Treatment Follow-Up Program

(continued)

High tech tutoring with WebCAER and Educational Games

Since the research is clear, that educational games are one of the most efficient and effective educational tools we have, I have provided a number of educational games that you can download free. Combined with WebCAER, they provide an inexpensive and effective tutoring program. One simply alternates between the educational game and WebCAER. When the child gets frustrated, or stuck on a academic task, WebCAER allows you to capture the frustrating image and present it between the moving lights. The child then uses the image to reconstruct the frustration and then watches the moving lights and sounds to extinguish those bad feelings. They alternate back and fourth between these two tasks until the image no longer causes any emotional response. Once the bad feelings are extinguished, the originally frustrating and difficult task is usually easy.

You may also use a digital camera to capture emotionally loaded images of classrooms, other children, teachers, tests, homework sheets, siblings, parents and so on. This allows you to extinguish bad feelings off many parts of family members lives.

There is also an online library of images which include:: appealing foods, mood colors and stock trading screens.

In addition, you may also make custom sound recordings similar to those described in my book, ADHD: A Path to Success (page 251). This feature allows you to extinguish the emotional responses to other people's words, , such as teacher statements of "do your math", "sit in your seat", parents saying "do your homework", "do not hit your sister", or possibly teasing from other kids. Once these bad feelings are extinguished, the task is usually much easier and less emotionally draining.

Together these technologies provide the basis for a stepwise systematic program that continues to addresses the real reasons underlining the educational and behavioral problems

It is a 4-step process to continue to improve your child's success in school: 1) Teaching responsibility for behavioral and academic task completion. 2) Reducing performance anxiety so that the child' can actually access their skills and demonstrate them in the classroom. 3) Bringing their skills up to grade level expectancies. 4) Transferring performance back to the school setting

Children

It is a good idea to require your child to use WebCAER on a daily basis. Twenty minutes to half an hour a day is a good place to start thinking about school, homework, family and friends issues. Adjust the amount of time as experience dictates.

Acting up

Acting up is not really a problem of behaviors, but the feelings that precede the problem behavior. These undesirable behaviors are triggered by the feeling that goes just before them. The most gentle and efficient way of dealing with inappropriate behavior is to find out what the feeling was just before the behavior. Have the child spend time with WebCAER concentrating on that feeling. Make sure that they follow that feeling back across all the other examples of that feeling in their life.

When ever your child causes a problem or expresses a problem, act delighted and say something like ."I am glad you did that. This gives you an opportunity to work on your __(anger, frustration, not listening etc.) ." In the blank put a short phrase that describes the issue that came up.

Then request that he go to WebCAER and say some phrase that expresses his feelings about the situation over and over while he watches WebCAER.

For example, if he says something like, "I am too stupid to do my work". You would fill in the phrase with "how stupid you think you are" And when he is using WebCAER, he would repeat out loud 'I am stupid".

This will extinguish "I am stupid" feelings.

It helps to take a picture of whatever triggered the bad feelings or record the words that set off. Presenting these while working on WebCAER can help child get into those upsetting moments and extinguish the feelings that drive them.

Homework

Most often, problems doing homework are not really because of a skills deficit. Rather, the work and the situation have a long negative emotional history. This negative emotional arousal blocks the child's access to their skills abilities. For a thorough discussion of this problem I suggest you read my web site www.freehomeworkhelpmessenger.com.

Try taking a digital picture of your child's difficult school papers, homework assignments, tests or difficult pages out of their book. Display these on the monitor, between the WebCAER lights. Have them look at the image a few moments to help conjure bad feelings. Once he or she gets into those unpleasant feelings, have them follow those feelings to all the other places they remember them, while they watch the lights. Have them alternate between working on their homework and watching the lights every 5 or 10 minutes until doing the homework becomes notably easier.

Whenever they get stuck doing homework, they should watch the lights a few minutes, until they feel more relaxed. This will make it much easier for them to be productive.

Social and Behavioral problems

For many children and adults, social behavior problems are not due to an actual lack of social skills. If you look across their lives, there are often places where they demonstrate very good social skills. However, there are also places where they do poorly.

Many children will interact very appropriately with adults, but do poorly with their peers. Adults will often be very social and articulate with same-sex friends or at work. However, when they come home they become withdrawn and socially inappropriate.

The point is that if people demonstrate appropriate social skills in one place in their life, but not in another, they clearly have the skills, but these skills are being emotionally inhibited in some situations. In such cases, there is little point in teaching social skills and communication skills that they already have. It is efficient and effective is to erase the emotional blocks that inhibit access to the social skills in particular situations. WebCAER is designed to do just that.

It is often useful to use a digital camera to take pictures of people, places and things that are characteristic of the situations where there are difficulties with social skills. This might be a picture of a boss, a party or giving a speech.

Put these images on the screen between the lights. Use them to help conjure the negative feelings from the situation they represent. Follow those feelings back across your life to all the prior times you've had similar feelings. Spend a few moments at each point to soak into those feelings so that WebCAER can wash them out.

You can use a similar procedure with digital audio recordings. You might make recordings of the upsetting things teachers, parents, bosses, coworkers, spouses etc. say. Playing these while you watch the lights will help you conjure the feelings that you need to extinguish to be more effective socially.

Once the negative feelings are washed away from the socially difficult situations social performance usually improves dramatically, without any social skills training.