:idea: Hi everybody! I am 6 year old’s father who has been detected with ADHD. I am trying no medications and concentrating on Behavioral Therapy. Can anyone guide me? Also in particular, can anyone suggest me the BEST timeschedule of the day so that the child remains hooked to a task. I am also trying rewards and punishments as a policy.
- nerosbaba
Re: Behavioral Therapy - BEST timeschedule
I would strongly suggest getting guidance from a counselor that frequently uses behavioral therapy techniques AND has a focus of working with families to implement behavior interventions at home. Behavioral interventions need to be tailored to the child and the family, it helps to have someone that is completely unbiased helping this process along.
For our 8 year old, we have found that the later in the day the worse her focus is. This is one of the reasons that we decided to not have her take the long bus ride home. Her attention has improved a lot since age 6 but there were times that we had to use a timer and have her do homework for 10 minutes and then play for 10 minutes over and over again until the homework was finished. We do homework directly after school but some kids take a break.
We also use a time at bedtime so that she will stay on task. She was taking 1.5 hours to get ready for bed. She also has a list of what is required in order to get ready for bed so that she doesn’t forget anything.
We use time-out and natural consequences for bad behavior. We also have a treasure box: she can earns tickets for good behavior and when she has accumulated enough tickets, she can go into the treasure box. Yelling and spanking generally doesn’t work with these children.
Terry
P.S. Now that my daughter is older she knows when to stop doing homework. We call it “brain-fade” and it is pointless to sit there accomplishing nothing.