While DYS disorders obviously affect the children who suffer from them, they also affect their parents. Fortunately, coaching and “parental guidance” solutions are available to provide them with support and more appropriate responses to their child’s behavior and difficulties. Like Barkley’s method, recommended for Attention Deficit Disorder with or without Hyperactivity (ADHD)…
The difficult management of the ADHD triad
A complex and disabling disorder, ADHD revolves around a key triad – inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity – leading to a variety of symptoms. For example, some children are simply intolerant of frustration, throwing themselves into terrible tantrums at the slightest refusal; some suffer from emotional lability, which translates into sudden, disproportionate, volatile and unstable emotional outbursts…
These behaviors invariably lead to negative interactions and conflictual relationships with parents, who over time experience frustration, distress and feelings of incompetence…
How can Barkley’s program help parents?
Barkley’s Parenting Skills Training Program (PSTP) is aimed at parents whose children have difficulty adhering to social or family rules – which is well suited to ADHD. Recommended by the French National Authority for Health (HAS), this method addresses the problem of opposition, helping parents to develop coherent, effective strategies with their children.
Barkley’s program is built around 10 stepsThese range from providing information on the disorder to better understand it, to anticipating future problems, to using a system of stickers, points and privileges, to working and collaborating with schools and managing public places. The method starts with home training on simple elements, before generalizing the approach to other situations and sustaining it over time.
How do Barkley’s parenting workshops work?
The framework defined by Barkley’s method calls for the program to be run in 10 to 12 themed sessions, lasting 1 h 30 to 2 hours, at a rate of two per month. Led by one or two trained animators, they bring together a group of 5 to 7 families maximum.
To give participants a point of reference, each workshop is built in the same way, following this template: a theoretical contribution on the day’s theme, theoretical-practical answers, and practical application at home. The start of the next session always begins with a debriefing of the previous workout.
In addition to the benefits of the method for parents, it is also beneficial for the ADHD child: by calming family relationships and reducing problem situations, he or she can, among other things, achieve greater self-fulfilment and self-esteem.
Professionals authorized to supervise Barkley groups include doctors, psychologists and psychomotricians. Don’t hesitate to contact the experts on the Ora-Visio platform to discuss this approach to coaching and parental guidance.
