ADHD studies

I was happy to see an article in the New York Times on Tuesday, Nov. 13, that cited several studies showing bad behavior early in children's school careers doesn't doom they later in life. The studies . The studies found that children with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder or ADHD have a delay in brain development rather than a deficit or flaw. That explains why many children "grow out of " ADHD as teen-agers.
One international study of 16,000 children found that disruptive or anti-social behavior in kindergarten doesn't lead to poor grades later in elementary school. The study is coming out in the Journal of Develolpmental Psychology.
A second study by the National Institute of Mental Health and McGill University http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/nov2007/nimh-12.html
used brain scans to show that the brains of children with ADHD developed more slowly than their peers and can be three years behind in some regions. The study is being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, explains why many children seem to "grow out of " ADHD as teenagers. Here's a good blog, the Knight Science Journalism Tracker ksjtracker.mit.edu/?p=4745.
Both my children have ADHD and have periodically struggled in school. My younger son was constantly getting in trouble in kindergarten and first grade. He stabbed a boy with a pencil and we thought maybe he was well on his way to being an ax murderer. He got taken out of Spanish for being silly and repeating the word "pineapple." And his kindergarten teacher just didn't think he was getting it.
Our older son who has the inattentive brand of ADHD never had behavior problems. But he did have a third grade teacher who also claimed he wasn't getting it, didn't have an "analytical mind" and should be left back. In our hearts, we knew it was she who wasn't getting it.
But it's comforting to think of ADHD as a developmental problem and certainly we've seen huge changes in both our children, partly due to medication but also due to their maturation. Our older son comes home and does his homework and practices the piano. We're not having daily battles that leave us both in tears. I take this as a great gift and I like the idea that it's simply a brain development problem. Although I would like to know when my brain is going to mature. Oh well.

In Princeton Township, N.J., there's an effort to become a sustainable town. That means we use up fewer resources, we try to come up with guidelines to be less wasteful and more environmentally friendly etc. I'm fully behind the idea and went to the first meeting with my own two cents. I advocated for sidewalks, so we could walk rather than use the car and I also advocated for banning plastic bags. It's still in the planning stages but they asked us to sign a sustainability pledge where we could opt to walk two more times a week, start a compose heap from our leaves and use five fluorescent light bulbs.
I pledged to do all that but we already walk to and from school most days, compost leaves and use lots of fluorescent light bulbs although I'm sure we could use more. (We're also not thrilled with the light but that's not another story).
Today though I feel like I'm no longer sustainable so I picked the kids up in the car. Oh well. My house isn't sustainable either. It needs to be recycled or something. I've reached that part of the year where I'm on a treadmill and I can't get off and I'm losing it. Literally. I lost my gradebook at my university, I've mixed up appointments and I got about five hours sleep last night, interrupted by the thought, "I have to bake muffins." Argh. Oh well. More on sustainability later I'm sure but here's the site: www.sustainableprinceton.org