Head in the Clouds

Thankful for Full Bins and a Body Double

2009-12-06T22:31:10-07:00

Check out all the recycling I put out this past week—loads of old papers and magazines! I cleaned all this out of my home office, where, along with a very few useful items, it had cluttered the floor and blocked access to the window since about 2005, judging from all the kindergarten newsletters.

But I didn’t accomplish this task alone. I had help from a volunteer nonprofessional organizer—my mom, here for a Thanksgiving visit. Thanks, Mom!

It reminded me how helpful it can be to work with someone else. Having my mom here helped even when she was just listening to me ruminate about whether to keep my old alumni magazines or five-year-old bank statements or that picture my daughter drew of a rose bending over “because the cheetah is chasing the zebra at 70 miles an hour.” It helped even when my mom was just sitting in the room with me as I worked quietly.

There’s a term for this in ADD circles: body double—a person who hangs out with you while you work on an agreed-upon task. “The body double,” writes coach and former ADDA president Linda S. Anderson, “serves as a physical and emotional anchor for the distracted individual who feels more centered by the presence of another person in their space.” The body double doesn’t have to do anything except be in the room with you—and perhaps pay enough attention to notice if you wander off task.

I’ve realized that my ten-year-old daughter and I serve as body doubles for each other when she does homework at the dining room table in the evening while I do the dishes. But I’m thinking I could use more body-double activity in my life. Writing dates at a tea house? Decluttering sessions with a friend? How about a webcam setup for remote body-doubling? (Mom?)

Well, in the hopes that my daughter and I will act as body doubles for each other as she gets into middle school and high school, I plan to set up a desk for her here in what will become our home office. In fact, a year or so ago, I found the perfect desk for her at the used furniture store. It’s still sitting on its end in the garage, though, right where I tipped it out of the car. No room for a desk in here—until now, with a little help from a great body double!

ADDitude magazine has a short article by Patricia Quinn on how to use a body double.

Linda S. Anderson’s quote is from her interesting article “The Body Double.”

If you’re wondering whether you need more organizational support than a friend or family member can provide, check out “Should I Hire a Professional Organizer or Work with a Friend?” from the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization (NSGCD).

For advice on how to hire a professional organizer, check out “How to Hire a Professional Organizer” from the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) and “How Do I Find a Professional Organizer Who Is Right for Me?” from NSGCD.

By the way, you can go to NSGCD's website and download its publications for free. I've reprinted the two publications above for easier access to them for educational purposes.

Colorful Behavior

2009-11-18T12:33:34-07:00

My daughter was pacing back and forth between the bay window in the front of the house and the dining room table in the back, over and over. It was a few years ago, and she’d just gotten back from a Rockies baseball game. She's prone to doing cartwheels through the clutter in the living room and dancing on the stretchy climbing equipment at the school playground, humming “Wipeout.” But her pacing that game day had an intensity that was different from her usual playful energy.

Was it the excitement of having been in a crowded stadium watching a pro ball game? Or was it the pink coloring in the cotton candy she’d had at the ballpark?

A 2007 study in the medical journal The Lancet suggests it could have been the artificial coloring. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, researchers found that a combination of artificial colors and the preservative sodium benzoate, in amounts a child might take in on a typical day, resulted in increased hyperactivity in a group of three-year-olds and a group of eight- and nine-year-olds.

"These adverse effects could affect the child's ability to benefit from the experience of school," said the lead researcher, quoted in a Time magazine piece (which I recommend). And he's talking about all kids; researchers selected the children in the study to reflect the general population, not for any already noted tendency toward hyperactivity.

In 2008, the U.K.’s Food Standards Agency called for a voluntary ban on the six artificial colors in the study, and the European Parliament voted in favor of putting a warning label on foods containing the coloring, reading "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children," according to the U.K. group Action on Additives. Psychiatrist Kenny Handelman reported earlier this year on his blog that the state of Maryland was considering a bill that would require a warning label on products containing ingredients in the study, followed by a ban.

But back to my daughter. She’s had that intense kind of physical energy a couple times since. Once was after the dental hygienist put bright red disclosing solution on my daughter’s teeth to show her where plaque was building up. The other was after she had birthday cake with a picture of some animal on it in brown frosting—and it wasn’t chocolate. I looked up how to color icing brown: You mix red food coloring with other colors.

I don’t mind having an active girl. In fact, I love it. But here’s what gives me the creeps: the fact that commonly used food additives might be having an unintended but significant effect on children’s developing nervous systems.

Britain’s Independent reports that sodium benzoate (the preservative used in the hyperactivity study) might also inactivate DNA in the mitochondria (our cells’ “powerhouses”) and combine with vitamin C to form benzene. Here’s an update, on the blog of the Independent’s consumer affairs correspondent.

Medical News Today, Britain's Independent, and the University of Southampton's news service also covered the hyperactivity study.

Here's how to make cotton candy, in case you want to try making some without the coloring.

And in case you want to do something with food coloring that doesn’t involve eating it, here’s an easy and gorgeous science experiment:

Here's another science experiment that can involve food coloring, this one performed by real physicists, with music provided by NPR’s Science Friday:

Meditation for Kids

2009-11-04T14:57:45-07:00

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

2009-09-28T14:14:12-06:00

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

2009-09-25T12:46:09-06:00

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!

2009-09-25T10:05:05-06:00

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

2009-09-22T21:45:24-06:00

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

2009-09-14T16:49:26-06:00

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

2009-09-03T23:17:04-06:00

"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

Structure.
Meditation.
Aerobic exercise.
Diet—less carbos.
Follow your heart—need passion and interest.
Neurotransmitter activity—need stimulation.
Recognize there is struggle to shift gears.

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

I Could

2009-08-22T23:54:07-06:00

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.