Fast ForWard for ad/hd?

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

My daughter was just diagnosed last week with ad/hd inattentive with her primary area of concern being temporal/sequential working memory. She has started on medication which really seems to be helping her already. One of my cousins called me and told me that Fast ForWard is really very good to help address some of the issues related to attention. My school district has this program but I had never heard of it being used for this purpose. It’s mainly used for auditory processing problems. I have a meeting with the school on Friday to evaluate the best way to help my child (504/iep—most likely, 504) and after that will be developing a plan for her. My cousin works for the company that makes Fast ForWard so I am looking for a little more objective advice. Has anybody tried to use this program for ad/hd issues?

Also, my other concern is she said that the program is 100 minutes a day five days a week for 8 weeks. Right now my daughter is having real issues with anxiety and is already in vision therapy and receiving remedial help at school. The doctor wants her to have the most “normal” routine as possible right now. For those that have tried this program, how did you find your child did with it? Did they enjoy it enough so it wasn’t a struggle to do?

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 12/11/2003 - 2:25 AM

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Not now…she is overloaded…as it is…I have an ADD-Inattentive daughter and I am a provider for FFW and I didn’t have her do it…she did fine with her glasses and speech therapy, and medication…

Give the meds some time….and the other therapy time as well.

Submitted by Beth from FL on Fri, 12/12/2003 - 6:11 PM

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We did Fast Forward and it did help attention but my son had been diagnosed with auditory processing deficits. It is a grueling program, which he hated, so I certainly wouldn’t do it if she is already feeling overloaded. We did it in the summer.

Beth

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 12/18/2003 - 12:01 AM

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Kids with sequencing and attentional issues seem to do well with interative metronome. I would try that before fast forward. It is much less grueling.

It really pretty much cured my son’s severe sequencing problems.

Today I was grilling him on multiplication and division problems. He has them pretty much down. I couldn’t stump him.

This was a child who couldn’t count my to 100 2 years ago before IM. He could not learn days of the week or anything sequential.

He is in fourth grade.

I also found vision therapy very helpful. I would definitely do one therapy at a time.

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 12/18/2003 - 12:29 PM

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Thanks for the advice. I pretty much had come to the decision to do just one therapy at a time and not to overload her anymore than necessary. Right now we are doing VT and that seems to be enough—especially since my daughter doesn’t like it. I really feel we need to get the anxiety and self esteem under control before we can effectively deal with anything new. Sometimes the anxiety issues kick in when they are least expected. Then again, I realize now in retrospect that I have been anticipating her anxiety and dealing with it proactively for years. Maybe not the best thing but has been subconscience and I never really thought that she was any different than any other kid. Anyway, thanks for reinforcing that it’s good to keep her in VT as we have been considering stopping it because she hates it and we are not sure it’s helping.

Also, right now the sequencing issues seem to have stopped due to the meds working. I truly thought my daughter was dyslexic. However, two weeks into meds now and there is no sign of it other than needing remedial reading help to catch up. I probably will try IM before the FF. I have heard such great things about IM on this board. It’s worth a try. I did also give in on my stance on playstation type things in the house based on all of the feedback regarding Dance Dance Revolution. My kids will be thrilled. Santa has brought them the PS2 and the DDR! My husband is thrilled! My one big rule—no violent or killing games!

Thanks again for the advice!

Submitted by Aaron Michael on Thu, 08/16/2007 - 7:52 PM

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This DDR game is really good for kids to excercise, and also to get to know new people. I recomend that parents should introduce their children to this game. I personaly have been doing it since i was 13 and now im 18 and in the best shape of my life. It challenges children and teens to get better and occasionaly there are tournaments for this game that also has kids striving to better, heck i’ve won 300 on a tournament, just for doing something that i love, it’s real inexpesive if you just buy one of the metal pads for your home console, but be sure for begginers that the metal pad has a bar in the back portion of the pad to hold on to just in case.

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