Natural supplements

Can anyone recommend natural vitamins or supplements that help with focus?  Sick of Children's hospital prescribing meds and would rather go natural.  Obviously if there was a magic supplement for socialization as well that would be great but doubt that is out there but have heard of natural supplements vitamins for children to assist w focus.  Any experiences or success please share.  Thanks in advance.

Parents Reply Children
  • We started very small, when she too was small (about three I think), with a home-made tank of pond minnows she fished for herself. It was semi-successful in that they (somehow) lived a couple of months but she learned that:

    1) it wasn't a good idea to "take them out of their bath" to play and

    2) being too rough with the tank and spilling it everywhere ended her pet-ownership fun. It basically taught her to consider that the poor animals HAD needs and that failure to do so had consequences. 

    We next got goldfish (about 4 years old) and she was MUCH better with them (remembered the minnows lesson) and they all lived quite a while (about 2-3 years) - one in particular she had until she was about 12 or 13 (didn't know goldfish could live that long) and we gave him a burial at sea (she'd gotten particularly attached to him). She helped with most of the tank cleaning, read up on their health etc., was the only one who fed them (with the help of a chart at first) and used to make up stories and adventures about them. Just watch out for sharing 'yummy' food like Birthday cake!!

    One of the tanks we had when her favourite fish was still quite small had a little periscope in it and she loved the interactive side of that, spying on his secret world! (I'd recommend it if you can still get them, try 'Bright Minds' or anywhere that sells Science-toys / kits for kids.) A later, larger, tank she decorated with stickers saying things like "look at his little legs", a joke she enjoyed for years! 

    At about 6 years old we got her a hamster. She again read up on them and took full responsibility for his varied diet (taking an interest in cooking mainly to create vegetable scraps for her hamster) and cage hygiene as well as devising more and more elaborate toilet-paper-tube adventure playgrounds for him. Perfect for encouraging craft / dexterity / concentration. They do sometimes bite though! (But it did teach her to be gentle and careful, eventually.) 

    The hard lesson with all of these animals was their death as none (apart from that one fish) lived very long and she sometimes took it quite badly but I guess the fact that she grew attached to them in the first place was a good thing - that's how i saw it anyway. She really loved her pets and they all, in their own way, focused her attention and gave her an interest to share with friends at school. 

    At age 11 we got her a puppy. We felt she'd graduated to being able to be responsible enough to implement rules for him and understand that sometimes they were a good thing: a lesson she 'sort-of' transferred to herself   :/   and she learned that his training was just as necessary as it was fun! 

    Good luck in your pet hunt and I hope it goes well. We had ups and downs with pets over the years but overall i think it was 70% worthwhile and 30% hard work.