Weekday mornings used to be exhausting for San Francisco mom Lissette as she tried to shepherd her young son Andrew out the door to school. "He would need constant reminders to get dressed, brush his teeth, get his shoes on," says Lissette. "At school, his teacher had to tell him over and over to focus and do his work in class.
" Andrew, who has dyslexia and ADHD, is now a fifth grader and excels at math. His mom has seen big improvements since they started participating in a UC San Francisco-created program for with attention and behavior difficulties called (CLS). School , who are trained by UCSF staff, lead the CLS program that teaches students to build organizational and while instructing parents and teachers how to support their child at home and in school.
"Most school counselors aren't trained to help children with attention issues, so the help is limited to reducing a student's workload or giving them extra time for tests," says UCSF psychologist Linda Pfiffner, Ph.D., who created the CLS program.
"What students need is scaffolding for all areas of their life—a plan for home and school, with specific behaviors targeted in both settings," Pfiffner says. CLS is an adaption of Pfiffner's clinic-based ADHD treatment program that was requested by the San Francisco Unified School District in 2009. So far, CLS has been used in more than 40 elementary schools in San Francisco, including four Spanish language schools.
It also has been modified for remote, web-based training f.