SMART cognitive training combined with a parental coaching programme for three children treated for medulloblastoma

In a pilot study we examined the feasibility of a condensed version of the Swedish Memory and Attention Re-Training on children treated for medulloblastoma combined with a structured coaching programme for their parents. Parental coaching contained the translation of the child's new skills into daily life, and education regarding their own stress mechanisms. Before and after intervention we assessed the children's cognitive performance, social relations and self image as well as their parents stress. All three families continued the programme without interruption. Observations revealed that this condensed version of the programme was more stressful to participants. However, several aspects of the children's attention and memory performance improved from pre to post-training assessment. In addition, all of the children reported enhancement of their social relations and self image. Initially, symptoms of parental stress were pronounced for the three mothers, but fairly low for the fathers. After training and coaching, the stress level of both mothers and fathers was low. Our findings encourage full scale studies examining whether this combination of condensed cognitive training and specific coaching programme for parents may influence not only the children's cognitive performance but also their social relations, self image and their parents stress.