I purchased the Play Attention software three months ago for my 10 year old daughter, Keara. She has had a lot of challenges with attention, focus, memory, comprehension and communication since she was very young.
When Keara first started using the Play Attention software, she was frustrated, fidgeted a lot, and complained that the games were too long. I created a sticker chart, and for every game she completed she earned some stickers. The better her score on each game, the more stickers she got. Keara loves the TY Beanie Boo stuffed animals, so we agreed on how many stickers she had to earn for me to buy her a new one. This approach really helped to motivate Keara to keep playing the games at the beginning.
She preferred to play only two games a day, which took about 10 minutes. To complete the recommended hour of games per week, I got Keara to play two games, six days a week. At first it was a huge challenge to get her to play the games this often. The first few weeks were the toughest, but thankfully the stickers and the extra treats I offered some days made a difference. After the first month, Keara got used to playing the games nearly every day.
I am so thankful that I persevered because Keara has made huge progress since she started three months ago. She has already moved from the beginner to the intermediate level on six of the eight games that I purchased – attention stamina, auditory processing, discriminatory processing, short term memory, social skills, time on task, visual tracking and working memory. Keara’s constant fidgeting stopped within the first month because the software helped her understand that she stopped focusing as soon as she started fidgeting. She even stopped biting her nails because she realized that was another form of fidgeting that made it very difficult for her to focus. I’ve tried to get her to stop biting her nails for years with no success, so I was so happy to see such a dramatic change in such a short period of time.
Keara just moved to the advanced level of the attention stamina game and is already doing very well. She only recently moved to the intermediate level on the time on task game, and is already achieving an average of 88%-92% attention score. For the short term memory game, she struggled to remember sequences of three at the beginning. Now she is doing very well with sequences of five, and is rapidly improving on sequences of six. For the auditory processing game, she had a lot of trouble at the beginning because one of her big challenges is listening to an instruction and then remembering what to do. Last week, after working on the game for the last few months. she moved to the intermediate level. For the visual tracking game, Keara had trouble completing sequences of three to four at the beginning, and now successfully completes sequences of eight to nine. She moved up to the intermediate level of the game a couple of weeks ago. For the working memory game, Keara had a big challenge remembering where the monsters were hidden. In less than two months, she improved enough to move to the intermediate level. For the discriminatory processing and social skills games, I expect Keara to move to the intermediate level n the next couple of weeks.
I have noticed a big difference in how Keara focuses on her homework, and in what she is able to remember and understand. I have no doubt that a big part of her improvement is from what she has learned from the Play Attention software. For anyone who has a child with ADHD, I would highly recommend the software. A special thanks to the Play Attention team for such a great product!
~ Carol, proud mother of Keara