Regarded as an innovator and pioneering authority in the field of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), John F. Taylor, Ph.D., is a family psychologist and the father of eight children, three of whom have ADD. For more than twenty years, his practice has focused on children and adolescents with ADD/ADHD and he is the author of thirteen books, over 200 articles in journals and professional newsletters, and numerous educational resource materials used internationally.

 

With a dynamic personality to match his expertise, Dr. Taylor is an oft-requested keynote speaker at national and regional conferences in the fields of mental health and education and the Best of You Today recently discovered why.

BOYT:  In your experience, do you find that more girls or boys are affected with ADD/ADHD?

JT:  Oh, clearly it's boys. Seventy-five percent of people with ADD are male, worldwide. And 90 percent of the people with severe cases of it are male. In profoundly hyperactive children, 90 percent of them are male. So there's a very high male to female ratio.

BOYT: What are the causes of ADHD? Do you think they are environmental or genetic?

 JT:   I would go along with the research showing that there’s a high genetic load to it. Someone came up with a figure of 83 percent genetic. You find a lot of genetic evidence and then the question is, what is it that they inherit? I have my own theories about what they inherit and definitely think there's a strong genetic component to it. You see it all over the place when you ask the parents about family history.

BOYT:  Considering that ADD/ADHD is, for the most part, inherited, what do you feel are the genetic components?

 JT:  My theory is that what they actually inherit, more than anything else, is faulty enzymes. You see a lot of evidence of this in cases of people with ADHD. They don’t have enough enzymes to process their fatty acids well; therefore, they have dry, itchy, rashy skin that's easily eruptive. Their immune systems are weaker than other people's immune systems because they don’t have enough fatty acids to support their immune system and that is the blame of faulty enzymes. People suffering from ADHD tend to have guts overrun with yeast, molds, and fungi, which leads them into food allergies. And that again is caused by insufficient digestive enzymes to support the acidophilus population that would've killed off these molds and fungi. Seventy percent of the boys underproduce digestive enzymes.

Whatever it is that they inherit, they certainly do inherit ADHD. You don’t get it from environmental causes, except that the brain of the fetus can get attacked while it's still forming by chemicals that the mother consumes; including such things as NutraSweet and Monosodium Glutamate, as well as smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, etcetera. Chemicals and poisons get in there and they foul up the making of the brain. Actually, I have called it Panic Brain Syndrome, but it's mislabeled as ADHD as the child grows up because the symptoms overlap those of true ADHD. I happen to think that if you really want to differentiate and split hairs about it, you have to have trouble with Fatty Acid Metabolism as part of the symptom picture to have true ADHD. That would show they have indeed inherited this clump of problems with their enzymes.

BOYT:  What is the likelihood of a child being ADHD if one parent is?

 JT:   If one parent has it, there is about a 30 percent chance that one of the children will have it.

One out of 14 children nationwide has ADHD. The odds are 1 out of every 14 children should have it in all families, which would mean 4 families would have none and 1 family would have 1 child. It's way more than that if a parent has ADHD; it's much, much higher.

BOYT:   In your opinion, have the number of children with ADHD increased through the years?

 JT:   Definitely. One of the common explanations for the apparent increase is that we're better at diagnosing it, we just didn’t see it before. I would disagree with that. I think that is an element, but you can't explain it away like that. You can't get away with explaining the high increase in ADHD over the last 30 years by saying, “Well, we just diagnose it better.” My opinion is that we definitely do have an increase here. We do have better diagnosis, but we also have over-diagnosis, or sloppy diagnosis. Too many kids being labeled ADHD who don’t really have it.

BOYT:  What is an appropriate age that a child can get an accurate diagnosis for ADHD?

 JT:  A skilled diagnostician can diagnose ADHD by age two.

BOYT:   How do you differentiate between a child that just behaves a certain way and one that is truly affected with ADHD?

