So much of the recent work I have been doing with HET points to a very interesting situation. As we all know behavioural conditions like ADHD, ADD, ODD, Autism, Asperger’s vary in symptoms from individual to  individual. Where we are looking at adults presenting these conditions, the key will depend on their frame of reference. Very often they are hooked into the symptoms  and will surround themselves with others who have similar symptoms and recreate these in their daily routines. The same approach goes for parents and carer’s beliefs about the condition. If the parent is solution focused, then their child responds well to treatment – irrespective of whether that is allopathic or alternative approaches ( apart from medication side effects – which is the main reason for parents discontinuing the medication route). Where the parent remains condition / symptom focused the child will  mirror the belief back to the parent.

The key seems to lie at the beginning of the process – almost like a self fulfilling prophecy which can be very difficult when other members of the family have been labelled with the same condition and the child fulfils the expectation / belief of the parent. This then gets labelled e.g. genetic and nothing can be done to help this. There is then a reluctance to try anything new even.

This is what I mean by condition focused. Where the parent sees indications to the contrary  and remains solution focused then the outcome is far more optimistic e.g. diet, exercise etc– the focus is on the measurement of improvement – this creates improvement within the child’s behaviour. This is what I mean by solution focused. Obviously, this is where the incentive charts score so well in HET as the focus is always on the positive from child and parent.

Where the charts breakdown is where the focus is placed on the undesirable behaviour because that in itself will generate more undesirable behaviour.

A similar trend is in keeping mood diaries: when mood ratings of 1 -5 are kept on a daily basis,  there is a direct correlation  between family members – even when they are not together. Mom or Dad are at work and have a bad day for instance, and the child comes home from school and has a bad day too. Then the dynamic builds up and that will trigger more episodes of ‘acting out’ in the child. Again when solution focused and looking at rewards or incentive tokens earned in the day,  this achieves more powerful results and improvements in the overall behaviour diaries.

Another indicator to look out for when keeping behavioural diaries  apart from the obvious things like foods etc is to notice barometric pressure e.g. is it windy or wet and also the moon phase which affects our emotional states. These indications are always helpful in strategy planning at vulnerable times.

Please add any posts here you think would be helpful in collating this information

Tags: ADHD ADD ODD Autism Behavioural Charts

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