How a ADHD Coach Helps

Professional coaching is not a substitute for traditional, multimodal treatment for ADHD such as medication, diet, exercise, and therapy. But at the Edge Foundation we believe it is a critical and highly effective intervention and support mechanism for young people with ADHD.

Current Popular Applications of Coaching

Coaching is a rapidly growing field. The International Coach Federation currently boasts 12,000 members. That's up from just over 2,000 members eight years ago.

The reason for this growth is that people all over the world are recognizing the benefits of life coaching in their pursuit of career and life goals. Many CEOs and top business executives find that executive coaches can give them the edge necessary to manage successfully and effectively when the stakes are very high.

At the Edge Foundation we believe that if a coach is good enough for CEOs, then it is good enough for the struggling students with ADHD.

Coaching at Academic Institutions

Academic coaching at the college level is already recognized as an effective tool:

• At some colleges and universities, staff have been trained to serve as part-time coaches to help students with academics. Duke University, Landmark College, and the University of North Carolina, for example, offer on-campus coaching to students.
• Other institutions have experimented with peer coaching.
• A few for-profit companies are offering coaching across the country to college freshmen as a way to increase students' academic success and colleges' student retention rates.

We believe that coaching can be an effective tool when applied at all academic institutions: high school, middle school, elementary, and even preschool.

How Coaching Can Help People with ADHD

Coaching is particularly well-suited to helping people with ADHD. Many of the strategies coaches offer are precisely the kinds of interventions needed by people with ADHD. Here are seven major ADHD intervention areas that most coaches work on with their clients:

1. scheduling,
2. goal setting,
3. confidence building,
4. organizing,
5. focusing,
6. prioritizing, and
7. persisting at tasks.

In addition, the focused and personalized one-on-one approach of coaching works well with young people with ADHD.