By Angel Swemmer, a  mom to a teenage-almost-adult ADHDer who says that what she writes is purely her opinion on things she feels strongly about, based on my experience as an ADHDer parent. Author of the blog Angelsmind

Make no mistake- I think most teachers are superheroes- but they can make bad calls when it comes to treating ADHDers!  Here’s an example of a mistake a lot of teachers make.

At the end of the last school year, one of the ADHDer moms I “mentor” (lets call her Jane) gave me a call. Jane’s son’s teacher had asked her if she could please return the unused Ritalin that Jane had sent to school.

Jane’s son (lets call him John) takes a Ritalin tablet in the morning and then another one later in the morning, which the teacher had agreed to give to him. All through the year Jane had been asking the teacher if she was giving John his second dose, because there were days when he came home more hyper than usual, and would then battle to get his homework done or get ready for bed and so on. The teacher swore that she was giving him his meds, even though John told his mom that some days she didn’t.  The poor ADHDer almost always gets the short end of the stick  because they have a tendency to tell stories the teacher is usually the one believed!

In this case, come year end, the teacher sent home almost  5 weeks’ worth of Ritalin tablets!

Jane was furious. When she confronted the teacher about all the extra medication, the teacher admitted that there had been days she felt he didn’t need it “that much” and decided not to give it to him.

Jane made an appointment with the school principal to discuss it with him and to ask him to follow up with John’s teachers in future, but it was the end of the school year so not much was going to come of Jane’s measures.

The implications of an ADHDer not having his correct medication dosage is huge- and it doesn’t only affect the school day. John’s teacher had no idea.

In the new school year, Jane was sure to give the teacher more information and explain why John needed his correct and complete dose every day- but the fact remains that South African schools do not have advanced ADHD “care” programs like the IEPs in the USA, and we have to rely on our children’s teachers’ willingness and good will to help in our ADHDers care, rather than be assured that their schools will follow up on a properly formalised plan.

Follow up with your ADHDers’ teachers and with the headmaster and division heads on a regular basis. Provide them with reading material and books as and when you can.

Talk to her every time you take new meds to school and remind her why your ADHDer has meds.

With a class full of children, she will forget!

And good luck to you.

by Sally Cameron, midwife, mother of 2 and co-owner of earthbabies . I am passionate, creative, trying to be Green unschooling single mom. It’s a journey

I became a single mom when the kids and I moved back to South Africa a year ago from the UK. Their dad and I are separated and he has chosen to stay in the UK. He wants to get a British passport so can only be out of the UK 30 days a year. His contact with them is therefore very limited. He has not seen them since June last year. One of the main ways he maintains contact is through Skype which I encourage.

He keeps asking that I am not present when he speaks to them. They are 5 and 2 so I feel I do need to be in the background so that if something goes wrong with the computer I can help as they invariably fiddle with it. Besides the 2 of them trying to both get their faces in the camera view often results in fighting. I am not sitting there on the camera, I just move in and out of the room while in ear shot in case they need me.

The one time I left the room I came back to the ex telling my daughter how he was planning a trip for them to the UK which never happened and he had not spoken to me about it first. I had to deal with the fall out and disappointment, so there is part of me that does not totally trust his motives when he speaks to them.

Am I being over protective, what would you do?

Nikki Bush, a self-confessed parenting adventurer.  Married with two strapping sons aged 14 and 10.  Nikki’s clients call her a creative parenting expert.  She is an inspirational speaker and author of bestselling parenting book, Future-proof Your Child (Penguin, 2008).

Have you ever realised that you are always trying to market to, or sell your child/ren something – an idea, a value, a point of view, an action to be taken etc:

With this generation, authority does work (sometimes), particularly in the early years when “because I am your parent and I said so” still has some magical power to it, or if you have actively positioned yourself as a hero in your child’s life story.  But, as children get older there is a tendency for them to either think or, even worse, verbalise “Says Who?” or “Who cares anyway?”. Living in a reward-based culture as we do, where it’s so commonplace for us to be rewarded for swiping our credit cards, being loyal to the same airline, store or restaurant, visiting the gym etc, our children could be forgiven for thinking:  “If they want me to do this, what’s in it for me, what do I get?”

