1. Know Your Therapy Goals
When you begin using behavior therapy for Attention Deficit Disorder, your therapist will ask what you want to accomplish. While many therapies begin this way, it is especially important when dealing with ADD because it gives you a goal on which to concentrate. Some sample goals are developing new strategies for organization and task completion, becoming a better monitor of your own behavior or controlling negative emotions. Make sure that the goals are clearly understood before starting therapy.
2. Come Up With a Plan
Once you've established your goals, your therapist will help you to come up with a plan. She will discuss various options and strategies for achieving your goals. She will also help you understand the obstacles ADD might present to you while trying to reach your goal, and aid you in coming up with ways to overcome them. After the strategies have been finalized, your therapist will periodically check to see whether the plan is effective or not.
If it turns out the plan isn't working, your therapist will revise the plan with you by discussing what did and didn't work, then approaching the problem from another angle. If you have trouble remembering deadlines, for instance, you may use a desk calendar to start with, and switch to a personal digital assistant or a portable day-planner if the desk calendar fails. Your therapist may even determine that you have trouble entering deadlines into a planner and work with you to overcome that. This kind of planning and revision will help you to focus your attention, finish a project without getting distracted and work on something that will require a constant amount of attention.
3. Choose One Problem at a Time
Since people with ADD have trouble concentrating and completing tasks, you'll want to take it slowly. Your therapist will help you select just one issue at first, then work on that area. For instance, you may want to be able to complete a project without getting sidetracked. Your therapist will help you with that goal, and when you both feel that you have reached it, he'll ask you to suggest another goal and repeat the process. During later therapy sessions, however, your therapist will check up on you to make sure you're still working on your original goal.
4. Use Reinforcement to Strengthen or Discourage Behaviors
Positive and negative reinforcement are key points when working with children in behavior therapy. Using this strategy, a child gets positive reinforcement when he performs the desired behavior, such as completing chores without getting sidetracked or doing well on schoolwork. On the other hand, negative reinforcement is essentially punishment for choosing the wrong behavior, such as taking away television privileges for a child who throws a tantrum. When using positive and negative reinforcement, the rewards and punishments have to be reasonable and discussed with the child beforehand. The therapist will also help to limit the number of different behaviors to be reinforced, in order to avoid frustrating the child with too many goals at once.
