The best thing we can do for kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and learning disabilities (LD) is to help them find ways to manage stress, according to Dr. Jerome Schultz, neuropsychologist and author of No Where to Hide: Why Kids with ADHD and LD Hate School and What We Can Do about It.
In listening to Dr. Schultz speak recently, it occurred to me that the Jewish educational environment may be uniquely suited to help all kids manage stress in their lives.
Just as we all understand that it is the balance of yetzer ha-tov and yetzer ha-ra that makes us human, and that gives us ambition and a drive to create fulfilling lives for ourselves, so does stress work to our benefit as well as to our detriment. The key for our children—and particularly for our children who are coping with ADHD and LD—is to learn to manage it in order to make sure stress remains in the moderate range that spurs creativity and growth. For when stress becomes severe, our kids shut down.
What’s causing stress in our children’s lives? According to Dr. Schultz, it’s a combination of the faster pace of family life, an emphasis on performance that has made excellence the new average, and a continued emphasis on product rather than process in education. For kids with ADHD and LD, there is the added stress of too much attention focused on what they don’t do well combined with a lack of respect for alternative ways to demonstrate competence.
What is the result of stress in our children’s lives? Dr. Shultz describes kids with ADHD and LD as existing on the crossroads between “I’m sure you can” and “I know I can’t” where well-meaning adults try to encourage or force students to ignore the fears they feel when confronted with things they can’t do or believe they can’t do. Students with no way to escape find their stress rising to levels they can no longer tolerate, leading them to pull away, avoid, shut down, or engage in a variety of other behaviors that may appear oppositional yet are simply predictable reactions to stress.
Many kids—both those with and even those without ADHD and LD—do not know what it feels like to be relaxed, says Dr. Schultz.
Surprised? I certainly was.
And I think the Jewish educational environment can help. Kids need what Dr. Schultz calls ‘an oasis of tranquility,’ moments of peace, places of respite where they can find relief from the feeling of being trapped by expectations and demands that they may feel unprepared to meet.
This sounds like prayer to me. It reminded me of a conversation we had in our offices recently with Rabbi Melissa Buyer, Director of LifeLong Learning at Temple Israel in NYC. We were discussing the spiritual lives of children and Rabbi Buyer spoke eloquently of the importance of tefilla to her students—so much so that several young girls came to her to request that she never cut it from the religious school schedule even when the afternoon is very full. It was too important to their feeling of wellbeing.
Imagine how we can help our children learn to relax, to connect with their innermost thoughts—through our emphasis on our moments of tefilla together. The exhilaration of song and movement combined with the peace that comes from spending a little time in prayer and contemplation can help students put a little distance between themselves and their daily concerns.
When we use these moments to let students experience relaxation and joy, we are doing so much more than teaching them prayer or how to behave in the sancutary. We are helping them learn how coming together as a Jewish community helps us all enrich our lives by finding that oasis of tranquility that keeps stress at bay.
Next time: eight specific steps Dr. Shultz outlines for helping kids with ADHD and LD de-stress about their work.
Vicki Weber serves on the board of a local school for children in grade 3-8 with language based learning difficulties. Their speaker series recently featured Dr. Jerome Schultz, PhD, neuropsychologist, faculty member at Harvard Medical School, and author of No Where to Hide: Why Kids with ADHD and LD Hate School and What We Can Do about It.
