The occupational therapy department at the Witrand hospital in Potchefstroom, North West, has been inundated with inquiries from surrounding schools and parents worried about hyperactive children, which has left the majority of them struggling at school.
Parents were advised to monitor their children’s behaviour, especially if they are between the ages of six and eight.
Occupational therapist Melandi van Zyl said the condition is called Attention Deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
She said that although it is not a rare condition, parents need to know how to handle it. “We do get many parents coming in to ask questions. Some things start with parents asking or saying that the child is struggling at school, and the teacher says he cannot focus. They might say that the child is naughty in class, disruptive, and has difficulty learning,” she said.
She said parents were not sure what to do about this. “The parents do panic quite a lot especially because sometimes according to them their children have been performing quite well for the first few months of the year, and suddenly the teacher has these complaints about the behaviour that the parent might not even have noticed at home,” she said.
van Zyl said the condition could be managed. “Not only with medication but also with something like a diet and implementing a system at home so that the behaviour is managed,” she said.
She said one could notice the condition by observing their children’s behaviour. She said that most of the time, they will see that their children are hyperactive, restless, in their world dreaming, or a combination of both.
She said this happens to children mainly at a school going age. “Parents would not recognise it when a child is younger, but it would not influence what a child is doing every day. If you think of a child around five or six, they can run around; they are not expected to sit still for three to four hours in a classroom. So we tend to see this from age seven and eigh,” she said.
The hospital said one in 20 children in the country have ADHD, and 10 % are school-age children.