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"GIFTED CHILDREN AND ADHD"

Question: "My son has been tested and 'diagnosed' as 'gifted' and he suffers from ADHD, so the intelligence does not come through in the traditional academic setting. Can you offer any spiritual insights into this type of child both as to why there seems to be more and more children like this and also how a parent can best support and nurture them?"

Psychic Advice: Of course, I am not a doctor, so I cannot address this issue from a medical perspective, so I will address it from a spiritual and intuitive perspective to shed some light on this fast-growing "problem" of ADHD or ADD. Children naturally have a tremendous amount of energy and life force, and modern life in our Western Society is penning them in, leaving them with pent up energy that they have no control over, and no acceptable way of releasing, so they become human pressure cookers. ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) has become a catch-all "diagnosis" which includes hyperactivity, inattention, and daydreaming - these conditions are the very nature of childhood.

Keep in mind that the "discovery" and growth of this diagnosis of ADHD or ADD is quite recent. Alan Cassels, who co-wrote Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning us All into Patients reports that as many as 10 percent of 10 year-old boys are diagnosed with ADHD in the United States. In Canada, the number is about half that, while in Europe, it is an extremely rare diagnosis. He states that the difference is not about variations in children, but how they are perceived in each culture, and he points out that children in our modern North American society do not get enough physical activity. He also warns of some of the dangers for children taking drugs for ADHD, dangers that can be so severe that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has considered a black box warning (the strongest warning it can issue without pulling a product off the market) for a class of drugs commonly given to children to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Man has been breaking the laws of nature, altering nature in ways that will have consequences for generations to come. This is all a recent development, and we are the guinea pigs with no way of anticipating the outcome or affects this will have on ourselves, on our children, and on the future of this planet. Humans are subjected to sugar, caffeine, MSG, preservative and additives in food, chemicals in water, detergents, artificial scents to mask noxious chemical odors, pesticides, chemicals in fabrics, PCBs, etc. in higher quantities than ever before in human history. On top of this, crops are being genetically altered to "stay fresher longer" on our supermarket shelves, and to have "terminator" seeds that are designed not to germinate or reproduce, among other things. Such cross-species hybridization as having tomatoes infected with the genes of fish is an abomination against nature. These experiments are being performed on all of humanity with no way of knowing their affects until it is too late.

We live in a society where money is worth more than human life, so companies are allowed to continue practices that pollute our environment, to create chemicals that contaminate our water, and to put additives that denature our food all to serve the bottom line. This has been taking place for less than 100 years, and the global effects have the potential to be devastating.

The real bottom line is that we are what we eat, drink and breathe, because everything that we take into our bodies becomes our cells. Before WWII, there was no such thing as "organic" food, because there was no such thing as "inorganic" food - everything was organic because everything was natural, as nature intended it to be. Less than 70 years later, we have to go to "health food" stores, or to special sections in our supermarkets (if they have them), and pay a premium for not having chemicals added to our food.

One of the keys to maintaining optimum health is to eat only organic foods and drink filtered water (by reverse osmosis). Ideally, foods should be as fresh and alive as possible to preserve their nutrients, so it is best to avoid commercially processed foods as much as possible. The closer a food is to being in the earth, the more alive it is, and the more nutrients it carries. In many European countries, people buy their food fresh from farmers on a daily basis, and prepare that food right away, so they get more vitality from the food they eat. Foods that can sit on the shelf for months on end without "spoiling" are essentially dead - they may fill you up, but they offer little nourishment or life force for the body.

The reason I am focusing so much on food and chemicals is that many of the children being born today are part of a new race of humans, and are extremely sensitive on many levels. Humanity is continually evolving and adjusting to present conditions for survival on Earth. This new race of humans that has been born in the last decade or so are often referred to as "Indigo Children". These children are highly intuitive and have an acute sensitivity to their environment, and as such, they may withdraw into themselves in certain ways in order to protect themselves. They are also very chemically sensitive, and should ideally only consume pure food and pure water, with no chemical additives, especially avoiding sugar. Their environment, including fabrics, detergents, clothing, garden, etc., should be as free of chemicals as possible (this is truly what is best for all of us, but most people don't even think about it - they just want what is cheapest and easiest, but this comes with a great price, and can cost us our individual health, as well as the health and wellbeing of our planet).

Those children who are "gifted" have a new level of consciousness that does not fit the old paradigm. They no longer fit into the out-dated box of traditional education, and get lost or restless in a classroom that is not actually educating them, but rather is designed to program and indoctrinate them into being "good" members of society. When that system does not work for them, we label them as having a disorder such as ADHD, and give them drugs that "help them conform" to society's expectations of children and adults.

Children are meant to be children. They have a tremendous amount of life force energy, and they are not designed to go from sleeping, to being in the car, to sitting at a desk for hours on end with 15 minutes of controlled recess and 1 hour of regimented physical education before going home to watch television and play with video games. Where does all their energy go? It just agitates them from within, especially when fueled by sugar, or even by seemingly healthy fruit juices or snacks.

Children need an outlet for their energy, and they need to be educated in a way that engages their interest. We do "gifted children" an enormous disservice to label them as ADHD which states that they have a "disorder", when in fact it is our society that is disordered. The human body is designed to move, and the mind needs different stimulation all the time. But what do we do? We live by an artificial clock that tells us when to eat, when to sleep, when to get up, and then we sit or stand for eight hours at a time doing repetitious work that bides our time on Earth. No wonder we are not healthy! And we start training children as young as four to live this way, then wonder why they can't sit still or concentrate (and by the way, fluorescent lighting which is so common in schools is known to be detrimental to concentration). It makes one wonder who is really disordered? The labels that we put on our children, such as learning disabled, stigmatize them for the rest of their lives, when really, it is the education system itself that is failing because it is designed to indoctrinate people into an artificial way of life, which is not really living at all.

These children need to be surrounded by soothing, calming colors. They would benefit from lots of physical activity and exercise, especially outdoors in fresh air, and perhaps even some form of yoga to center and ground them. They need to have their mind stimulated by various activities, but they also need calming energy, like classical music, which aids in concentration. It is important for parents of all children to monitor and limit television, especially violent cartoons and video games.

Gifted children need to focus on their areas of interest and giftedness, and they also need to try new things and learn from new and different activities. Children naturally have a short attention span, so they need a lot of variety and various options available to them at all times. They would also benefit from special schools with smaller classes where they can receive personalized attention, perhaps something like a Waldorf or Montessori School, or the new KIPP schools, or some type of education system that supports them to be an individual with unique needs and interests.

From a spiritual perspective, the most important thing to remember is that children are not really children - they are evolved souls coming into a child's body, and are only children until their physical and emotional maturity catches up with their consciousness. These souls come to the parents who can best support them to experience what they need to experience on Earth, and who can give them the foundation in their upbringing to develop physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Throughout this process, children also come to heal their parents, and to teach them about unconditional love and acceptance. Everything serves a purpose, and ADHD is one of the conditions that challenge us all to grow in the evolution of our consciousness, so gifted children are really a gift to humanity.

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