My 7 year old was just diagnosed with ADHD. He'll start medication next month.

In the mean time, I need to start a behavior management plan. Our psychologist said to use the plan in "Taking Charge of ADHD," it's a token economy system. I read it, it seemed easy enough...

So, I made up a list of behaviors and rewards with corresponding points and it's a nightmare to follow through with! I have ADHD and I need something simple and easy! I can't keep track of the points and the rewards and the tokens!

I know he needs frequent recognition for all the good behaviors he exhibits, but can I just use a weekly sticker chart where he gets stickers for doing certain things each day? Besides verbal praise and physical affection, what are some good quick rewards that don't involve keeping track of tokens and rewards? I don't want to use candy or money.

And to complicate things further, I need to include my 9 year old son, too. He doesn't have ADHD, but I don't want him to feel left out of the rewards.

I'm practically freaking out over this!! I know he'll be okay if I don't do it. He doesn't have ODD, he's just like a hyper absent-minded professor. But I know he'll benefit from it, especially once school starts in 5 weeks.

Any ideas? Any links? Any books? Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't put too many things on the list at first. Just try a couple behaviors. You cant fix all the problems at once.

As far as rewards, we use money. But is is essentially their allowance. So, we are making them earn their allowance.

Sugar free gum is not such a bad reward.

Gum! That's an excellent idea! Thanks!


I also found this webiste while I was doing some frantic, panic-style web searching: www.parentcoachplan.com (http://www.parentcoachplan.com) I paid $7.95 to download some forms, but they look very good and are much more simple than what I was trying to do. They have some free stuff too.

http://www.printablechecklists.com/



Here is a site you could take a look at and see what you think,but the best part is the checklists are free.I use them on a daily basis and my little girl really works hard to earn points and prizes as she would say with them.

Our coucilor gave us an idea for the token system that is easy to follow for us. We say that they have to earn 25 tokens in a week to get the "reward" which we decide on together each week. Last week it was lunch at McDonalds and this week it is to go fishing one afternoon with Dad. This is only our second week doing it but it seems to be working. We take away tokens for unwanted behaviour. We give one warning and say we will take away tokens if the behaviour doesn't stop. Also, near the end of the week if the child hasn't seemed to earn enough tokens but you think they have had a pretty good week you can start to give the tokens more generously to bump up the numbers to help them out without actually giving them away. Or if they haven't had a good week they simply don't get the reward. As I said it's only been about 12 days so I don't have a long term perspective but it is something I'm finding easy to follow through with. My son has ODD/ADD so we do have to deal with a lot of rage I'll let you know how things progress. We try to keep some tokens on us at all times so we can dole them out immediately. This helps for our son to get the instant satisfaction of the token rewarded for the specific behaviour. Hope this helps!

I would not delay the stickers, tokens, etc, for a week. Being that he is also AD/HD he will likely lose interest very quickly if he doesn't get more immediate results.
My son is looking at an Aspergers diagnosis, but of course with that comes AD/HD, and many similar traits, so he needs constant rewards too. I also have AD/HD so it's difficult to stick to things.

What we are doing is breaking up reward times into 4 hour blocks. We are doing a simple system that I got from one of the kids teachers. They have 3 index cards. A green, yellow and red one, in a pouch, green in front to start. Cards are on green until we have a behavior problem. If there is a problem, they get a warning and the yellow card goes to the front as a "caution". If they are caught doing something great, the card can be turned back to green. If they continue with bad behavior when on yellow the card goes to red. If it goes to red, it stays on red for the rest of the 4 hour block. At the end of the 4 hours they get tokens based on where their card is. They get the most tokens for green, half the amount for yellow, no tokens for red.

For tokens they are buying computer game time, trips to the park, or prize box items. I didn't want money type rewards either, so we picked these things. They don't get computer time at all without buying it (and there is a time limit per day that they can buy), so it's a great motivation for my kids. If they earn a certain amount each week, then we add in the trip to the park. They can also save for the prize box (dollar store items- pencils, notepads, crayons, coloring books, chap stick, lip gloss for the girls, $1 toys, etc).

I think buying t.v. time is great too, but I don't use that one because without t.v. background noise, I go crazy:D, so the t.v. is always on . You could use phone time, play station time, friend time, buying sleep overs, buying a "get out of a chore" ticket, etc. There are tons of things you can do that don't cost money. You just have to make sure it's something that motivates them, or it won't work.

I use this because it's simplified and much easier for me to stick with. I use short time blocks so that even if they end up on red, they still have more opportunities to earn through the rest of the day.

Just find something that works well for all of you. You don't have to do anything exactly like it's originally set up. You have to mold it to fit into your life easily, otherwise it won't work out.
Good luck!