21 October 2008
ADHD Detox
Posted by admin under: Outings .
Two-Heel Drive pointed out this article by Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times reporting that a study from the University of Illinois gives hope to parents of kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Most parents I know are aware that reported cases of ADHD seem to be increasing and almost all Scouters have had to worry about one of his kids taking his medication for the sanity of the unit while on an outing.
A small study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at how the environment influenced a child’s concentration skills. The researchers evaluated 17 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, who all took part in three 20-minute walks in a park, a residential neighborhood and a downtown area.
After each walk, the children were given a standard test called Digit Span Backwards, in which a series of numbers are said aloud and the child recites them backwards. The test is a useful measure of attention and concentration because practice doesn’t improve the score. The order of the walks varied for all the children, and the tester wasn’t aware of which walk the child had just taken.
The study, published online in the August The Journal of Attention Disorders, found that children were able to focus better after the “green” walks compared to walks in other settings.
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Dr. Kuo said that while there are “hints” exposure to green outdoor settings offers a benefit, the science isn’t advanced enough to give parents a strict formula.
“We can’t say for sure, ‘two hours of outdoor play will get you this many days of good behavior,’ but we can say it’s worth trying,” she said. “We can say that as little as 20 minutes of outdoor exposure could potentially buy you an afternoon or a couple of hours to get homework done.”
Dr. Kuo said it’s notable that parents themselves consistently report benefits for their children from green settings.
“One reason we believe this is that if the effect were short-lived, we don’t think that parents would have so consistently observed it,” she said. “But they do. They report it over and over.”
I’d have to agree with that and it goes back to what we all know. Kids need love and sunshine to grow. You have to get them out of the house to play. I actually have a hard time with this with my kids. I literally have to force my youngest to go in the back yard and play. When I was a kid it was understood that if you didn’t want to get stuck doing some around-the-house chore you made yourself scarce by heading outside. We live in paranoid times, however, with so many horror stories that we’re afraid to let our kids run free. So, it makes sense that deprivation of outdoor time would lead to a rise in ADHD.
Fortunately, Scouting helps out by getting kids outdoors and tired which seem to be the two components figuring in the study results. I’ve anecdotally noticed that my ADHD Scouts don’t act out when we’re on the trail. If anything, they tend to be more reticent about expending a lot of energy. I wonder why? Anyway, this study clues me in on what to do when little Johnny is disrupting the card games and conversations at camp. Time for a hike!
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One Comment so far...
Walter Underwood Says:
22 October 2008 at 2:53 pm.
There is a lot of this sort of data collected in the book Last Child in the Woods. It even holds for adults — people who took an outdoors vacation were more productive when they got back to work.