This is a very real challenge for 21st century parents.  Of course the desired end result after years of parenting is for our children to be self-motivated rather than relying on some form of external bribe etc.  But, from time-to-time, it may be necessary to utilise various “marketing tactics” to get the message across to your child in a fun and playful way, or to get their buy-in until it becomes an adopted habit, value, thought or behaviour pattern.

Star charts, treats, promises and bribes are all in a parent’s marketing arsenal – to be used wisely, of course.  And do watch what the marketers are doing – you could pick up an idea or two to add to your toolkit.  Try these “promotions” for size, my kids loved them:

by Joy Robyn Dembo, married, with an 18 year old son and a 25 year old daughter.  Addicted to the www, particularly Twitter. Recruitment Response Handling Consultant and Freelance Copywriter, vegetarian and animal lover.  Here’s her blog.

With almost 8 years between my two children, it was beginning to feel as though I had been at school forever, so you can imagine my elation when my son passed Matric last year and I left school forever!!

My son had decided many years ago that he wanted to be a chef when he left school.  So, not withstanding the fact that he had never cooked anything other than 2-minute noodles and scrambled eggs, hated washing dishes and didn’t know the meaning of hard work, I filled in the 10 page application form for the Hotel School, signed the 21 page contract, paid the obscene fees, bought the R7000-00 worth of books (I always thought you could buy an entire library for R7000!),  paid for the hideously expensive uniforms (1 x suit and 2 times chef uniforms plus accessories),  bought the set of knives that look as though they came out of a serial killer’s boot (I watch the Crime & Investigation Channel a lot!), and paid for all the other incidentals!  You will notice that the words “bought” and “paid for” feature quite prominently in this paragraph.

Day one eventually arrived!

The first two days were taken up by a Wine Course (At an additional cost of R1200-00), and I am proud to say that I am now very knowledgeable when it comes to useless wine, port, sherry, brandy and sparkling wine facts. (If all else fails, I think I am fully equipped to apply for a job as a Sommelier)”

The second two days were dedicated to a Level 1 First Aid Course.  Apparently, by law, you have to do at least Level 1 before you are permitted to work in a hotel kitchen. My son is not a light boy and after spending two days on his knees practicing CPR on a dummy, he was almost crippled.  After taking truckloads of Voltaren and Myprodol, he was finally able to walk again (but only just!!).

Ryan is doing the 3 yr Diploma in Professional Cookery and Kitchen Management, which is divided into academic and practical sections, on a block release basis.  Ryan has been allocated to do part of the practical section first, and has been assigned to a 5-Star Rosebank Hotel.

Horror of horrors!  He is currently doing the 6:00 am (as in getting up in the middle of the night) – 2:00 pm shift.  As you can imagine, after doing this for almost 3 weeks, we are all floating around like Zombies!  But, despite the fact that Ryan has almost cut his finger off twice, and he finally knows the meaning of HARD work, after being on his feet for 8 hours straight, on a daily basis he is learning what it means to take your place in the “working world” and he is actually enjoying his course and savouring the experience of learning something new every day!

Me?  I am spending hours boiling, bleaching, soaking, washing and scrubbing an entire gourmet menu out of his WHITE chef uniform, on a daily basis, rushing to fetch him at 2-00pm, helping my hubby out with the morning lifts (I didn’t know it was possible to “sleep drive”) and fervently hoping that he will get his driver’s license soon and I will, at the very least, be served a Cordon Bleu meal, in the very near future!

by Paul Jacobson , dad, husband, lawyer, geek, blogger, evangelist, maven. He blogs at Paul Jacobson and Web. Tech. Law

I have become acutely aware of how my stress impairs my ability to relate to my family and to our son, in particular, in a constructive or even meaningful way.  My law firm has seen a number of changes over the years since I founded it.  One thing that hasn’t really changed all that much is the amount of stress I am under almost all the time, particularly about financial matters.

