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ADHD Programs
Fast ForWord and Cogmed cognitive training for children and teens, at home with professional coaching.
Target the Roots of ADHD—Not Just the Symptoms
For most ADHD programs, the gains stop when the program ends. This leaves parents with a choice:
- Manage the symptoms with temporary fixes.
- Remediate ADHD at its source, once and for all.
More often than not, inattentiveness is not the problem. Rather, it’s a symptom of the problem, most likely a cognitive skill gap that is making learning exhausting – leading to inattentiveness (diagnosed as ADHD-PI) – or frustrating, causing hyperactivity (diagnosed as ADHD-PH).
Find the Source of Difficulty
Gemm Learning provides two programs for ADHD. Our recommendation depends on the source of difficulty and your goals. The most common skill gaps are in:
- Language Processing: If listening in class or reading is frustrating, a child will either tune out or shut down.
- We target these delays with Fast ForWord.
- Sensory Processing: Difficulties with hand-eye coordination, balance, or spatial awareness.
- Physical exercises (or OT) help here
- Working Memory. Struggles to retain verbal instructions or reads fluently but does not comprehend what was read.
- We improve working memory with Cogmed or Fast ForWord.
- Other: Difficulties are narrowly around inattentiveness, impulse control, and/or distractibility with no evidence of difficulties otherwise.
- Fast ForWord may be able to help
Fast ForWord: Cognitive Training for ADHD
Fast ForWord software reduces ADHD symptoms in two distinct ways:
- Addresses the root causes of reading and learning delays:
- Makes listening in class and reading more automatic and less exhausting – reducing tuning out.
- Boosts comprehension – making teachers and books more engaging – improves stamina.
- Trains specific attention skills:
- Impulse Control: Delayed response times build self-regulation.
- Sustained Attention: Successive correct answers help endurance.
- Tuning Out Distractions: Intentional “distractors” that scale in difficulty.
The software is evidence-based, using neuroscience principles to accelerate brain development. More on Fast ForWord here.
Cogmed: Working Memory Training
If your child has no history of language delays or reading difficulties but frequently loses track mid-task, struggles to follow multi-step directions, or forgets what they just read, we will likely recommend Cogmed Attention Training.
Cogmed actively expands both auditory and visual-spatial working memory capacity. By increasing the brain’s “mental scratchpad,” your child can easily hold, organize, and manipulate information.
Cogmed training aims to boost focus, executive function, and reading comprehension. A child with better working memory has the cognitive bandwidth to stay engaged from start to finish.
How Fast ForWord Helps ADHD
Attentiveness in Class
Many children with attention issues struggle in class. Language processing delays make it difficult to:
- Follow the teacher – she is talking faster than the child can process
- Block out background noise
The extra concentration required is exhausting, and so they drift off.
Our ADHD treatment protocol focuses on improving language processing speed and accuracy.
Reading Stamina
To be a better reader, you need to read constantly. For children with ADHD-PI, that’s a tough cycle to break.
Our programs tackle this issue by aiming to improve reading automaticity, making it easier and less exhausting to read for extended periods. Easier reading also improves comprehension, making the experience more engaging and interesting for the reader.
Reducing Homework Stress
While hyperactivity and inattentiveness affect homework frustration, the bigger issues are:
- Missing the assignment in class or the content needed
- Reading the assignment takes a long time and/or is not understood
- Prior frustrations and a lack of confidence undermine homework enthusiasm.
Reducing homework stress is where our non-medical ADHD programs have the most impact. By moving the needle in class and with reading, we can turn around confidence and your child’s attitude toward learning.
If you are not sure of the source of your child’s difficulties, try our complimentary learning screening. We will send our findings.
When I asked, How can I help my child with ADHD, the answers were all different. He was behind in school and tested below average in reading and comprehension. He is now testing above average! This program has been extremely helpful, worth every penny!
The Published Research: 2+ Decades of Evidence
Fast ForWord is the most reviewed educational software in peer-reviewed journals. It is a non-medical ADHD treatment that has undergone over 20 years of external scrutiny, independent validation, and peer-reviewed studies.
- 3+ million students helped in 35 countries.
- 300+ Studies across hundreds of schools and districts.
- 60+ Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles (including Nature and PNAS).
- 80 patents on adaptive logic and neuroplasticity algorithms.
Meeting the Industry’s Highest Benchmarks
- ESSA’s Highest Tier (“Strong Evidence”): Meets the Every Student Succeeds Act highest standard, requiring rigorous, randomized control trials.
- What Works Clearinghouse (WWC): Evaluated by the U.S. Department of Education, Fast ForWord earned a “Strong Evidence” rating with 21 passing studies—the most of any reading intervention program ever evaluated.
- National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII): Independent state reviews (including Iowa and Nevada) classify Fast ForWord as a verified, “high-gain” program.
Peer-reviewed research – including neuroimaging studies at Stanford and Harvard – confirms that Fast ForWord directly strengthens the neural mechanisms responsible for selective attention and working memory.
Addressing the root causes of ADHD-related learning frustrations helps students process information faster, stay focused longer, and follow multi-step directions with ease.
