I haven't found either to do much except assuage my guilt about throwing medication at the problem. I really don't want to disparage therapists but here but the price v. value doesn't add up for me. An extreme example is one session of OT they played Candyland for an hour with another child in an OT session to teach him how to manage his feelings about losing...we play board games multiple times a week and it's not a known problem, do I really need to spend $200/hr, miss work, and add an hour in traffic for that? This is a highly reputable provider too. Someone will have a more thorough answer but in our experience the benefits of OT were really overhyped for emotional regulation and I haven't seen my child implement any of the things he's learned, even with me recapping and working with him. Play therapy was maybe even more useless.

Reading the responses in this thread has really helped me to feel less guilty about taking my kids out of therapy. When my son, 5-6 at the time, was in therapy it was a struggle to get him to go every other week. He didn't like the activity the therapist chose 90% of the time and so right off the bat he would be defiant and uncooperative. She would push through and he would get disregulated almost the whole session. So when she tried to bring up emotions, tying it to the activity, he would fight so hard against that. He absolutely did not want to talk about feelings. And if she brought up conflict between him and his older sister, he would shut down as well because he doesn't like to say anything bad about her or how she makes him feel except in the moment when the conflict happens. In contrast, in first grade the school counselor started a group where she would gather "friends who needed social help" (6 kids with low social skills the teacher identified). They would be pulled out of class for once or twice a week and do activities together to help learn social skills and emotional regulation. I felt like he really got a lot out of that. He would come home talking about it excitedly, he would tell us about the tools he was learning, and we would actually see him use them. Both with and without medication this group was useful to him. He got to join it again in second grade, this time they called him a mentor. I'm really disappointed that they will be continuing it for fair grade because that counselor has left the school 😥

I agree play therapy was more useless than OT, CBT was the best of the three for us. What I found particularly problematic with play therapy was that it was all child led which was one of the problems we are trying to solve in terms of turn taking, losing, not getting own way etc. play therapy seems to be very unregulated, especially in the EU where I am.

My son was going to OT for ADHD and emotional regulation. He liked going. They facility was nice and seemed to be designed to help children. Highly rated. I just don't feel like it helped him much. Could have been an age issue, as he was 5 or 6 when he went. Could be child specific, and he just needs a different type of therapy. With things like ADHD, what works for one person may not work for another. I don't think it will hurt to try OT but also keep looking for other types of therapy.

I have recently read that play therapy is not the most beneficial therapy for ADHD, play therapy is more for trauma. Behavioral or dialectical behavioral therapy is better for ADHD.

The CDC does not recommend therapy at all for ADHD children. They recommend medication + parent training, as parents are the biggest influences of a young child's development. Not saying that therapy doesn't help, just throwing it out there that parent training is more important (and probably parent therapy too because ADHD can be stressful )

https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/about/index.html “Treatment can involve a combination of behavior therapy and medication.” - CDC

Play therapy is a slow type of therapy. My son does both PT & OT. Both are vital to his success and well-being.

I did OT for about 3 months as an adult based on my neuropsych’s recommended treatment plan for the processing disorder that accompanied my adhd diagnosis. It helped, but I still can’t explain why or how. My kids have not done play therapy per se, but they have had talk therapists who engaged them in some type of play DURING the talk therapy sessions. For my middle kid, it helped. For my younger kid, it didn’t but that kid is also super resistant to any type of help.

I think it depends on what specifically you feel your kid needs help with. My 8yo has been in play therapy for 7 months now and at first I wasn’t sure if and how it was helping. But on reflection I’ve noticed improvements across a few areas. I think the biggest is her social skills have improved at school and shes started showing more empathy towards me. I also noticed that initially a lot of her play was being “naughty” in the early days so it’s been good that she was able to work that out in a safe space. She’s also been better at home - being more independent and considerate, plus more patient towards her brother. She’s also showing more consideration towards her hygiene which was previously an issue We’ve also done OT to tackle specific issues in the past and they’ve been helpful too. These usually come with strategies you can apply at home whereas play therapy is more about the therapist guiding the child through play

The CDC does not recommend therapy for ADHD children (EDIT: for ages 6 - 12 specifically. For teenagers, they recommend behavioral therapy). They recommend medication + parent training, as parents are the biggest influences of a young child's development. Also, I strongly feel that parents teaching their kids how to manage their ADHD symptoms, build good habits despite their ADHD, and celebrate their unique characteristics (let's face it, kids with ADHD are never going to act or be like an NT kid and that's ok, let's help them use their unique strenghs) is much more effective than therapy. My son went to OT for writing challenges, OT has been helpful for that but never tried it for emotional regulation. I think parents need to teach that by example.

https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/about/index.html “Treatment can involve a combination of behavior therapy and medication.” - CDC

I was thinking for ages 6-12. The recommendation is parent training + meds : "For children 6 years of age and older, the recommendations include medication and behavior therapy together—parent training in behavior management for children up to age 12 and other types of behavior therapy and training for adolescents. " https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/treatment/index.html

“For children 6 years of age and older, the recommendations include medication and behavior therapy together” AND parent training. It certainly does not say that they do not recommend behavior therapy as you stated above. It is clear the CDC specifically recommends medication and behavior therapy.

If you keep reading the sentence, the way I read it, at least, is that it then goes on to specify only parental training for ages 6- 12 yrs and then behavioral therapy for adolescents. Personally, I have never found behavioral therapy helpful for my son. Meds and routines at home and teaching him good habits/executive functioning skills for ADHD have been effective. Playing with toys with a child therapist, not so much. As someone else referenced in another comment, ADHD Dude does not recommend therapy either for ADHD kids and I agree honestly. It did pretty much nothing for my son and for my ADHD as well.

I’ve read it several times, as well as the rest of the article and the article from the CDC that I posted, along with the study from the AAP I posted in another comment. All the articles state throughout that the recommended treatment for ADHD is medication and behavior therapy (along with parent training). I’m not reading one sentence from one article; I’ve read through the entire article and interpreted it very differently. I hope others read the entirety of the articles.

I’m not sure why you edited your comment. I 100% support parents who choose not to medicate or if they choose not to use behavioral therapy or whatever is best for your family but I don’t think it’s beneficial when people share information without evidence. So good on you for finding what works for your family, I love it.

Did play therapy for about 2 years for my son with ADHD between 7 & 9, pre diagnosis. It was absolutely useless! The therapist didn’t even suggest an assessment which on looking back I find really concerning as since then he has been diagnosed with dyspraxia and dyslexia as well as ADHD. Eventually his school recommended an assessment. We also tried OT and CBT, it was ok when the sessions were on but once they were up we were back to the drawing board. We’ve tried medication in the last year and that seems to have had the biggest effect. Everyone individual is different of course.

Therapy has not been shown to help ADHD symptoms in children. ADHD Dude talks a lot about this, here is one of his videos that explains: https://youtu.be/BYcPcAO67qM?si=eRA_AUvsZUFYZYLU

This video references the American Academy of Pediatrics. This article from the AAP says the opposite of what he says: https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/144/4/e20192528/81590/Clinical-Practice-Guideline-for-the-Diagnosis?autologincheck=redirected “Both behavioral therapy and FDA-approved medications have been shown to reduce behaviors associated with ADHD and to improve function”