Your son with ADHD is not the “identified patient” — Ryan Wexelblatt (ADHD Dude)

Slide from Raising Great Dudes, my upcoming Parent Behavior Training (Behavior Therapy) Program

Identified Patient definition from the American Psychological Association:

“A member of a structured group (especially a family) who exhibits the symptoms of a mental disorder and for whom treatment may be sought by the other group members.”

Multiple times a week parents reach out to me asking if I can work with their son to address his problematic behaviors. Here’s what I explain to them:

Kids with ADHD do not change their behaviors by talking to someone about feelings or their behaviors that are causing their family stress, etc. Individual therapy has shown no evidence to be effective in treating ADHD. Furthermore, most mental health professionals have no specific education in ADHD.

Kids with ADHD learn best in the moment because they can have difficulty with episodic memory (recalling past emotions/experiences and applying them to the present) as well as difficulty with non-verbal working memory or “future thinking skills”. There will be no carryover from counseling/talk therapy to practical application. I teach parents how to change behaviors because I will not make kids the identified patient. As a former child identified patient myself I can promise you that sending kids to individual therapy because of their behavior is a GUARANTEED way to make them never want to participate in treatment.

Sometimes when I explain how I work parents say “No thank you”. Its very difficult for some parents to acknowledge that some of their parenting approaches are not effective for their child with ADHD when it might work just find for their other children.

I’m creating Great Dudes because I want families to have an affordable way to get effective help. Because I have extensive training in all areas pertaining to ADHD I want families to have a “one-stop shop” to address behaviors, executive function challenges, social skills. The ADHD Dude membership site is going to be priced about the same as a therapy co-pay, yet offer a billion times more value than traditional therapy.

The membership site will be an ongoing work in progress. When it launches it will include: Raising Great Dudes, Executive Function Crash Course Webinar Series, videos where I answer member-submitted questions, and more.

Add yourself to the mailing list for priority registration. You will not be bombarded with annoying sales emails: https://www.subscribepage.com/adhddude