 JT:   It’s very difficult. You have to hunt for body signs. Again, we're hunting for the abnormal enzymes, the fatty acid problems, the weak immune systems, the dry skin, the sugar craving, the cravings for proteins, the cravings for salty and highly seasoned food, the mineral deficiencies, and the abnormalities in the blood of ADHD. So, a skilled diagnostician knows all that and can recognize it in a two-year-old. A less skilled diagnostician would simply fall back to the old solve that you can't diagnose them until they're six years old when they can’t sit still in school.

BOYT:  In recent times, more and more parents are opting to do blood testing on these children. What is present in the blood of those with ADHD that is different from those without it?

 JT:  The two most prominent and noticeable blood abnormalities, which anybody could see just taking a blood sample, are hyperlipidemia and agglutination of the red cells. To make a long, long story very, very short, the blood of people with ADHD is laden with millions of little droplets of partly digested fat. That's because they run out of live-paced digestive enzymes and they can't really digest the fat in their food sufficiently. The digestive tract kicks undigested fat out into the bloodstream. To stop this from happening, you just feed them live-paced digestive enzymes in capsules in the middle of the night for 30 days, then take another blood sample, and voila, no fat floating around in the blood anymore. The other thing is the agglutination of the red blood cell. The red blood cells of people with ADHD clump together. They stack, like checkers. When you king me in checkers, the checkers are one on top of the other. They stack like that. And that is because the cell wall of the red cells is sticky like Post-It Notes rather than slick like Teflon, the way it's supposed to be because they don’t have enough fatty acids. If they don’t have enough red cells individually available to pass single-file through the brain to feed it the oxygen it needs, children with ADHD are chronically hypoxic in their brain. They don't have enough red blood cells to feed it the oxygen, again because of the fatty acid shortage. So, it all leads back to this enzyme problem.

BOYT:  Do you find taking enzyme capsules is effective in helping to diminish some of the effects of ADHD?

 JT:   Yes. The Hyperlipidemia contributes to symptoms in a couple of different ways. You can easily get rid of it by giving a child live-based digestive enzymes, which proves that that's what caused it. You give them more live-based enzymes, it disappears. Again, that supports my theory about the enzymes being key here.

BOYT:   Do you feel medication is a viable treatment for ADD/ADHD?         

 JT:  Yes, and there other treatments that are better and valid. My overall philosophy is treat first with nutrition, then treat with avoiding toxic chemical exposures, then treat with reducing and eliminating any allergies the child has, then, number four is medication. That is what I generally advocate. I have, for a long time, been one of the premier spokesmen worldwide for non-medication treatment of ADHD. Medication is a viable treatment option but it creates side effects and it only works 75 percent of the time. And you have to wait until they're six years old, really.

BOYT:  What are the side effects of an undiagnosed child or adult with ADHD?

 JT:   Raw, untreated ADHD is basically a life-splitting force. We end up with the parents arguing over child discipline; with the child ruining family events, trips to the restaurant, vacations; incredible sibling rivalry. The child ends up feeling like a victim, alienated, not understood and picked on, and descends into an undesirable role such as “the brat” or “showoff” in contrast with the siblings who are normal kids, who try to please mom and dad. Because of this, the person with ADHD, especially if the parents used poor child discipline techniques, ends up at high risk of juvenile delinquency, criminality and substance abuse. That's untreated ADHD with a hyperactivity component in it. That is the typical story. And a high percentage of kids who are hyperactive end up being sociopathic and they don’t develop full consciences. The estimates are somewhere around 30 to 40 percent of hyperactive boys end up not developing a fully functioning conscience. So they're highly at risk for delinquency and so forth; it's an ugly story. The research on ADD adults is also similar. There are some positive traits, but there are a lot of negative risks associated with ADD in adulthood. And so, untreated, it's a monster.    

BOYT:  You have eight children and three of them have been diagnosed with ADD. What treatments did you elect to use for your children?

 JT:  We treated with nutrition: protein- and nutrient-rich supplements, vitamins, minerals and a high protein diet.

BOYT:  What are some of the vitamins and supplements you recommend for a child with ADD and ADHD?

