ADHD Monitoring System

ADHD Monitoring System

by

David Rabiner, Ph.D.

Duke University

The ADHD Monitoring System is intended to help parents and health care professionals monitoring the ongoing effectiveness of treatment(s) a child is receiving for ADHD.

Dear Parent, Healthcare Professional, or Educator:

One of the most important things one can do to help promote the healthy development of a child with ADHD is to carefully monitor how he or she is doing at school. The ADHD Monitoring Program will help make it easy for you to do this. By using this program, you will be able to carefully track how your child, student, or patient is doing in school, and will be alerted to when any adjustments or modifications to the child’s treatment need to be considered. The directions below are written specifically to parents, but are applicable for use by teachers and health care professionals as well.

Although the program was originally developed to monitor the ongoing effectiveness of medication treatment, it can be used to monitor the success of whatever treatments your child is receiving.

This message contains a comprehensive set of instructions that explain how the ADHD Monitoring System is used, along with the rating form that is to be completed each week by your child’s teacher. (This form can be found at the end of the message.) I recommend that you print this message out so that you have a hard copy of the material that you can refer to.

In my own experience, I have found that this program works best with elementary school children who have only a single teacher. This program can also be quite helpful for children who are in middle school or high school, although sometimes teachers in these grades do not spend enough time with a student to provide ratings that are as reliable. You will have to see how this works in your own situation.

I have used this program in my own practice for a number of years and have found that it is an extremely helpful tool for parents to have available. I sincerely hope that you begin to use it regularly and find it to be as helpful to you as it has been to many of the parents that I work with.

Sincerely,

David Rabiner, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist
Duke University

Instructions for Using the ADHD Monitoring System

ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

The second page of the rating form provides important information on your child’s academic performance during the school week. Information is provided on the amount of assigned work completed, the general quality of the work completed and whether this varies by subject, and also alerts you to homework assignments that may not have been turned in. Obviously, the ideal is for your child to be completing all assigned work, for it to be of good to very good quality, and for no homework assignments to have been missing.

SUGGESTED GUIDELINES FOR USING THE INFORMATION

The information contained in the weekly monitoring form is designed to provide you and your child’s physician with the data you need to make informed decisions about the effectiveness of your child’s treatment and when any additions or modifications appear necessary.

It is important to stress, however, that any child can have an occasional bad week. If your child has been doing well, and then one week the monitoring form indicates difficulties in one or more areas, this should not necessarily cause alarm or indicate the need for changes in treatment. In general, this would not be suggested unless the problems persist for several weeks in succession, or if troublesome weeks start to occur with increased frequency (i.e. instead of one bad week every couple of months you start to see several bad weeks each month).

IMPORTANT – If your child’s teacher is making monthly ratings rather than weekly ratings, a single bad month would be cause for concern. Thus, I would recommend the information be shared right away with your child’s physician so that he or she can determine whether modifications to your child’s treatment(s) need to be made.

With these guidelines in mind, a simple and reasonable framework for evaluating the information contained in the weekly monitoring form is to consider the ADHD symptom ratings (i.e. items 1-12) and the other information separately. When done in this way, several different combinations are possible. These are discussed below.

EVERYTHING GOING WELL

This is what we hope to see each week. In this scenario, ratings of ADHD symptoms in items 1-12 are primarily or exclusively 0’s and 1’s,ratings for items 12-15 indicate that your child is following rules, getting along with peers, and appearing happy, and your child is completing all or almost all assigned work and the work is of good quality.

When this is the case, it is clear that your child is doing a great job at school, and that whatever treatments and/or support are in place are working well. No changes or adjustments are indicated.

EVERYTHING GOING POORLY

At the other extreme is a situation where nothing is going well. Ratings of ADHD symptoms are high, problems with behavior, peer relations, and/or mood are also evident, and both the quantity and quality of assigned work being completed is problematic.

In almost all cases, this indicates a situation where changes and adjustments (i.e. to medication, behavioral plan, etc.) need to be implemented. The only exception would be if, as noted above, your child has been doing consistently well and then has a single bad week. If this is the case, it is still important to speak with your child and his or her teacher to try and learn what may have accounted for the difficult week. Should things get back to normal the following week, there is probably no need to change anything. If the difficulties persist, however, it will be important for the appropriate modifications to be made. Consult with your child’s physician about the most appropriate steps to pursue.

As noted above, if ratings are being provided monthly, this situation would definitely warrant a discussion with your child’s healthcare provider.

ADHD SYMPTOMS UNDER CONTROL, BUT PROBLEMS WITH BEHAVIOR, PEER RELATIONS, MOOD, OR ACADEMICS

This would be indicated when ratings of ADHD symptoms on items 1-12 are fine (i.e. mostly 0’s and 1’s) but problems are indicated in one or more of these other areas. When ADHD symptom ratings are low, these other problems are unlikely to be direct results of ADHD, but may reflect additional difficulties. Such difficulties can occur for a variety of reasons and it is very important to try and learn what factors may be contributing to the difficulties occurring for your child. Once again, consulting with your child’s physician is recommended.

NOTE: When children are in middle school or high school and have multiple teachers, teachers often do not spend enough time with the child each day to observe problems with regards to

ADHD symptoms. At these ages, it is more common for these symptom ratings to look okay, but for the difficulties to show up in a child’s academic performance or behavior. It is important to be aware of this because from the teacher’s ratings it may look like primary ADHD symptoms are being effectively managed when they may not be, and adjustments in medication may be necessary.

OTHER AREAS LOOK GOOD BUT RATING OF ADHD SYMPTOMS ARE HIGH

This would be indicated when ratings on items 1-12 include lots of 2’s and 3’s but no other real problems are reported. This is probably the most unusual combination because generally when a child’s ADHD symptoms are not being managed well significant problems in behavioral, emotional, social, and/or academic functioning are also evident.

Should this pattern persist for more than one week, some adjustment in treatments used to manage primary ADHD symptoms is likely to be necessary (i.e. medication adjustment, revising behavior plan). Of course, if a child continues to do well academically, socially, and behaviorally at school despite high levels of ADHD symptoms it may not be necessary to change anything. Generally, however, one would expect problems in these areas to emerge if ADHD symptoms are not being managed well for any sustained period. Again consulting with your child’s physician is strongly recommended.

NOTE: The first question on side 2 asks for the teacher’s rating of how morning and afternoon periods compared. If your child is taking medication, and is receiving a longer acting stimulant or is taking a second dose during the day at school, morning and afternoon behavior would not be expected to differ.

If your child is receiving only a single dose of a stimulant that is not intended to provide coverage across the entire school day, however, and the teacher’s ratings indicate that mornings are consistently better than the afternoons, it may indicate that the medication is wearing off during the day and that a single dose is not sufficient. If this pattern emerges in the teacher’s ratings, you should discuss this issue with your child’s physician. It is possible that a second dose or the use of a longer acting medication would be helpful.

Note: You’ll find the weekly and monthly versions of the monitoring form on the next pages. I hope this is helpful to you.

Thanks again to Novartis for supporting my efforts to distribute this tool to the widest possible audience.

Thank you for your help!