Selecting a treatment intervention program

Which treatment, intervention or program is the best for my child/teen's needs?

There are thousands of different treatment options out there to assist kids and teens with learning, behaviour, developmental or emotional difficulties?  How do you choose what is best for your child's needs?

Here's an easy checklist to help you make the best decision.

#decisionsmadeeasy #parentintuition #easychecklist #treatment #intervention #learningdifficulties #adhd #autism #anxiety #parentingadvice #anniescentre #drannechalfant #helpingfamiliesthrive

Transcript

Dr. Anne Chalfant: Hello, everyone. If you're in Australia watching this, then I hope the school holidays went well for you, and that term three has begun smoothly. If you're in the Northern Hemisphere watching this, then I hope you are enjoying your summer vacation, and that you are safe and well, wherever you are.

Now, lately, I have been asked frequently by my clients and also by other families that I've come in contact with about what intervention they should choose for their child's particular needs. Whether that child has a literacy difficulty or ADHD, or autism, or some sort of language or communication challenge. Parents often ask me whether the treatment that they're considering is really the right treatment for their child.

What I thought I'd do today is present to you an easy-to-use checklist that you as a parent can use to try and help you discern what is the best course of action to take when you're looking at a particular treatment for your child's needs. This came up again this last week when I interviewed Professor Michael Kohn in our podcast, the Annie's Centre Podcast. I really encourage you to have a listen to that.

He is an expert in Australia on ADHD. He's a very well-regarded pediatrician and researcher. He talked about this rule of thumb or checklist that he presents to families when they're thinking about treatment for ADHD for the child. What I wanted to do today is present that similar checklist to you, but also add a question into it to help I suppose broaden out your considerations. Rather, it's for a child who does have ADHD or for something broader than that literacy, language, autism, anxiety, whatever your child's difficulties or teenager's difficulties may be.

The checklist goes like this. First, the first question to ask yourself as a parent is, "Is the treatment that's being presented to me or offered to me, is it likely to help my child?" Now, you, as a parent, are the expert on your child at the end of the day. You will be able to follow your gut instinct, or you should follow your gut instinct on answering or in answering that question. One way to help answer that is thinking about whether the intervention that's being proposed to you directly targets or relates to what your child's actual difficulties are.

For example, if you have a child who has literacy or reading difficulties, is the intervention directly targeting their literacy difficulties by teaching the child things like decoding strategies, how to break words down, how to repetitively learn certain words that need to be memorized like sight words, et cetera? Or, is the intervention targeting something completely unrelated to that, like putting them on a special diet, or getting them to do 20 star jumps 10 times a day or every day for the next four weeks. Those things are completely unrelated to literacy. Yet those kind of treatments, sadly, are out there for literacy.

As a parent, you need to ask yourself that question, "Does that really seem directly related to what my child needs, and therefore is it likely to be helpful?" That's the first item on the checklist. The second item relates to harm. Is the intervention that's being proposed likely to cause any harm to your child or to your family more broadly? Again, as the expert on your child or teenager, you will be best placed to make that decision and go with your gut instinct on that.

The third item on the checklist is about cost. What is the cost of the intervention being put forward, both in terms of the financial cost, the actual monetary cost, but also in terms of cost to my family in time? When we take children for treatment for various issues, there is a time-cost involved and usually quite a hefty one, not just in the treatment period itself when you're in a clinic, or in a session, or attending a program but often at home when there's exercises or certain skills that need to be practiced or developed.

There might be also a more broad emotional cost to the family in terms of possible disruption or reprogramming or remanaging routines around the intervention. Think about those things when you're considering cost.

Fourth, which is what I wanted to add in to the discussion, is the idea of does the treatment being proposed makes sense? What I mean by that is, can the clinician break the treatment down for you and communicate about it to you in a way that is logical and easy for you to understand as a parent?

If you're working with someone, and they seem to be very highbrow using lots of technical terms and jargon, and lots some scientific language about neuroplasticity and pathways, but they can't translate that into language that is easy for you as a parent to understand and therefore commit to, then that should be setting off some alarm bells or warning bells for you that this person may be very good at this specific craft but may not be able to be the kind of person that can work with you on a regular basis, and/or that the intervention itself may not be particularly helpful.

Sometimes professionals have been known to bamboozle parents using that highbrow jargon and technical language into going along with a certain treatment, and the treatment itself is not that effective. Just be wary of that kind of issue.

There's four items on this easy-to-follow checklist, again, to keep it practical. Does it seem likely to be beneficial for our family, for the child, or teenager in question? What is the targeting and does it directly relate to what I need help with for my child? Is it going to harm in any way? What are the costs, financial, emotional, and time-wise? Fourth, is the clinician able to explain the treatment to you in a way that is logical and make sense, and can be broken down in language that you can genuinely understand?

Hopefully, that helps a little bit with discerning what is and isn't the best path of action for you with a child with any kind of special need or a teenager. All the best. Have a great weekend. See you next week.

[00:06:38] [END OF AUDIO]