The Science
For children with ADHD, learning struggles usually aren’t a matter of effort, but a direct result of cognitive overload. Because the ADHD brain has an unregulated internal noise filter, it struggles to process split-second speech sounds (phonemes) fluently.
Making Processing Automatic
Fast ForWord is an effective program for ADHD as it directly targets these cognitive skills gaps using millisecond-precise, adaptive auditory training to accelerate processing speed.
By shifting basic language decoding from a high-effort chore to a subconscious, automatic reflex, it dramatically slashes cognitive load—finally freeing up the mental space your child needs for deep reading comprehension, following multi-step directions, and classroom learning.
Engaging Exercises Based on Neuroscience Principles
Fast ForWord’s neuroscience-based ADHD programs are designed to coax the brain to change, using the research on brain plasticity by co-founder, Dr. Michael Merzenich.
Children with ADHD have difficulty regulating and releasing dopamine. Without proper dopamine regulation, the brain struggles to initiate tasks, sustain attention, or accurately predict the value of an effort.r
Fast ForWord uses this neurological trait through high-frequency trials and rewards that release dopamine, the biological glue that locks in new learning pathways.
“This has been the best 9 weeks of Maleek’s academic life! He’s turning in assignments, he’s more confident on the basketball court and all his teachers are saying how they see maturity, focus, and growth they have never seen before. He had an A, four B’s and 2 C+’s on his most recent report card and is passing geometry for the first time ever!!!”
Gemm Learning Case Studies
Real stories, compelling results. Read more case studies here
ADHDDyslexia
Antonio
Age: 7
Location: Maryland
Diagnosis: ADHD, Dyslexia
Results
Antonio made enough progress to avoid summer school. His reading has improved significantly, and his test results meet the school’s expectations.
ADHDDyslexia
Caroline
Age: 12
Location: AL
Diagnosis: ADHD, Dyslexia
Results
Mistakenly informed that she would not make progress by a school system that seemed to give up on her, Caroline is now
working successfully on grade level.
ADHDDyslexia
Sam
Age: 11
Location: Alberta
Diagnoses: ADHD, Dyslexia
Results
Samuel struggled with dyslexia and ADHD. He felt embarrassed reading to the class, and so he avoided participating. Today, Samuel is reading with confidence and enjoyment, and his social life is much fuller.
Book a Call
An advisor can help identify possible causes of your child’s ADHD and suggest practical next steps.
FAQ on ADHD
Will they just outgrow this as their brain develops?
The brain is constantly changing. However, by age 7, most language processing skills are formed. If a child has a working memory deficit after that age, it means their brain is not receiving enough stimulation from the world around them, and cognitive training is advisable.
How does cognitive training for kids translate into better real-world focus?
The software exercises train the individual skills needed to find the world interesting and not distracting. Any exercise that builds processing speed translates into gains in any brain function that uses processing, including listening.
Will my child have to do this forever to keep the gains?
This is a one-time program. Improvements in working memory, focus, and related skills integrate into your child’s learning and are used daily, so the gains endure. Not only that, but by removing long-held impediments to learning, higher-level executive function and metacognitive skills can then develop more quickly, which is why many clients report continued acceleration in learning after our programs.
Which is better for my child, Cogmed and Fast ForWord?
Cogmed focuses narrowly on working memory capacity and cognitive flexibility. Fast ForWord focuses on language processing and related cognitive skills, including working memory, to build learning and reading efficiency.
If your child has a history of speech delays or ear infections, learning delays in your family, and/or if your child’s reading is slow and labored, Fast ForWord is the right choice.
If your child is a fluent reader but comprehension is a challenge, or if focus is challenging in all learning situations, then Cogmed might be the better choice.
Call a Gemm Learning advisor to find out which program is the right fit for your child.
Could this be something other than ADHD?
ADHD is a description of behavior: inattentiveness (ADHD-PI) or hyperactivity (ADHD-PH), most often caused by language processing delays. Many people who want programs for ADHD and dyslexia together choose Gemm Learning because Fast ForWord targets the common cause of both. Similarly, ADHD and APD programs.
What is the parent role and what oversight do you provide?
Your role as a parent is to establish a daily routine for the child. Your child just logs in and starts.
We manage everything else. Our professionals manage the daily assignments your child works on, monitor daily, check in regularly, send weekly reports and success certificates, and intervene with tips, advice, and virtual live sessions as needed.
Why is my child with ADHD struggling with reading?
The most common reason your ADHD child struggles with reading is that both ADHD and reading are language skills, requiring the same cognitive skills. If there’s a deficit, reading and focus are both impacted. For other children, a lack of focus gets in the way of them learning to read. Finally, reading comprehension requires reading, holding in working memory, and comparing to prior knowledge – an intense skill that is difficult if you cannot sustain attention.
Is this an alternative to ADHD drugs?
Yes. We treat ADHD with the goal of reducing or eliminating ADHD symptoms permanently. While this is not the only way to treat ADHD without meds, Fast ForWord and Cogmed are arguably the most researched worldwide. More on natural remedies for ADHD here.