 JT:  The number one food to feed anybody with ADHD is Afetesominaon Ataqua, or "ASA," blue green algae. In my book, Helping Your ADD Child, I actually refer to it 13 different times. It is your number one symptom-knocking-out food you can feed somebody with ADHD. It knocks out more symptoms more immediately than any other food, and it knocks out the same category of symptoms that the pharmaceuticals do without any side effects. It’s nature's answer to Ritalin, especially the cold-processed kind. The heat-processed kind that you get in health food stores is not as good.

BOYT:  Since many children are picky eaters, is there another way of feeding ASA to a child if they do not want to eat it?

 JT:   It comes as a freeze-dried green powder, so you can mix it in with apple juice and you can't taste it. Put it in any blender drink. They even have a chewy chocolate protein bar you can eat. And it comes in pills and capsules also.

BOYT:  DId you see a noticeable change when your children’s diets were adjusted?

 JT:   Yes, their ADHD became quite manageable and they all grew up to be happy, well-adjusted people.

BOYT:  Do you recommend that once a child has been diagnosed with ADHD and begins treatment that they also begin emotional therapy to cope with the effects of ADHD?

 JT:   It can be dealt with without getting emotional therapy, especially if the child is informed. That's why I wrote The Survival Guide for Kids with ADD, so the child could be informed about what they need to know so they can make it through their life well. You don’t have to go to mental health professionals unless you have a severe sibling-rivalry issue; the child feels like a brat or feels worthless and unloved; or the parents are at the end of their rope with the parenting of the child and end up with the nag-yell-spank kind of discipline. Under those circumstances, professional guidance would be helpful. Many families can quite successfully manage it by starting with nutrition and the immediate, scientific avoidance of toxic chemical exposure. You stop having the brain attacked by nasty poisonous chemicals and you give it what it needs in order to function correctly.

BOYT:   When discussing the different forms of testing available, you mentioned allergy testing. How beneficial is it to those concerned about their children having ADHD?

 JT:   Seventy-five percent of the time someone with ADD, with or without hyperactivity, has any kind of allergy, they will have more symptoms of their ADD flare-up. So, the hypers get more hyper, the straight ADD kids get whiny, fussy, depressed and indecisive. We want to help them get on top of their allergy, which, of course, means diagnosing the allergy and then trying to treat it. And with allergies, basically, the first thing to do is you don't let them have exposure to whatever it is he's allergic to. If he's allergic to pork, then you don’t have him eat pork. Insulate from the exposure to the toxin. Then you can go to an allergist, if you want to, and take allergy shots and try to teach the body to not be so sensitive to that allergen. That, of course, is difficult, cumbersome and offers a relatively low percentage success rate. At least you need to not let him have exposure to anything you have discovered he is allergic to. The biggest impact is nutrition and there are seven nutrients that their brain needs every day. Start there. Make sure that he gets all seven nutrients. The average child with ADHD is deficient in all seven nutrients.

BOYT:   What are those seven nutrients?

 JT:    The first one is amino acids. The brain is a protein factory and its job is to make protein all day long. Kids with ADHD almost always don’t eat enough protein. The second most common food they crave is protein-rich foods. So, the body is crying out for more protein in kids with ADHD. We need to put them on a diet that includes protein in every meal and a protein-rich snack between every meal. So, if they have amino acids coming in every two hours it usually results in noticeable symptom decrease, even if the parent doesn’t do anything else. If that's the one and only thing the parent does is feed this kid protein every two hours, they usually will notice a symptom decrease. It's a very powerful, simple, effective, safe thing to do. My opinion is that kids with ADHD, in fact, need more protein than other kids do. They just have an abnormally high need for the protein.

The second nutrient is vitamins. And the human brain needs all vitamins, and kids with ADHD, like all humans, need all vitamins.

And the third one is minerals. The minerals boss the vitamins around. They tell the vitamins what to do and control the metabolism. The four leading mineral deficiencies in America of children are the four leading ones for ADHD. Over 90 percent of kids with ADHD are deficient in magnesium and just about that same amount are deficient in zinc. Calcium and iron are the third and fourth most common deficiencies among American children and it's true with ADHD kids too. But the typical child with ADHD will be deficient in more than one of the big four, so they tend to have a lot of mineral deficiency.

