Join Me at an All-Day Workshop for Educators & Parents on December 5th

I’ll be conducting an all-day workshop for educators on Monday, December 5, 2011 at the Grappone Conference Center in Concord, New Hampshire. The event is sponsored by the University of New Hampshire Institute on Disability and is geared to regular and special education teachers, school psychologists and social workers, behavior specialists, occupational therapists, administrators, and parents.

Description:

Neurological disorders that emerge in childhood often have significant impact on students’ academic, behavioral, and social-emotional functioning. Participants will learn about the cardinal features of Tourette’s Syndrome, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Executive Dysfunction, Mood Disorders such as Depression and Bipolar Disorder, and the memory deficits, sensory issues and “storms” that sometimes accompany them. Strategies and assistive technology to accommodate symptom interference in activities such as handwriting, homework, math calculation, and written expression and big projects will be described. Pitfalls in behavioral interventions, and simple social skills and problem-solving interventions will also be identified.

For more information on the workshop and registration information, download the brochure or register online at www.iod.unh.edu.

Hope to see you there!

 

Studies Home In on ‘Quieter’ ADD Students

Sarah D. Sparks has a nice report in Education Week on recent research on students with the Inattentive subtype of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and an innovative program at one school to improve functioning. Here’s a snippet from her report:

Glenwood School for Boys and Girls, a private residential school outside Chicago for kindergarten through 8th grade students who are homeless or experiencing family and income instability. Ninety-five percent of the 120 students live in poverty, and 70 have been identified as having some type of processing or attention problem. Glenwood has implemented cognitive training for all its students.

For 30 minutes, four or five times a week, each elementary grade class uses the school’s computer lab to play through a set of 20 cognitive games called BrainWare Safari, offered by the Learning Enhancement Corp., a Chicago education software firm. Before beginning the program, teachers explain to students how the brain learns and tell them “you can strengthen the brain like you would a muscle,” said Anne Budicin, the director of the learning and resource center at the Glenwood School.

Read more on Education Week.

Executive Dysfunction: He could never find a pencil or pen

When my son was younger – and back in the days when we didn’t have a diagnosis called “Executive Dysfunction” – I used to refer to him as the “absent-minded professor” or more often, as just “terminally disorganized.”  One of his major challenges as a student was that he never seemed to have a pencil or pen in school.

Each night I would dutifully check to ensure that he had pencils and pens in his book bag.  I’d even send in extra boxes of pens and pencils for him to leave in school.  But each day, he’d wind up asking his teachers or classmates for a pen because he could never find his.

Somewhere there was a black hole in the universe where all his pens were going.

Read more

Another Great Resource for Parents

If you have been struggling to get meaningful goals, objectives, and interventions into your child’s school plan to address problems with memory, processing speed, or executive dysfunction, I’m delighted to point you to a new resource by Marilyn Dornbush, Ph.D. and Sheryl K. Pruitt, M.Ed., ET/P:

“Tigers, Too:  Supplement - Checklists for Classroom Objectives and Interventions” (Parkaire Press, 2010) is the companion to the authors’ authoritative reference guide, “Tigers, Too: Executive Functions/Speed of Processing/Memory” (Parkaire Press, 2009).

Use the supplement to assist you at 504 and IEP meetings in conjunction with other resources on this site such as Challenging Kids, Challenged Teachers (Woodbine House, 2010) and Find a Way or Make a Way (Parkaire Press, 2009).

ADHD and Executive Dysfunction

From CHADD:

In celebration of ADHD Awareness Week, CHADD would like to offer you some of the most popular Attention articles to download and share. Today’s free article:

Executive Functions: Describing Six Aspects of a Complex Syndrome
by Thomas E. Brown, PhD

Attention is an incredibly complex, multifaceted function of the mind. It plays a crucial role in what we perceive, remember, think, feel, and do. And it is not just one isolated activity of the brain. The continuous process of attention involves organizing and setting priorities, focusing and shifting focus, regulating alertness, sustaining effort, and regulating the mind’s processing speed and output. It also involves managing frustration and other emotions, recalling facts, using short-term memory, and monitoring and self-regulating action.

Observing the problems that result when attention fails has allowed me to notice the effects of attentional processes on multiple aspects of daily life. Documenting the interconnected improvements that occur when attentional impairments are effectively treated has shown me the subtle but powerful linkages between attention and multiple aspects of the brain’s management system. All of these observations have led me to conclude that attention is essentially a name for the integrated operation of the executive functions of the brain.
Read more

The author of this article, Thomas E. Brown, PhD, is is assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and Related Disorders. He is a former member of CHADD’s professional advisory board.

Read more about CHADD’s plans for the week and download the ADHD Awareness Week poster

Attend CHADD’s conference on ADHD in Atlanta, GA November 11-13.

Participate in CHADD’s Parent to Parent classes online.

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