Seven Strategies for Single Parents Raising a Child With ADHD

Raising a child with attention deficit hyperactive disorder( ADHD) is a major challenge for a single parent. According to the Center for Disease and Control, 4.5 million children have been diagnosed with ADHD. These children's behaviors are characterized by a short attention span, difficulty sustaining attention on a consistent basis, susceptibility to distraction by extraneous stimuli and internal thoughts, losing things necessary for tasks, and repeated failure to follow through on instructions. Moreover, two or three times more boys than girls are affected by it. And, there is an average of one child with ADHD in every classroom.

Experts, however, remain unsure of what causes it. Some of the views include: alcohol and drug use by biological parents; chaotic, dangerous households; and family genes.

Exposure to common pesticides is a cause that new research has been revealing. The particular pesticide, an organic-phosphate, is a man-made toxin originally developed for chemical warfare and now used extensively in agriculture. Scientists believe that children exposed to this compound while still in the womb have a higher chance of developing attention problems by age 5.

While it remains a possibility that roughly one million children may be misdiagnosed, it is important for you to be observant of how your child behaves as they progress through their birthdays. For example, if your child is misbehaving or is inattentive, it may be that he is 5 and the other children are 6.

As a single parent who wants your child to realize his highest potential and to become reasonably self-sufficient, here are seven strategies to consider:

1. Learn about ADHD and its causes. The more you know, the more you can help yourself and your child.

2. Praise your child when he or she does well. Build upon your child's abilities, strengths, and talents.

3. Talk with your child's doctor about the types of medication that would help your child as well as the potential side effects of the medication.

4. Be clear, be consistent, and be positive. Provide structure in the home. Set clear rules with your child. Tell your child what he should do, not what he shouldn't do.

5. Pay attention to your child's mental health and your own. Be open to counseling. It can help you deal with the challenges of raising a child with ADHD.

6. Meet with the school and develop an educational plan to address your child's needs. Both you and your child's teachers should get a copy of this plan.

7. Keep in touch with your child's teachers. Tell the teachers how your child is doing at home. Ask how your child is doing in school. Offer support.

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Seven Tech Tips for the Busy Single Parent

If you are the average single parent, you are too busy to have to deal with a troublesome computer. You want your computer to perform smoothly and you want to access the information you need without any hassle. To help you in doing so, here are five tech tips.

1. Malicious programs stealthily embed themselves into your software without your knowledge, often through forwarded e-mails, and free scans and downloads. These must be removed from your computer before they cause damage to your operating system and bring your system to a halt. To do this, you can use many of the free spyware/adware removal tools. When you have one of these tools installed, run it frequently and keep it updated.

2. Make sure you download all the latest Windows Updates, Service Packs, and Hot Fixes. They normally make your computer work better. Most software applications nowadays have an automatic update and will prompt you to update them. As soon as you log onto the Internet, they automatically start the updates and if the new updates are available, they would get it and prompt you to install it.

3. Learn how to use keyboard shortcuts for Windows and Microsoft Word, or create your own keyboard shortcuts. Here are three important ones: Windows key+ E opens Windows Explorer with one quick keystroke; Windows key + F4 allows you to close a window in a program and Ctrl + W would do the same thing. Both of these will allow you to close the window without using the mouse to hit X in the right-hand corner. In, Microsoft Word, the right and left arrow allows you to move the cursor to the beginning of the previous word and the up-and-down arrows would do the same with paragraphs. This is very helpful when editing a document, or scanning for any reason.

4. Clean your registry by removing broken shortcuts, missing shared DLL, invalid path, invalid references, and more. The Windows registry is the master control center for your operating system and the applications it runs. Corruption or overload can cause performance problems and, in general, disrupt the system process. Do not manually attempt to change the registry. Try one of the freeware sites.

5. Remove unnecessary or old programs by using the Add/Remove dialog in the Control Panel. In addition to unnecessary or old programs, you may have many useless files left over from re-installs and just general use. To clear these up, do regular disk cleanup using the tools available or you can doing so manually.

6. Perform a virus scan on your computer regularly. If you don't want to install virus protection, use some of the free online virus scanners. The Windows Firewall is very adequate and should be always be turned on. However, do add an additional good, reliable and up-to-date virus scanner. Two is better.

