Nathan just graduated from Grade 6 last week.  June also marks his 10th full month of Play Attention.  When Nathan began the program, he struggled with sitting still and focusing for even the briefest time period.  As a coach, I was kept very busy marking every movement, fidget, distracted and off-task behavior. We began with 15 minute sessions 3 times per week and worked hard to establish the routine, which, it turns […]

Joyce Bowen’s son Brody always seemed to be on the go. Even as a baby, he seldom slept for more than five hours a day, and his rambunctiousness only grew as he got older. Soon, Joyce felt as if she were spending more time disciplining Brody than playing with him. When Brody was old enough to go to school, Joyce began to receive telephone calls from his teachers. Brody was being disruptive,

Pat and Jerry  have been seeking outside support for their son, Peter, since he began the educational system. With a diagnosis of ADHD and learning challenges in 2nd grade and oppositional defiance by 7th grade, school became a perfect place for Peter to use his bully protection to avoid the pain of academic failure. In other words, if he got into trouble with his behavior, others might not notice that he had

From Kayla’s mother, Sonja: From a very early age, our oldest child Kayla seemed to have trouble concentrating.  She was always very bright, and a fast learner, but anything could distract her. Her train of thought would jump from one thing to another so fast and so frequently, that sometimes it was hard to understand her. When Kayla got to kindergarten, this became a real problem. When it came time to sit

Yosef felt discouraged.  His family had moved overseas at a crucial time in his young life.  Now in high school, Yosef was finding his adjustment to learning in a foreign country to be challenging at best.  Although his parents had taken care to enroll him in an English-language school, mastering a new system of matriculation exams was overwhelming.  Yosef had always had trouble concentrating in class, and feared he would fall behind.

I would like to share my experiences as a program manager using Play Attention with one of the teenagers that came to my clinic. As an ADD kid, Fatima was failing ten subjects in her senior year of high school, which was a bilingual private catholic school with small class groups. In El Salvador, bilingual schools are required to run the programs in both English and in Spanish in some areas, and

Hari first came to us as a shy 9 year old who had been struggling with grades lower than his potential and related to behavior issues. He found it hard to sit for long intervals of time or concentrate on boring subjects, and this often showed up in his school performance and records. His mother says, “Hari had problems sitting in a particular place for a given period of time. He would

My involvement with Play Attention began when my stepson Andy started having difficulties in elementary school.  The school was concerned because Andy’s teachers were having trouble managing his behavior well enough to ensure that he and his peers were still able to successfully learn the material.  As such, it was not a shock to us when our presence was requested at the school for a meeting to discuss our child’s education. What

My son, Nabil, had behavioral issues since he started school. Unfortunately, he did not have the professional teacher nor school administrators who would even give me a hint about ADD. The school-Nabil battle continued in reception and the beginning of grade one. I put all the pieces of the behavioral puzzle in front of me and started searching to put them together. This is when I thought that he might have ADD.

My son Cade was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and ADHD at age 5. He was in kindergarten in the public school system, and had been asked to leave every day care, preschool, and summer camp he had ever attended. When his troubles continued in kindergarten, I decided to take him to his pediatrician for a consultation. He asked what seemed like two hundred questions, and finally suggested that we have Cade tested