Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)/Expert Profile

Expertise

Behavior and learning challenges are usually caused by personality traits such as Restlessness, High Physical, Low Concentration, Wide Tolerance (spaciness), Force (anger), Aggressive, plus others. I can help in either area.

Experience in the area

25 years experience working with families, teaching them how to work with traits so they work for you, rather than against you. As mother of seven grown children and grandmother of 19, I have seen first hand the beauty of recognizing talents and potential in a child who is difficult to raise. I could not have raised my last daughter, who had a very strong personality, without this knowledge. Besides working with families, I have worked with individuals and businesses. The challenges are always the same--learning how to work with your own traits, plus learning how to handle trait differences between yourselves and others.

What do you like about this subject?

The most wonderful thing is teaching you that your child's challenges are really his gifts in disguise. Each trait has both a positive and negative expression; therefore a positive expression is possible with each negative behavior. This changes the attitude of the whole family.

What do you still hope to achieve/learn in this field?

The more people I work with, the more I learn about traits and how to work with them more effectively. I hope, through my books, teaching, and consulting, to help everyone celebrate each person's uniqueness, create better understanding of self and others, and learn valuable skills in effectively handling traits in themselves and others.

Something interesting about this subject that others may not know:

Applied Personality Science was actually developed in the thirties, forties, and fifties, but did not go widespread because of the trend toward psychotherapy, which had its basis in damage done from the environment. A.P.S. shows that about 80% of behavior is genetic-based and gives us choice over our behavior.

Something controversial or provocative about this subject

There are those who benefit from keeping our children on medication. Unfortunately, that puts pressure on parents to medicate their children. Understanding behavoral traits gives parents an alternative to drugs, more beneficial to the children, but not very popular with those who benefit otherwise.