7. Completely uninstall programs and applications. Remnants of programs and applications can cause your computer to become unstable. Both the coding and the software need to be uninstalled. All the debris.left behind needs to be cleaned up.

For the Busy and Thrifty Single Parent - Seven Tips for Buying and Organizing

It is unusual for a busy single parent to not be concerned about thriftiness and being organized. Here I'm offering seven tips to help out in these areas. They are:

1. Buy Generic Items

Similar to prescription drugs, generic food items are exactly the same as the more expensive brand-name version. By law, certain items, such as aspirin, baking soda, cornstarch, honey, molasses, peanuts, pecans, salt, sugar, unbleached flour, and walnuts must be exactly the same content and composition regardless of the packaging or quality gimmicks. Always buy lower-cost generic brand when buying these items.

2. Control Your Impulses

We you pick up an item that is not on your grocery list, place it in the child's seat of the grocery shopping cart. Then just before checking out, re-evaluate the budget breaking items, and then put all those items back except for one item. That's your reward for carefully controlling your impulses in the grocery aisles.

3. Shop with Cash Only.

Shop for groceries with cash only. You'll be a much more careful shopper knowing that you cannot go over your limit because you do not have a checkbook or credit card to fall back on. Also go to stores where you can bag your own groceries. Their prices are lower and you can group items together to match the way your kitchen, pantry, refrigerator are arranged. You will save a lot of time putting things away.

4. Deal with the Mail Efficiently.

As soon as you get the mail, read it, and sort it into one of these four categories: to pay, to answer; to file; and, to dump. Then do it.

5. Set Up Family In-Boxes.

Designate a colored file folder or plastic in-box for each of your children. When they come home from school, have them to put important papers, forms, and other school information in this special place. They will then know where to find the papers and items they need to return to the teacher the next day.

6. Use a Home Filing system.

Set up temporary files labeled "To be filed", and "To be tossed". In the first, place items that need to be saved permanently. In the second put dated materials. Once a month file the first and dump the second.

7. Reuse Plastic Grocery Bags.

Save and organize grocery bags neatly and compactly inside a cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels or wax paper. Stuff the plastic bags into the tube and store them in your cupboard or drawer. Keep one under the car seat also. It will come in handy.

Let me know if you find these tips to be useful.

Computer Buying Tips for Single Parent Families

The decision to buy a computer for the first time or to replace an aging or obsolete one is a significant decision for single parent families, especially if there will be only one computer for the family.

When considering the purchase of a computer, here are some basics you need to know:

Computers come in all sizes and for your family, only consider a desktop, not a laptop. And, the hardware, what's inside your computer, which includes the hard drive, random access memory (RAM), central processing unit (CPU), graphic card, and the optical media drive must be essential in your consideration.

Since your computer will have multiple users, let's first consider the hard drive. The hard drive is the central storage device in your computer. It will be used to store your digital music, photos, and video collection. Go for a hard drive with a minimum of 750GB (gigabytes). Think of this as the equivalent of about 160 DVDs. However, 1 TB (terabyte) of drive space would be even better. By doing so, everyone will have adequate space to store their personal media.

Second, consider your RAM which is your Random Access Memory. This is where your computer stores programs and data while it is on. Consequently, you need to buy a computer with 4GB or more of RAM. Keep in mind that if you want more than 4GB of RAM, you will need a 64-bit operating system (OS), because the 32-bit OS can only use up to 4GB of RAM.

Third, consider the CPU or central processing unit referred to here as the processor. This is the device that actually performed the computing tasks. In considering the processor, go for a quad core processor instead of the dual core which describes the number of processor cores found on a single processor die. Multiple processors have the ability to separate the handling of tasks to share the load so that the job can get done more quickly. Most current programs are designed to support quad core processing and even the older programs will work better with the quad core or multiple core processor.

Fourth, consider the graphic card. This is the component that plugs right into your motherboard and without it your PC could not display images. If you and your children plan to play video games or movies, then you need to have a dedicated video card. Buy a computer with the video card that offers the largest amount of memory. The computer would then be able to play your games faster and offer greater support for high definition video, such as 1,920 x 1,080 or larger.

And finally, the optical media drive enables your computer to read CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. Nowadays, most computers come with a DVD burner that can both play and record media on DVD. If you and your family will be only watching DVD movies, then you will be in good shape.