Parents Help for unmedicated daughter with ADHD in tumbling

[Sam1910]

My daughter is 9 and has been tumbling since April. She’s really good (she moved over from trampoline) and has quickly picked up skills to move up the groups in her gym.
We went on holiday in summer and she came back with the biggest mental block ever and just refused to flic. Her coaches have worked with her since then and built her back up to 3 flics on track and working on end skills on fast track.
She has ADHD but is not in any medication at the moment, and she really struggles with concentration and focus. So she has days where she gets stuck in her own head and won’t perform certain skills etc.
I’m looking for practical advice/solutions I can possibly share with her coaches to help her keep focussed? Or try to tune out the distractions. She LOVES tumbling, trains 4 x a week, but when she has days like today (said she got a song stuck in her head and so couldn’t do it) she gets upset and frustrated and I just want to know how to help.
Thanks

 

[Dahlialover]

Aside from medications (which are a life changing miracle for my child), the things that help him manage his symptoms are regular sleep, regular exercise, limiting stress and overstimulation, adequate rest, and limiting how many challenging activities he does in a day/week. I have to be very very careful not to over-schedule him and I have to be flexible about changing plans if he’s too mentally tired to do a scheduled activity.

In my experience, once he truly loses his focus, the only solution is to rest. Usually this means going home early or staying home. I think that it’s important for your daughter to learn to recognize when she has lost focus and to have a plan for what to do. It’s not safe to tumble when she cannot focus and she must recognize the situation and stop immediately. You and her coach need to watch for signs and stop her before she injures herself. I’d work it out with the coach to have an alternative activities for her to do when she cannot safely tumble (conditioning, stretching, hurdling and round-off only practice). She should also have permission to be excused early from practice if necessary.

Do your best to set her up for success and then be flexible and understanding if it doesn’t work out. Good Luck.

 

[catchingupmom]

My daughter is on medication too, and I agree it has been life changing. However, non-medication strategies we use include:

• adding or taking away music when feeling under or overstimulated;
• snacking especially a high carb treat can stimulate enough dopamine to reset focus;
• taking a breather by either going for a walk around a few times before trying to re-focus;
• going to the bathroom and just taking a few extra moments to calm and settle;
• doing jumping jacks or literally shaking out the jitters;
• vagus nerve stimulation or "thinking caps" a brain gym activity you can google which involves rubbing the ears;
• meditation or mental imagery;
• sensory stimulation or focusing on texture for a while;
• positive self-talk - this takes practice!

And sometimes none of this works and it is just an off day. Not every strategy will work for you, it takes some trial and error. Get the coach involved, there may be other strategies that they've used before or perhaps they can support in allowing your daughter to have the freedom to try different things. Another thing to try depending on what motivates your child is to have the coach ask for help with something, some kids are rewarded by this and anytime you can say you accomplished something can boost dopamine too! It has been my experience that it is almost unilaterally better to focus on what you can do rather than the negative so I try to phrase constructive criticism in a positive way, such as "your middle splits have improved so much, you are almost there!" rather than "you still are not down flat". Once you find something that helps you could write out a little card saying what she can try when things aren't working as those of us with ADHD tend to have poor recall. I'd laminate it and keep it in her grip bag for easy reference. Hope that helps!