ADD and ADHD: Has your child been labeled?
Have you been labeled – scatter brained, distracted, inattentive, even impulsive? Has your child? Perhaps ADD or ADHD diagnosis has been away to explain these behaviors. Diagnosing ADD or ADHD is highly subjective and comes with a multitude of negative connotations. But what if it’s not a negative? What if its not even ADD ?
- What if you are operating exactly like you’re supposed to?
- What if instead of being deficient – you are actually quite gifted?
- What if you could start seeing the gift – the opportunities?
- What if you could harness and shape your gifts to work for you and not against you?
There’s good news. Visual learners share many of the same traits as ADD. Visual learners need more visual, hands on learning experiences and often struggle to organize, stay on task and pay attention. This is increasingly apparent with children in today’s language heavy, test oriented classrooms. And yet there are great advantages to being a visual learner. Some of our most creative minds, great leaders and innovative business people have been and are visual thinkers.
Imagine my excitement when Education.com asked me to share insight from my book, Being Visual. What an honor! If your child is a visual learner, they may be struggling in the classroom. Understanding learning styles is a fantastic way to help a child succeed academically. We parents don’t like to settle for anything less then success for our kids and I’m excited to have the opportunity to help.
I met with a group of parents to share information about learning styles and ways to help our visual learning children do better in the classroom. A mother seated in the front row had raised her hand and asked that question about her 9 year old daughter. 
All I wanted was to do art with kids — to teach and empower — to see their sweet faces light up with every new discovery. My young students thrived when they got the “how to” information they craved. And while teaching children how to draw, they taught me — again and again — how important art is to them. In my book, Being Visual, I talk about my 20 years experience teaching young kids how to draw by using their preferred learning style. The classes and teaching method were popular and effective, so I made a business out of it. But it’s never really been about the business.
