You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down

But try keeping a child who has ADHD and is recovering from an injury, down for a few days. It is a feat that requires some very creative thinking! During the past few days, I’ve had to keep my son home while he recovered from last Friday’s dog attack. Getting my son to sit still for more than a few minutes is a task that we have trouble with, at times. I had no idea how I was supposed to keep him at rest, without the use of sedation. So I turned to my blogosphere friends for their advice. Here are some great ideas that actually worked:

1. Movie day! Rent your child’s favorite movies and have a couch fest. Pop some popcorn, make some cold drinks and just chill together.
2. Arts and crafts. Recovery is the perfect time to break out the quiet activities like painting, sculpting and creating works of art. My son loved this idea, since we cannot do this very much without is turning into a seven kid circus!
3. Cooking class. Let your child have a turn in the kitchen. The both of you can sit and plan a meal, then you and your child can make it together.
4. Video games. We do not have video games in our house, but if we did, I know that it would have kept him thoroughly entertained for at least an hour.
5. A walk down memory lane. I took out our huge box of old family photos and then let him look through it. It was a lot of fun to tell the stories that accompanied each picture.
6. Journal. If your child likes to write, have them start a journal of their injury and recovery time. Expressing their feelings in written form may prove to be very therapeutic. If they cannot write, have them cut out magazine pictures to illustrate their feelings.
7. Puzzles! My son is a whiz at putting together jig saw puzzles. This kept him busy for a lot longer than I expected.  Some kids may enjoy doing crosswords or word find puzzles. It keeps their mind fresh while the body is allowed to mend.
8. Computer games. My new laptop came in very handy when all of the above ideas got stale. We popped in Star Wars Math and the complaints of boredom immediately fizzled.
9. Phone time. My son loves to catch up with old friends. I allowed him to make a few calls to tell his friends about his injury and use up some time before dinner.
10. Story hour. My son loves to read. Now that he reads to himself, I do not get the chance to read to him, like I used to. I’m usually reading toddler books to the younger kids. I remembered reading Charlie And The Chocolate Factory to him, when we were waiting to start his surgery in the emergency room, and it helped to take his mind off of what was going to happen. Today, we picked out some poetry books, some of his old favorites and then took turns telling parts of a made up story. We passed a story stick back and forth as the story unfolded and created a wild adventure in our living room!

My son has had so much fun recovering, I’m afraid he’ll never want to return to school!