Davis Attention Mastery
A Drug-Free Solution to ADHD
Davis® Attention Mastery provides effective tools to help adults and children age 8 and over to address attention, behavioral, or organizational difficulties.
About the program:
Through working one-on-one with a Davis Facilitator, adults and children gain new abilities:
- To recognize and clear up distorted perceptions.
- To use simple mental tools to focus, relax, and control and monitor energy levels.
- To master and internalize concepts that will help them with social interactions and attention issues. These concepts include: self, change, consequence, before, after, cause, effect, time, sequence, and order vs. disorder.
- To apply these concepts in real life situations
A Drug-Free Approach:
The Davis approach gives individuals the tools to control their attention focus and energy level without reliance on drugs or nutritional supplements. These simple mental techniques can be learned quickly, without reliance on specialized equipment or gimmicks.
These techniques include:
- Davis Orientation or Alignment: A simple approach which stabilizes and harmonizes an inividual’s perceptions, including the perception of the passage of time.
- Davis Dial Setting: Provides individuals of all ages with enhanced awareness and ability to self-regulate energy levels.
- Davis Release: A simple and easy tool for relaxation and stress-reduction.
Conceptual Understanding:
Individuals who are labeled or diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD or ADHD) tend to be highly imaginative and creative thinkers. Often they have difficulty harnessing their ideas and translating thought to action. They know what they want to accomplish, but struggle when it comes to completing tasks and establishing organization in their lives.
Davis Concept Mastery is a system of guided modeling of concepts, which enables individuals to develop personal insight and understanding into their self-created barriers through exploring concepts such as consequence, order, and responsibility.
Which Program?
Young children diagnosed with ADHD often have significant academic and learning barriers, particularly with reading skills and reading comprehension. The Davis tools for attention regulation are part of every Davis program. Because academic difficulties often are at the heart of behavior problems and the inability to sustain focus in a classroom setting, in some cases it is better for chidren to start with a Davis Dyslexia Correction program. In many cases, the behavior issues that gave rise to an ADHD diagnosis will dissipate when the child gains the ability to read and understand print.
Adults and teenagers who are frustrated because of poor organizational skills, difficulty completing projects, or time management may choose to begin with the Davis Attention Mastery approach.
A licensed Davis Facilitator can help each individual determine which program will provide the best start.
This program is currently available online from many Davis Facilitators. For more information, see Online Program Delivery (Pilot Program).
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Interested to know more
are there any scholarships for low income families looking to enroll their child in the Davis method program? The program fee is beyond my means and I am searching high and low for a scholarship to offest the cost. We would qualify for any low income based scholarships. We already did the evaluation – the facilitator indicated that my son would benefit from the program and my son is eager to do it
The answer to that may depend on your location — in some areas there are local bursaries or charities that have been set up to help with program funding. Have you asked your facilitator whether she is aware of such funds you can apply for, or what options may be available for payment?
Can someone please tell me why it is so expensive to get help for people that have ld’s? What about the people that cannot afford a program? They just have to continue to struggle with learning because their purses are not large. What if it doesn’t work? No guarantees, no money back if it doesn’t work.
The services are costly because it requires personal work with highly trained professional, and in most cases the services are not covered by insurance. In the case of Davis programs, the services are always one-on-one for 30 hours or more, and of course the facilitator can only work with one client at a time. Davis facilitators are careful when they screen clients so that they are reasonably sure they will help before accepting clients, and the facilitator certainly is committed to doing their part in guiding their client through the program. Of course for facilitators, the work is their livelihood – but I have heard of many who have been very flexible or creative in making payment arrangements for their clients. In some cases, there may be other sources of funding available- some facilitors working with adults have been paid through vocational rehab services, and in some cases with children the facilitators are paid by public schools.
I would love to have more information about how to help students in my class. I obviously cannot enroll students but I would love information to improve my interactions with struggling students.
We would recommend that you read the books The Gift of Dyslexia and The Gift of Learning. The books would give you more insight into some of your students’ learning needs, and you might be able to incorporate some of the Davis techniques into the classroom. There is some duplication of content with how-to instructions of some of the mental self-regulation techniques. However, The Gift of Learning provides details about the Davis approach to attention mastery, math mastery, and resolving handwriting problems. The Gift of Dyslexia focuses mostly on problems with reading.
If you are teaching primary level student (grades k-3), you might find it worthwhile to attend a Davis Learning Strategies workshop if there is one in your area.