It is usually around month-end and the beginning of the next month (“that time of month” for me) that I notice my patience wearing really thin in general and my personality shifts to the Dark Side (with a side order or Super Grouch).  Despite my hope that I can keep the stress to myself and deal with it in some way (still looking for that magic wand to turn the stress into euphoria and bliss …), it leaks out and taints everything and everyone near me.  I get angrier quicker and lose my temper when pushed.  In short, I behave terribly and a big part of my anxiety is watching how my stress affects Aaron, in real-time.  Sure he has his moments (he had a doozie this morning) but he is still a child.  I mentioned before that I have started to see him begin to withdraw a little and me getting angry doesn’t help at all.  Then, after the anger has passed and the tears are drying as he sits on my lap apologising to me, the guilt and depression sink in.  My worldview just shifts from red to deep blue and that isn’t much fun either.

I think what I am slowly getting to is this: we all get stressed out and we take it out on people around us in varying degrees.  Although it often makes me feel worse, becoming more aware of the causes of my stress and the reasons why I am such an ass at certain times of the month is essential to dealing with the stress a little better.  At the very least I am slowly getting better at recognising that it isn’t our son’s tantrum that sparked my anger but something wholly outside his control or even his little universe.  It isn’t his fault that a client is 10 days late on a big fee and all my debit orders have bounced.  He’s upset because he had a bad dream or because we can’t rewind Peppa Pig for him.

We all know we shouldn’t take our stress out on other people but are we all as aware of the causes of our stress as we could be?  Perhaps if we were more aware of those causes we’d recognise the triggers sooner and behave a little better next time our children start pressing buttons.

Robyn Cameron, entrepreneur, firedancer, self employed domestic worker, chef at home. Passionate about education, philosophy, music, nature, animals, crafts & South Africa. General manager and shareholder at Hire Education. You’ll also find her on twitter.

If you are in the same boat as me, 2010 has kicked off to such a rapid start I think I might have missed it altogether! Generally I come to the end of January and feel like I should have done more, but this year I’m feeling that if January was this crazy, look out for the next 11 months ahead!

I once read a quote which seems appropriate:

“Don’t worry about tomorrow. After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”

Easier said than done? Right?

Maybe not. What I’ve learnt is that multi-tasking isn’t always best as we tend to divulge our focus. This leads us to complete a few things at once, but in double the amount of time and of a lesser quality, had we been concentrating on one thing at a time. Ever tried helping the kids with homework whilst trying to cook dinner? The outcome – homework that looks like a dogs breakfast or possibly dinner that doesn’t look much better!

So, for this year, my aim is to take things one at a time and worry less about what I’m not doing so that I can focus on what I am doing.

My first attempt at living in the present will be to compartmentalise (yes that is actually a word) my time. Oh wait, I think that me googling compartmentalise whilst writing this post still counts as multitasking? Anyway, most of you will have so many tasks to accomplish in one day that just trying to figure out what to do next will leave your head spinning. Whilst you are at work you might be thinking – I have to fetch the kids from school, then go to the shops – what do I need from the shops? Which leads to – what will I do for dinner? And then, before you know it, you have not progressed at all on the task at hand.

So, when you decide to do something, keep bringing yourself in check when your mind wanders. Even if it means turning off the phone, closing your email and anything else open on your computer. Allocate time to tasks – even set a timer on your phone! When that timer goes off stop whatever you are doing and move onto the next thing.

At first it may feel like you are leaving things open ended, but as time goes by you will get into a routine that works for you and start seeing the benefits of dedicating your focus on one thing instead of many. Once you train your mind to concentrate on the task at hand, you will soon start to have less panic running around in your brain about all the other things you need to do, which will lead to less stress about things you can’t change at that point in time.

What are your ways of coping in with this demanding, high paced society, where it’s now or never that seems to be ruling our waking hours?

