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ADHD Parent Support
YMOTC
Supporting your goals
YMOTC, supporting parents of neurodivergent children who are experiencing challenges at school, at home, or in relationships.
Yvonne incorporates her experience as an Occupational Therapist, a coach, and a parent to support you in implementing evidence-based strategies to help your child thrive at school, at home, and in relationships- while also bringing greater harmony and connection to the whole family. Yvonne provides education on ADHD brain differences through a neurodiversity-affirming practice, which involves a strengths-based approach and respect that every individual's journey is unique.
Research has proven that behaviour therapies are an effective treatment for ADHD and are most effective when delivered by parents.
This process can be supported by your child also receiving coaching, creating a wrap-around service that takes a holistic approach to their well-being and fosters both academic and personal success.
Strategies support:
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Emotional Regulation
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Relationships/Parenting
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Academic Success
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Response Inhibition
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Sustained Attention
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Planning and Organising
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Managing Belongings
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Working Memory
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Initiating Tasks
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Completing Tasks
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Working Towards Goals
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Time Management
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Flexibility
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Problem Solving
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Metacognition
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Sensory Differences
These struggles are commonly due to a lag in executive function (EF) development. Children with ADHD typically have a 30% lag in EF development.
There are specific strategies that parents can implement to assist their child's EF skills.
Research has proven that behaviour therapies are an effective treatment for ADHD and are most effective when delivered by parents.
Executive Functioning Skills (EFS)
Children with ADHD typically lag behind their peers in EFS by 30%. For example, if your ADHD child is 10 years of age, their EFS is typically that of a 7 year old. There are strategies you can implement to support your child's executive function development.
EFS are "the group of complex mental processes and cognitive (such as working memory, impulse inhibition, and reasoning) that control the skills (such as organising tasks, remembering details, managing time, and solving problems) required for goal-directed behaviour." Definition in Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
These skills are learnt, we're not born with them.
EF skills develop from the 1st year of life through to mid to late 20's.
Often, EFS can be more predictive of academic and career success than either socioeconomic status or IQ.
EFS blossom most when we lessen things that impair them (like stress or sadness) and enhance the things that support them (like joy or feelings of belonging). EFS also help regulate emotions and can help children manage stimulus and cope with stress.
During sessions Yvonne will discuss executive functioning skills, teach strategies to improve EFS and support you to implement them into your daily routines.
Executive Functions include:
Initiation: The ability to begin begin projects without undue procrastination, in an efficient or timely fashion. Getting your resources together, taking the first step in a task. Eg a student not waiting until the last minute to commence a project.
Focus/attention: Being able to focus on a task or person for a period of time. Attention skills also include how to refocus when attention is waning, ignore distractions, and fine-tune the level of focus necessary for a task
Perseverance/Sustained effort & attention: The ability to keep working until the completion of a goal. Goal-directed persistence: The capacity to have a goal, follow through to completion of the goal and not be distracted by competing interests, fatigue, or boredom.
Emotional control/inhibition: The ability to master thoughts and impulses so as to resist temptations, distractions, and habits, and to pause and think before acting. Regulating emotions. Eg: thinking before speaking, putting your hand up in class rather than blurting out answers, resisting the urge to play on the phone or do computer games when it’s homework time.
Working memory: Being able to hold information in mind while doing something with it. It incorporates the ability to draw on past learning or experience to apply to the situation at hand or to project into the future. eg being able to follow 3 step instructions, being able to do mental arithmetic, after reading a page can you remember the information, in high school being able to remember instructions from a variety of teachers.
Planning and organising: Being able to plan and organise yourself to achieve set goals. Ability to prioritise. Organising one's thoughts, time, and resources effectively. Having systems for where belongings are and putting them back.
Time Management: plan and organise our time efficiently, learning how to estimate time required and allowing enough time. Staying within time limits and deadlines. Balancing wants and needs.
Metacognition/self-reflection: Reflect on and manage our thoughts, attention, effort, organisation skills, and emotions. It’s thinking about our thinking, what needs to change if things aren’t going well. It is the internal dialogue/self-talk. Reflecting on what we’re doing, is what we’re doing working, is what I’m doing effective or do I need to change something?
Social and mental flexibility (SHIFT): The capacity to switch gears and adjust to changing demands, priorities, or perspectives. If plan A doesn’t work can you be flexible and make a plan B (enables problem solving). Develop creative solutions.
Stress tolerance: The ability to thrive in stressful situations and cope with uncertainly, change, and performance demands.
Sensory Processing
Children with sensory processing disorder (SPD) may be over- or under-responsive to sensory information; they may not be accurately interpreting sensory information or may have a sensory based motor disorder. Studies have found that 40% of children with ADHD also have Sensory Processing Disorder (Ahn, Miller et. al., 2004). Sensory processing difficulties observed in individuals with autism can overlap with those seen in SPD. Yvonne works alongside parents to provide strategies to address children’s sensory needs- supporting them to thrive at home, school, and in everyday life.
Developing Self-Regulation:
Self-regulation means we are able to regulate our own feelings and behaviours. A child with poor self-regulation may have a meltdown over a small problem, like being told they have to stop playing with their favourite toy as the family are going out. Self-regulation develops through a parent providing co-regulation. This is an individualised process.
Behaviour parent training
Research has proven that behaviour therapies are an effective treatment for ADHD and are most effective when delivered by parents. Parent training is individualised: it may include implementing schedules, routines, strategies to support activities, positive praise, effective limit-setting, natural consequences, planned ignoring, positive interactions and working together to problem solve challenges.
Parent training includes creating a positive environment that supports mental health over time.
YMOTC, Supporting your goals
Email today for your appointment, I look forward to meeting you.