Has anyone used "Play Attention" for their child?

[littleWMN]

I have a 7 year old daughter with ADD and we are looking at options to increase her attention. Learning Rx was mentioned, but I'm also looing at Play Attention (a lot cheaper!). Would love some reviews, thank you.

[nevergiveup]

We tried it several years ago. We purchased the system to use at home. My son was probably in 3rd or 4th grade. He never used it long enough to see any benefits--my son is the type that falls asleep if he has to sit and concentrate on something that is boring and that is exactly what happened during a lot of the exercises, since the student has to sit and just concentrate on the screen.

That said, I thought it was interesting and would probably help someone with more motivation to succeed.

[JABarney]

We are using it here. We did a lot of research on it and even attended the webinar by Peter Freer before purchasing. (there is a small discount for those who attend) We compared it to Cogmed and thought this was a better program.
We have four user licenses and all of us are using the program. (good for adults too) We had some technical problems in the beginning due to our computer and the company support was outstanding. Our personal support rep has been fabulous too.

They say it takes an average of 40-60 hours to complete the program. We each have only logged about 7.5 hours so far and we do not expect to see any changes until at least 12 hours into the program. I'll be honest, it is a lot of hard work. The hours that get logged are just the game play time and each game lasts about 5 min. There are five games and you play each game once per session. So that is about 25 min per day and the company recommends that you play a minimum of 2-3 times per week. With the behavior interventions and coaching, I spend about 40 min per child each day that I use the program. So if you are looking for a quick fix, this is not it and I dont believe there is one. Expect it to take many months. With all that said, there is training provided to you by the company on how to be a coach for your child and again, the support is endless.
We all like the program and of course went through a honeymoon phase where it was new and exciting and the children were eager to play. We are now in the phase where it is work and naturally I get the "I dont want to play Play Attention" I treat it like any other subject we are teaching - something we just have to do. There is built in fun once they get started because we compare the previous sessions game scores and then they try to beat their previous scores. They can see the progress they are making while learning to recognize the relationship between distracting behaviors and their ability to focus. The games are engaging and there is the cool factor with the hands free aspect of some of the games. They get to see how their attention (and distracting behaviors) effect the characters on the screen and thus scores. Once they get this down pat, we will then start transferring these skills to other areas of their lives.
For us it was an easy (though expensive) decision to go with this company. We wanted to try to fix the attention problems vs using medications. This is our starting point, so it is always possible we could be in for a huge disappointment. The company can not say that this is a cure, but again, from what I have personally come to understand, it sure looks like one to me. Remember that each family has to do the research and decide what options are best for their child. I am not sure that there is a one fix for all solution. I should know more in a month and I am happy to post about our progress. Feel free to PM me with any questions.
HTH

[littleWMN]

Thank you so much for the reviews!

We are going with Brainware Safari first to see if that works. Then we may revisit Play Attention.

[Darcy from LWM3B]

I got to see Play Attention in action in Cincinnati. I thought it had a very expensive price tag, but I guess compared to others it isn't as bad?

I dunno. The child had to watch a whale. If he did, it went down, if he didn't it floated at the top. At the end it scored him on his ability to bring the whale down. You have to perform at 80% to move on to the next level.

The child didn't, but I'm not sure anyone could have in the middle of a workshop.

I just can't picture my child being reinforced by bringing a whale down, so I'm not sure what the motivation is to pay attention, if not intrinsic (which my child doesn't exactly possess). Maybe moving to the next level would be appealing to some learners.

PS - Dr. Guffanti from Rocket Phonics is an absolute hoot.