for Paperwork Central, but you can if you’d like. The key is staying on top of it as is comes in.
A QUICK WORD ON FILING:
Does anyone like filing? NO! The key for filing is only keeping things you really need. Obviously financial stuff like tax records need to be filed. And you’ll probably want to keep school work for the quarter. But beyond that, try not to save very much stuff. The less paper you save, the less filing you have. Some people like to file things right away (like doing the dishes). Other people like to let it pile up and do it all in a quick hour or so. Figure out what works for you. Just be sure to keep your long-tem files separate from your bills, urgent and “to do” piles!
Top Ideas for Staying Organized:
Paperwork Central: set aside a place for all your paperwork
Quick sort: sort things into piles as you get them
To Do List: keep a to do list to make it easy to see what’s on your agenda
Take care of the easy stuff first. You’ll feel less overwhelmed when you have less to do.
Don’t get overwhelmed. With just a little work every day, you can stay in control.
What tricks do you use to keep on top of your paper piles? If you’ve got a system that works, we’d love to hear from you.
Edge is pleased to report that our board member, Nancy Ratey, was featured in the October issue of Attention Magazine. Attention is the membership publication of CHADD — the leading national organization working on behalf of children and adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