Corinne Lamoral is a freelance writer and media consultant and mother of three children 3-9yrs. She reviews books and movies for a living which has sharpened her eye to spot out the must see’s  and must reads out there.

Having watched more than my fair share of Barbie DVD’s about princesses and fairies I was not sure what to expect from The Princess and the Frog, but I was wonderfully surprised.  Disney has reverted to their classic hand-drawn style and produced a visual feast of a tale with engaging characters and memorable side- kicks.

This is a modern day fairy tale in which the ‘princess’ – Tiana – is really a hard working young girl from the wrong side of the tracks who wants nothing more than to own a restaurant and cook food for everyone. Prince Naveen is a spoilt but well-meaning young ‘eurotrash’ who arrives in New Orleans looking to have fun while hopefully snagging himself a trust fund princess to pay for his way of life. Throw in the menacing magician cum voodoo man, Dr Facilier and Tiana and the Prince get turned into frogs sending them on a wild adventure deep into the Bayou (swamps) to find the good medicine woman who will return them to their human forms.  Along the way they learn about love, friendship, and wishing upon a star.

The spirit of 1920’s New Orleans with its mix of jazz, blues and gospel inspires a foot tapping soundtrack and the hand drawn and painted animation has a warmth and richness that we’ve really missed with the digital age. Do children care about all this? Well, maybe not, but it stirs their imagination and is culturally entertaining.  Did they notice that all the main characters were black or Hispanic?  My daughter and her friend didn’t mention it, even though this has been both hailed and deplored in the US where it’s seen as being either ‘about time’ or too PC.  I think its just part of the story and helps to level the surplus of white princes and princesses out there.

AGE RESTRICTION: I was glad I left my five year old at home. The age restriction is 10, and my 9 year old and her friend were happy watching it.  The restriction is for the scare factor and I do wonder why Disney has to go quite so dark in enacting the Voodoo shadows and masked figures. Yes, it is artistically done, but it’s scary! Having said that a few of my daughter’s friends apparently felt the movie was boring. In the age of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Avatar – it is refreshingly simple and ‘old-fashioned’.

The Princess and the Frog is currently on circuit at Ster Kinekor cinemas around the country.

by Brendah Nyakudya,  a single mum to a 4yr old girl. Admittedly not the best cook, but loves exploring the outdoors with her little one. A political and social commentator she has just started a blog As I see it. During the day she works for management consultants in Johannesburg.

Every so often my daughter says “Mommy I am going to marry Ben tomorrow, because he is my boyfriend and he said so”.   Its sweet and I earnestly pray that for her love is indeed that simple.

As a single parent, love and dating are such complicated issues.  On the  one hand I am an easy date because of my hassled lifestyle.  Anything that doesn’t include me cooking and begging someone to eat, far away from the constant cries of “mommy, mommy” would be my idea of a romantic date. So on a bad day, a drive to McDonalds with an adult man, just the two of us would be romantic.

But on the other hand, because I am a single parent, I am the toughest client to please.  People always assume that when someone has a child its harder to get back into the dating game. It’s a correct assumption.  But the mistake they make is thinking the child is the hindrance to them having a social or a love life – the opposite is true, it’s us, the parents, who get in the way.

As a single mom I have become even more cautious and critical when approaching the dating game, because I now have a little life and heart I am responsible for.  I no longer have the luxury to just “kick it” and see how it goes. People say I am too picky but I have to be!  The minute someone shows interest it would be remiss for me as a mother to not gauge how they would be as a parent.  It’s too risky getting attached to someone who cannot connect with your child.

Trust is another big issue because unfortunately the world we live in is cruel and dark. Everyone has read those devastating stories of sexual and physical child abuse at the hands of those we loved, trusted and let into our lives.  How do you protect your child from that?

And that’s not all! Logistical factors also come into play. When do you introduce your child to a “suitor?”  Do you do it early in the game, before you get attached, so you can test it out but risk your child being introduced to lots of different men should it not work out or do you wait until you are sure, which has its own disadvantages should they not get along and you have already fallen in love.

