ADHD Treatment for Children

“Treating your child from every angle”

A combination of several treatments can be most effective for treating ADHD and its numerous co-occurring problems. We offer a special program to help treat your child as a whole; cognitively, socially, academically, behaviourally and emotionally.

Training & building your child’s core attention weaknesses

We run the HighQ Cognitive Training program. The HighQ cognitive training program is a “brain training” program which is an individual program, tailored personally to your child according to their specific pattern of strengths and weaknesses noted on assessment (eg. visual sustained attention, auditory sustained attention, divided attention, switching attention, working memory, attention span etc.). This program is a unique synthesis of over 16 of the most effective cognitive training programs from around the world, the majority of which are only available to specifically trained psychologists and cannot be accessed directly by the public. This program is highly unique in that it trains children holistically, opposed to commercially available individual programs that only target a small range of areas, are computer based, and hence do not tend to train real-life skills (but more “gaming” skills). Our aim is to train the core building blocks and then teach children how to apply these skills to the real world.

Social skills training

Children with ADHD often suffer from high rates of social interaction problems and rejection by their classmates. This program will help train your child in  social skills including interrupting appropriately,  greeting others, eye contact, conversation & listening skills, dealing with anger, apologizing and other skills.

Executive functioning training (planning & organisation)

Executive functions are a number of interrelated skills necessary for completing goals, including planning, organisation, problem solving, utilising feedback and flexible thinking. Difficulties with these skills are very common in children with ADHD. Our training program includes both classroom and home interventions to reduce the negative effects of weak executive skills, as well as direct intervention to help improve your child’s capacity for using their own executive skills. We often recommend that core executive skills are worked upon as part of our HighQ program, and executive management at home and at school is often included as part of our HighQ cognitive training program once core skills are built.

Psychological therapy

Many children with ADHD have reduced self-esteem, increased anger levels, high levels of frustration/irritability. They can be quite explosive and this can affect friendships and family life. For some children with these issues early intervention can help prevent ongoing issues and maximise overall happiness and quality of life.

Parent training program and family intervention for behavioural &/or emotional problems

ADHD does not just affect the child– it can have widespread effects upon the family and family relationships. This parent training program is designed to reduce the problems of noncompliance, defiance and/or aggression, and help better manage any difficult behaviours in and outside of the home.  We will also consider whether your child has any emotional problems, and treat them accordingly. We offer individual and family therapy to help deal with the effects on the whole family and stress levels in the home. We like to place a particular emphasis on siblings and parental relationships.

Classroom & educational interventions

If issues are noted with behaviour in the classroom, we can design for you a classroom-based management system and  help work together with your child’s teacher to maximise your child’s learning at school. This system will include both guidelines for  the teacher as well as teaching your child self-management techniques. This is usually done in conjunction with our HighQ Cognitive Training Program.

Deciding when to medicate and monitoring ADHD medication

The decision to medicate should be considered carefully and the benefits and negative side effects weighed.   If medication has already begun, it is important that the effectiveness of medication is monitored closely at school. We are able to offer parallel assessments both on and off medication to examine the effects of the medication upon your child’s cognitive/attention skills, and we will work closely with your paediatrician or psychiatrist to find the most appropriate medication ias different medications can have different benefits and side effects for inidviduals.