AD/HD Child(ren) Tracking Software | ADHD Information

As a (hobby) developer i had the idea of writing a specific application for parental use to track the behavior of children (AD/HD or not really, but my own AD/HD troubles during childhood are the inspiration) at home and at school (requiring teachers to either use a web-app to report info to the parental software or have the children give the teacher a simple form to fill out that must then be entered into the parental application (the web-app would do this automatically).

The basic features for the parental software i am thinking off:

- Household calendar, schedule, reminding, with full recurrence support
- Daily routine definition for the child (think quiet-time, homework, etc)
- Daily routine definition for the child at school.
- Behavior tracking (enter how the child has behaved)
- Based on the behavior, the program can then recommend rewards or punishments (as defined by the parent).
- Grade entry, giving the ability to show progress or no progress
- Diet tracking, is the child eating healthy and avoiding foods that may aggrevate the AD/HD
- Detailed charts and information of all the info in the application, showing directly any progress the child may have made.

Basic features for the teacher software:

- Entry of general behavior at school (in class and playground)
- Entry of homework completed or not
- Entry if the child is keeping up with the rest of the kids.
- Entry of Daily Routines and if the child is following them.
- Entry of Grades.

Other features:

- Lots of information on various disorders
- Medication information (and the ability to track how the child is responding to treatments)
- Supplements that may help with disorders
- Dietary information
- Latest news on developments regarding disorders
- Book list, perhaps with a rating system
- Community, allowing parents to talk to each other forum style, but in the application itself
- Organizational and Social techniques that may help the child behave better

And of course, whatever else could be put in there :)


What i am looking for is if you, as parents of AD/HD child(ren), would like such an application and whether or not such an application would make things more 'understandable' and 'clear' for you as it would give an indepth and direct look at the childs behavior and performance.

Of course, suggestions for other features are very welcome as well.

It's a hard sell to make to school districts (we have a middle-school principle and language-coach in the family, so i have lots of info on that, although any input from you is very welcome) as a (small) company, so, the support of parents is extremely important.

Developing software like this is not a trivial thing, and before i spend 6 months developing this, i'd like to get as much 'market feedback' as possible.

So, a software application like this (extremely user-friendly and fast to use, of course, as many parents have AD/HD as well), would you, as a parent, be interested in it?
Hemmie38877.0540740741

It sounds too complicated. I wouldn't be able to keep track of it all and most teachers would say they didn't have the time.

If you could simplify it, you might get more responses.

The whole point is simplicity, it may seem like a lot of functionality, but in reality, the program would do most of the work.. for the teacher, it'd be five or six 'checks' (or no checks) for various behavioral and performance related 'questions'.. and considering that a lot of kids with behavioral and performance problems do this 'take a note to the teacher and have him/her sign it" thing (at least here in LA), it'd be a question of the parent doing the 5 or 6 checks or no checks to get the info into the program. Charts are predefined (albeit one can define their own) and show the history of the kid... Only things that takes a little bit of effort is the household calendar, defining daily routines (one time thing) and maybe a few other minor details in the program. The calendar would fully support recurrence, meaning that a lot of 'calendar topics' would repeat automatically on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, same goes for the reminders attached to each topic.

Being moderate to severe ADHD for more than three decades, i know very well that things have to be easy and more importantly, fast to use. After all, i deal with it myself every day

I haven't had the time yet to fully write a 'design document' where i'd define the interfaces, automation and such things, so it's hard to tell exactly how things would work, but think of things as 'wizards', the program would show a wizard, the relevant info is entered (checkmarks and one or two bits of text, where required), press OK and the program has the data. If the program sees that a child has been doing badly that day, week or month (definable), it will automatically notify the parent and suggest a 'punishment' (which are defined by the parent, a simple question of punishment name, and a percentage, the percentage being the factor the program uses to determine which punishment(s) pop up depending on how the child has behaved/performed that day, week and/or month). he exact same goes for rewards, but then the other way around, increase in behavior/performance would automatically show rewards (which, again, are fully defined by the parent).

So, there is a level of customization that needs to be done in the program to define various things, but that's a one time deal only, so that should not be a problem for most people i think. For the rest, the program will be 90% automated in it's functionality (apart from the information sources, but that's up to the parent to decide if they want to read all that stuff or not).
Hemmie38879.1979398148I feel it is all a good idea because at the moment I have to write down all behaviour, diet, bahaviour in school etc etc. I give a diary to the school everyday to write in and they hand it back to me every afternoon so I can read how he has been which is better than discussing it in front of my child or other parents. I feel it would be easier to do on the computer rather than having lots of pieces of paper hanging around. So, basically, nobody would be interested :)

Well, that's what 'market research' is for. Saves me a lot of work to develop a program and then have it not sell. :)
I see there isn't too much interest in this sort of software apparently. Maybe instead of aiming at AD/HD children i should rethink this and and start aiming it at Adult AD/HD people as a schedule/remind software (reminding in the way of screen messages, e-mails, SMS to cell phone, maybe even have the computer call the adult and tell the reminder (pretty easy to do)).

Hmm.. back to the drawing board for me.