All these things rush through my head the minute someone asks for my number and it may seem psychotic, but it’s my reality and these fears and issues are real and sometimes too daunting to even face for “dinner and a maybe”.

Which would probably explain why this Valentines I will be having dinner and dancing with the love of my life (read: forcing a 4year old to eat and then jumping around to Boogie Beebies).

But I will sleep happy, content and in love.

by Kojo Baffoe a man, a father, a son, a brother, a husband, a friend, a poet, a writer on a quest to make sense of this reality, with words. Author of ramblings .

We had it all figured out. From the wedding to first child, we had had a solid five years to find the place and our rhythm. Our life together operated like a well-oiled machine. We did not have to think about it. Everything had its place and its time. Weekends we would often curl up on the couch, under a shared blanket and watch movies – well, I’d watch the movies and she would sleep – or we would go out for dinner to some of our favourite restaurants. In fact, once a month, the missus would identify a new restaurant and we would invite friends to join us to test it out.

Also, whenever we could, especially around our anniversary, we would go off to some quaint self-catering or bed and breakfast for some rest and recreation. We’d book spa treatments and spend the rest of the day in bed, braai in the evenings with each other, wine and good music for company. Yup. We had this whole marriage game down to a science.

While exciting and frightening, even the pregnancy period was relatively straight forward. The third party in our relationship went where the wife went so we maintained the dinners and the like. To that we added a regular visit to the gynae and, as the time drew closer, antenatal classes.

And, in a short, amazing moment, all of that changed. People tell you but I don’t think it really sinks in until it actually happens. A baby consumes ALL of your life. A spanner in the works does not quite capture how brutal and how extreme the change is; life-changing, amazing and wonderfully profound but still brutal. We were barely keeping our head above water.

Also, because the bulk of our families live in different cities from us, we couldn’t always drop him off for a break. And, while we had a great nanny, one of us always had to be there to ‘babysit’. We also discovered new dimensions to each other … we were now parents in addition to husband and wife. And Kweku demanded the attention and, at two and a half, still demands it.

How do we maintain romance in our relationship after the birth of our child? I don’t know. I don’t know if we even maintain it. We are still working our way through it. We have tried different things, including the infrequent coffee date or dinner date. Now that Kweku is older, it is easier (for us) to leave him and go out in the evening. Sometimes we get it right. Only sometimes. But, we do realise that we were before he was and therefore we cannot lose sight of us, no matter how blessed we are to have him.

By Gina Jacobson, a mom, a leo.  She works for a  non-profit organisation, is a procrastinator, loves sci-fi, sushi, good books and scrabble.Her blog is made up of A Bit of This a Bit of That.

With our 4th wedding anniversary coming up followed very closely by Valentine’s day I have been very busy thinking up ways to make that weekend romantic and intimate for Paul and I.  It’s also made me think about how often (or not so often) we get ‘lone’ time.

One of the ways we ensure that we don’t go stark raving ‘TellieTubbies-Tweenies-MeToo-BoogieBeebies-GetSquiggling’ mad is by getting my mom to have Aaron over for a sleep over every 2nd or 3rd Saturday night.  We spend that time relaxing by watching TV or going to see a movie or spending time with our friends.

I think we do need to make better use of that time by going out for dinner just the two of us, you know, the whole spiel, candles, wine, and dessert.

Another idea that recently came up is going out of town for a long weekend.  When Paul mentioned going to Cape Town our first thought was child-friendly accommodation.  Then I though to myself, well, maybe its time for Aaron to have an extended sleep over, 2 nights with his nana?

Just imagine 3 days, 2 nights, child free in another city…

It would be like having a mini honeymoon.  It doesn’t even have to be in Cape Town, it could be in Magaliesburg or some place else that’s only a few hours away.

I also think that part of the fun is making the plans to spend ‘lone’ time together, the anticipation and excitement.

So, while I go and start making these ideas happen, tell me what you do to make time for yourselves…