The fourth nutrient is the fatty acids. And again, just like protein, ADHD kids seem to need more than other people do. And fatty acids basically are moisturizers. The body uses them to moisturize every cell in the body and the brain. Fifty-five percent of the brain is fat tissue and has to constantly repair itself with building blocks of fat, which are those fatty acids. The other 45 percent of the brain that is not fat cells has to moisturize its cell walls with fatty acids and the brain needs those fatty acids in order to make proteins. So, there's a huge need for fatty acids. If the only thing you do is you feed them fatty acids and do nothing else, you notice there's a symptom decrease in the majority in the kids. Some very well done science actually showed 40-percent symptom decrease. If all you do is feed fish oil capsules to hyperactive children, you’ll notice a 40-percent symptom decreased.

BOYT:   If a parent decides to give their child fatty acid supplements, about how many milligrams would you recommend be given daily?

 JT:   500 to 1,000 milligrams of fish oil every meal. Basically, you want 1,500 milligrams per day for a kid and 3,000 milligrams a day for an adult. That's sort of a minimum if they have ADHD. Give them one 500-milligram capsule of fish oil with each meal, and three of those per day. I really like them to go higher than that; however, if they go so high that the digestive tract becomes so moisturized, they end up with diarrhea.

The fifth nutrient is water. I teach that a child should have an eight-ounce glass every two hours, all day long, and adult should consume a 12-ounce glass every two hours. That's sort of a minimum, safe, universal way to have any person be hydrated correctly. Kids with ADHD are very high-risk for dehydration. Almost all of them don’t drink enough water and so dehydration is very, very common, as is delipitization – not enough fatty acids. Both of those are almost rampant in ADHD. You almost cannot find a child with ADHD who is not partially dehydrated and/or partially delipidized. And what they will do is sweat during their sleep. That is a classic proof that the body is too dry and desperately trying to get rid of salt in a desperate effort to normalize the salt-to-water balance. So, proof positive of being dehydrated and/or delipidized is sweating at night. It is a classic ADHD symptom.

BOYT:   As parents, we obviously cannot be with the child all of the time, and if the child's not drinking enough water, is there any other way to help this dehydration?

JT:   Watermelon. Fruit juice. Put it in your freezer in a Dixie cup with a spoon in it and he has his own fruit pops. Dilute fruit juice so it's not too sugary. And there are herbal teas. In a real pinch, root beer or 7-UP, the soda pops least likely to cause symptoms.

Now, the sixth one is fuel to run on. Consider the brain to be an engine and it runs on blood sugar. And how you get glucose to a brain is you don’t eat sugar, you eat protein.

The seventh nutrient is the only one that doesn’t come to the digestive tract and that's oxygen. Kids with ADHD, as I said earlier, are almost always chronically hypoxic in their brain. They never get enough oxygen, most of them. And part of that is because of the heavy metals that are lodged in their brain interfering with the ability of the red cells to drop off the oxygen. That's where heavy metals enter the picture. They cause hypoxia in the brain, which means more symptoms, because they interfere with the iron metabolism of the red cells dropping off oxygen into the brain.

The way you get more oxygen to an ADHD brain, even though there may be heavy metals lodged in it, is you have the child do three or four minutes of jumping jacks. It is your emergency way to calm down any hyperactive child. It'll give you about 20 minutes' worth of better mental control, calming down, focus and organization. It even helps in getting higher grades on tests at school if they will do three or four minutes of jumping jacks prior to entering the room to take the test. That’s oxygenation. I've been recommending it for years.

BOYT:  If parents are currently medicating their children, is it recommended, or safe and effective, to begin to wean their children off of medication?

