29/04/2024
It’s been a few weeks since our last blog post (sorry) but I suppose this is just reflective of what has been going on here in the staff room. It has been busy but busy is good. We’ve been so lucky to meet some new families over the last little while, this is always one of the best parts of the job. Staff room musings have been as wide as the imagination can stretch; talking about all kinds of things. One of these that comes to mind while writing this is a discussion Chloe and I had last week about ADHD and supporting people to engage in tasks they may typically avoid. There is a heap of ways we can try to support this such as increasing motivation, setting up a predictable deadline, increasing reward-centre activation, visual supports, and more. But the thing Chloe and I spoke most about was how firstly understanding the communication is so important, and then using this information to potentially find some ways that create more functional ways to communicate the same message. If a person is avoiding a task because it is too hard, is there any forms of communication including, but not limited to, verbal expression that can communicate the same message that don’t include removing yourself physically from the experience? As you work together to find something that achieves this, we are hopefully next able to generalise this communication technique to other areas of the person’s life where they may also be avoiding certain things.
Keep an eye out for more resources available very soon (sneak peak – we’re hoping to have another video done soon on visual supports!!).
