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 for an Autism Spectrum Disorder. The only facility in our area that does that...

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. I contacted one of the professional psychological centers, who said that they...

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 was a shock was the fact that the entire focus of the...

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 have to be given repeated instruction to do a small task and would always want to do many things at the same...

All my life I have had the symptoms of ADHD. Issues like not being able to stay on task, difficulty completing things, trouble paying and sustaining attention to details, procrastination, disorganized activity structure, (living life like a game of pinball), forgetfulness, impulsivity, easily distracted by basically anything. Though I liked the attention of being the class clown in school, I had difficulty with following the rules in social situations and staying on track with current...

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 because of this, children often feel a heavy load on their shoulders. Fatima had failed to pass...