 JT:  Well, the medical community doesn’t like that. Their official statement is, "Do not intend to wean off, plan to take it for all your life."  I find this ridiculous for most of the kids, because it's only the number four option. What they should do all their life is eat a lot of protein and fatty acids every day. That's what they need to do all their life. [Laughs]

But yes. I advocate use of medication as your fourth option if you’ve maxed out what you can do with nutrition and toxins and scientifically avoiding toxic chemical exposures, which I've not talked about in this conversation enough yet. And control all allergies. Also, there is a sensory motor treatment. I go around the nation doing seminars on that, giving the sensory motor a kind of intervention. There is a lot of research showing that massage helps these kids with brain and athletic kinds of activities, improving their motor control skills and giving them visual training so they can read better and so forth. So, yeah. I advocate weaning off. "The Medication Effectiveness Report Form," which is available free from my website, will give parents the eight desired effects of pharmaceuticals on their kids and let them give feedback to the physician on whether those eight effects are really happening with their child with this medication. Also, it has all the side effects listed there, too. It’s a feedback form to give to the physician when your child is taking this stuff, to tell the physician whether the dosage is correct or not and whether it really is working.

BOYT:   Do you find that most of these kids with ADD and ADHD have sensory issues?

 JT:  Absolutely. One of the things I teach is that every child with ADD, with or without hyperactivity, has sensory processing disorder: Primarily Motor Sensory Integration Disorder. A lot of those symptoms are distortions of sensory input. The brain mutes and magnifies sensory inputs inappropriately. That’s why we find so many of the hyperactive kids complaining about their shirt collars, that the tags on their shirts bother their skin and so forth, because they're hyper aware of the skin and it bugs them. The hyperactive kids want to poke, touch, feel, grab. They want to relate by excessive touch. And they violate boundaries; they stand too close to people. What I do is have the parents stretch out their arms fully and tell the child to imitate them. Then the parent starts twirling and says, “This is the invisible body bubble everybody has. Now, you approach me and stop where my bubble is.” And the child does that, and then the parent puts their hands down. “Now approach me again and stop in that same place. But you don’t have my hand as your guide.” And then we see how well he did. The parent again raises their hand and stays still, the child practices approaching but stopping at the arm's-length boundary.

BOYT:   You mentioned avoiding toxic chemicals as much as possible. Please tell us how that can be avoided in the household. Is using organic, non-toxic cleaning supplies a smart option?

 JT:   You got it. Avoid artificial this, that and the other and use living green, modern, earth friendly kind of natural stuff. There are five classes of chemicals that end up causing ADHD symptoms if they get into the brains of these kids. And those five categories are heavy metals, which, I like to include aluminum in that, even though some people don’t regard it as a heavy metal. Avoid aluminum, cadmium, copper, mercury, lead and nickel. And the second one to avoid is petrochemicals: pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, gasoline. And then avoid the 6,000 food cosmetic additives in 90 percent of foods and beverages in supermarkets. The third category is carcinogens and neurotoxins. That includes monosodium glutamate. The fourth one is aromatic phenol. That would be manufactured fragrances: perfumes, air mists, room deodorizers, smoke of all kinds, whiteboard markers, fresh wood coatings, glue, paint, shellac and the smells from indoor swimming pools. And then, finally, toxic -ITE and -ATE is the fifth category: I-T-E and A-T-E, meaning nitrites, nitrates, and sulfites, sulfates that are added to cured and processed meats, especially sausage and bacon. Those are the five categories to eliminate. So, the parent simply chooses other brands of food than the 90 percent that have those chemicals in them when shopping. Avoid MSG and NutraSweet and don’t let the child breathe whiteboard marker smell – ask that their school use the low-odor whiteboard markers. Also, avoid scents in fabric dryer sheets and laundry soap.

You need to go about insulating him from exposure to those chemicals. The best source for help is the heroic, self-help, volunteer, nonprofit organization comprised mostly of parents of kids with autism and ADHD and named in honor of the brilliant pediatric allergist who first discovered that these chemicals are toxic for these kids, Dr. Benjamin Feingold. It is the Feingold Association of the United States and I refer every parent of a kid with autism and ADHD to join that organization. Their website is www.feingold.org.

