About Dynaread Session Length for Children with ADHD

Keywords: dyslexia, adhd, add, schedule, session, administration

We recommend daily sessions of 30 min, ideally followed by a shorter second session some time later in the day. Dyslexia remediation is like taking antibiotics. Take antibiotics in the prescribed way, and you will likely win over the infection. But fail to take the pills regularly, or stop prematurely, and you run the risk of building up resistence. When dyslexia remediation is not consistently done, you run the very same risk. Doing Dynaread for 20 min and only three times per week is not enough to secure proper progression. Lack of proper progression will result in your child not experiencing enough improvement, which in turn undermines their faith in the program and their willingness to work with it. And since Dynaread specializes in remediation for older struggling readers (age 7+), failure may leave you with very few last options to pursue.

What if my child has ADHD and cannot focus for 30 minutes?

This is a good question. Dynaread is actually very suitable for children with ADHD and has been designed with ADHD in mind as well. Dyslexia and ADHD is a very common combination or comorbidity. The actual neurological causes of ADHD are not yet fully identified, though deviations in the Basal Ganglia do seem to suggest the causes can be found there. But even without biological origins, it is an established fact that children with reading disorders are anxious about school work and any school activity involving reading. And forms of expression of that anxiety can be in reduced abilities to focus, and hyperactivity. The anxiety has to go somewhere.

To come back to the question of 30 minutes: Can shorter sessions suffice? First we'll answer from a Remediation Program Perspective, as in: What is technically possible. In Dynaread, all instruction and training is administered in modules. All modules run only around three minutes each. For children with attention span issues, this is ideal. Obviously they are to switch to the next module, and the next. However, if they want to put little breaks in between... they certainly can. We used to force these breaks in Dynaread v4 but on request of schools removed those forced breaks.

From a Cognitive Neuroscience and Program Design Perspective, memory retention increases by repetition. It is better to practice a violin memorization piece three times for 20 minutes, than 60 minutes straight. Memory consolidation increases by repetition. This is also why Dynaread works so much with repetition. So there is nothing wrong with breaking a 30 min session up into two 15 min sessions.

Lastly, from a Practical Reality Perspective we observe that many users seem unable to establish a routine of multiple sessions a day. Splitting up into two sessions of 15 minutes may result in doing only one 15 min session a day, which is really not enough. Discipline has everything to do with the ability to proactively plan/act on your day. Not everybody lives in an environment—whether a school structure/environment, or a domestic/work environment (think of single mom parents, of whom we have many in Dynaread)—to be able to do that, and not everybody masters these skills either.

In conclusion

Operate in the reality of your child's need to learn to read, the reality of your environment and circumstances, and the reality of your ability to make a plan and stick with it. The bottom line is: Your child needs help. Dynaread student age average nine years of age. That gives us little time to avoid the seriously dangerous waters of adolescent low literacy. Make Dynaread a priority in your day, and covenant with your student to give it your utmost. And know we are always here to help and think along: No child is the same. Together with you, we help children succeed one at time.