Therapist for DMDD?
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Anonymous
| My 9 year old’s therapist isn’t really helping. Does anyone have recommendations for therapists that treat kids with ADHD/ DMDD? My kid’s major problem is aggression and foul language when triggered by mean people, losing games, academic frustration, etc. I heard CBT therapy could help? |
Anonymous
| Define aggression. |
Anonymous
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It's really hard to find a good DMDD therapist. You need to find one that can connect with your kid. For mine, that meant finding someone that understood his passions. The therapist happened to have a younger sibling my kids age and understood the Minecraft realm. She taught my kid how to label his emotions and the difference between the different levels for frustration and anger using the characters in Minecraft. I've since learned that there is a whole therapeutic milieu using role playing as a the modality.
My son was 7-8 when he used Minecraft. He's now 15 and still attends a Dungeons and Dragons social skills group. |
Anonymous
Hitting, kicking, throwing objects |
Anonymous
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DBT is prob more helpful than CBT...I know capital youth services is doing alot of work developing DBT for ASD
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Anonymous
| Get a behavioral evaluation. Find an LBA. |
Anonymous
| I recommend a neurodiversity affirming therapist who is knowledgeable about adhd and non-behavioral (not reward/punishment) based. Capital children’s wellness center is a great resource for kids and teens. It’s important to get to whats underneath the unregulated state. |
Anonymous
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I agree with the PP. Finding someone that understands DMDD and being able to connect with your child is very important. For us it took time (years) to find the right person. We learned as a family how to teach our daughter that her feelings were normal but her response to her feelings was not.
In our experience DMDD has been a really channeling and isolating diagnosis. Consider connecting with a NAMI support group and DMDD support groups on Facebook. Sending you positive thoughts. |
Anonymous
Your mistake here was doing talk therapy for DMDD. |
Anonymous
| I have to agree with this. Our kid got this DX. He's not the "talk it out" kind, likely due to intellect. Drugs were very helpful. |
Anonymous
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I agree. As I shared this was a very challenging and new experience, especially early on in the diagnosis. We did the best we could with what we knew and the supports we could find.
I would never shame or make anyone feel bad about how they are trying to navigate the diagnosis. In our experience it has been a really difficult and very isolating, if you haven’t lived with DMDD it is impossible to understand. |
Anonymous
| The only thing that helped for us was an SSRI. I know most people cringe at that suggestion, but for my son, a lot of these behaviors were anxiety. |
Anonymous
| OP here, we have tried medications for 3 years and he still has problems with DMDD. Clinicians keep suggesting play therapy when I ask about CBT or DBT therapy. I have not been able to get an autism diagnosis for him (that would allow for ABA therapy if that would help at all...) as he doesn't meet all the criteria even though he exhibits some traits. |
Anonymous
Where do you live? There are practices that do DBT for children. |
Anonymous
Psychologist here- agree with cbt or dbt. The dmdd lab at nih treats with combo of stimulant and ssri, and parent management training too on top of whatever individual treatment |