BOYT:   Many parents of ADHD children choose to use gluten-free diets and sugar-free diets to help combat symptoms. What are your thoughts on that?

 JT:   The sugar is an amazing story in the field. The medical community thumbs its nose at the very idea that sugar can cause problems. Yet, it has been my observation that it definitely does cause problems, especially when the child doesn’t have protein. So if he eats a lot of sugar and there's no protein in one meal or snack then we have problems. And taking them off of sugar generally means fewer of those 6,000 chemicals. You have fewer colorings and flavorings and preservatives and those nasty petrochemicals in the food if you're limiting sugar. It also means more protein in the diet. Taking him off the sugar ends up doing two good things: it gives more protein and lowers the exposure to those chemicals. Therefore, I think it's meritorious to do it. The research is very inconsistent. A lot of the research on sugar has been done by the food industry as a propaganda measure. It's highly controversial and does not have favor in the medical community. I, however, endorse a low sugar, high protein diet. However, what parents may want to do is switch to foods with NutraSweet, which is worse than the sugar. I advise people always to read the best book on all of that, which is written by a naturopathic nutritionist who really understands all this and understands the brain toxicant processes very well. The book is Our Children Are What Our Children Eat. It is the first book to read on toxic chemical exposures and nutrition for your ADHD child. Marcia Zimmerman and her book, The ADD Nutrition Solution, has also done an excellent job. But I like Laura Thompson's book a little better because it goes into brain toxicity factors.

BOYT:   What are some of the best social activities for children with ADHD? Do you find that children flourish better in team sports or individual sports and activities?

 JT:   I write about that greatly in my book. I have a whole section on that. It's one of the few books on ADHD that has a chapter on play and recreation issues with them. I'd much rather that they be in the sport where you measure your own progress against yourself. It can be a team sport that emphasizes the individual angle. His times improve in the swimming. His number of laps improve. His speed of running improves in track. He's monitoring his own times. In bowling, his scores get better and better, that kind of thing. So, compare with self. We don’t want, "Oh we lost the game because it's your fault, because you screwed up, you made us lose the game."

BOYT:   Should parents restrict the use of TV and video games with children with ADHD?

 JT:  Yeah, try to discourage that – try zero – and if you can't, then try minimal. And if you can't do that, try an hour a day max. And if you can't do that, try two hours a day max. Put a reign on it. The average family has a television on seven and one-third hours per day. Research shows that after about 30 minutes, a normal human brain will decrease and will go down to the ga-ga, dreamy, spacey, Theta wave level after watching TV. So TV is an automatic energy drain on a human brain. And the Theta wave is what most ADHD kids are in if they haven’t had enough protein that day or if they haven’t taken their medication that day. Raw ADHD is in Theta wave anyway. It's ga-ga, spacey, dreamy, airheaded. That's why they're so impulsive and careless and thoughtless. They're in Theta wave in the first place. And TV drives everybody down into a Theta wave level. It sucks energy out of the human brain. And so it is not good to park them in front of an energy-sucking machine like that. It does nothing good for them. I have a section on TV and meeting the challenge of TV in Helping Your ADD Child.

BOYT:   Do most children that suffer from ADHD suffer from learning disabilities as well?

 JT:   Oh, yeah. About 40 percent of kids with ADHD have some sort of learning disability. And about 50 percent of all learning disabled children have some sort of ADD with or without hyperactivity. It's a huge overlap. Not only do they have the self esteem problem of, nobody likes me, and the number one ADHD complaint of, I don’t have enough friends, but then they can't even perform a task at school well. And so where do they find their strength? Where's their joy? It certainly is not in the friendshipping skills, it certainly is not in their behavior control, and it certainly is not academically, where 40 percent of them have learning disabilities.

So, it’s no wonder they end up smoking cigarettes, trying alcohol, trying juvenile delinquency in a desperate attempt to find some sort of light at the end of their dark tunnels. Learning disabilities are a nasty business. They almost always mean lower self-esteem, which, of course, then means a lot of other bad things too for our kids. We have to guard their self-esteem and that's why I do not advocate Behavior Mod techniques with ADHD kids. I know they're very popular and many books on ADHD advocate being consistent in discipline and talk about punishment and withdrawing privileges and so forth. I've never advocated that. That doesn't really help the self-esteem; it's too harsh. I have always advocated a more sophisticated method of child discipline; getting out of the nag-yell-punish cycle. We don’t want to harm their self-esteem. Punishments automatically are a threat to self-esteem. I always advocate logical consequences. You temporarily withdraw an abused privilege, but the child gets another crack at it as soon as he's ready. And the question you ask him is, “What is a better way to handle this next time? You just did it in a lose-lose way. You lost and your victim lost. What's a win-win way for you to get your needs met next time? How can we do this better next time?” Put lots of emphasis on undoing whatever he did: apologizing, replacing the toy he broke, and redoing it instantly – redoing it quickly. “Now, play another game with your sister. This time, don’t yell at her. Show her that it's safe for her to play with her brother.” He gets an instant role-play of the correct way to handle the situation next time.

We have to do a better job of nurturing self-esteem in terms of when they are doing well. We've got to do better than waiting until they do well and then telling them that they did a good job. Praising them after they’ve done well – that is so lame. It's way too tardy, it's way too late, it is way too retroactive, and it really doesn’t uplift them enough to pass judgment on what they did. I've always advocated a much more sophisticated method of self-esteem uplift, even when they aren’t doing well. It's all explained in my books.

BOYT:  You don’t think favorably of a reward system, in which a child receives points for completing a certain task, and can then turn those points in for something he wants?

 JT:   No, I don’t like that. I don’t like any kind of Behavior Mod system. I think it is mechanical and it doesn’t do enough for self-esteem and the nuances you really want to teach. You might get lucky. He might put it all together and say, “Oh, I see. When I do what others want me to do, they will be happy with me and they will do nice things for me, and I will be happier that way.” Maybe they’ll put that all together, but they're much more likely to concur, “What's in it for me? How much are you going to pay me to take out the garbage? Oh that isn't enough. I don’t want to take out the garbage.” The Behavior Mod methods lack so much of the interpersonal dynamic themselves and the parent has to flush them out with interpersonal dynamic to make it an effective way to have a child feel happy, safe and productive. The methods that I advocate are not at all Behavior Mod. They emphasize very much the process of natural encouragements to the children rather than artificial praise. In my book, From Defiance to Cooperation, I put together techniques to raise any child with a conscience, even one who is troubled.

BOYT:   Now that ADHD is more recognized in the school system, are schools a little more willing to work with parents and their kids with ADHD?

 JT:   Slightly, but only slightly. What I hear mostly are complaints about the schools putting gag rules on the teachers and the school psychologists saying, “Don’t mention ADHD to that parent because we'd have to pay for the visits to the physician and the testing.” There's an awful lot of dodging the responsibilities by school districts. It is wise for a parent to tell a teacher, “My child will do better if blah blah blah.” Absolutely, it's wise. I strongly advocate that. And I have three chapters on that topic in my book, Helping Your ADHD Child. We want to negotiate when we're together with the teachers. If the parent has an idea that works, they definitely want to share it with the teacher. I produced the most comprehensive video in the field of ADHD on classroom techniques to use. Hopefully, the school will show it to the teachers for faculty in-service training. Hopefully, the parent owns it and invites the teacher over for dinner and watches it together. It's called “School Success Toolkit” and has over 125 techniques in it. It's as long as a full-length motion picture and is the gold standard in this field.

BOYT:   What is your best advice you can offer to parents with children with ADD and ADHD?

JT:   Go after the underlying brain chemistry with nutrition and scientifically avoid toxic chemicals. Then guard your child’s self-esteem. Spend special time with the child at least once a week to show them that you love them.

For more information on Dr. John Taylor or to purchase his book and several other's on ADD/ADHD visit his website