Helpful Tips for the ADD/ADHD Child

May 2, 2023 survivingathome5

Every ADD Child or ADHD Child Learns Differently

I will preface this by saying that our middle child has not been officially diagnosed as ADD or ADHD. However, he exudes many behaviors that are characteristic to ADD/ADHD. Therefore, it is best that if you are unsure and you desire a clear or definitive answer, meet with a doctor to properly diagnose. So, if you are here because you need quick ideas for the day to day, hopefully these resources help. These resources helped us while homeschooling and treating the everyday chaos of teaching three young kids.

The Big Picture:

Your ADD/ADHD child is probably going to learn differently than their peers, that’s not a bad thing.
Reevaluate what your homeschool goals are for your child.
Be ready to modify your approach to all tasks and goals.
Homeschooling is also about life skills, so these approaches help with every aspect of living.
Most importantly- just accept that things will get lost, forgotten, lost again. And most of the time, they don’t even mean to do it. It just happens.
With patience and modification, it can help channel their energies to reach greater success.

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What can I do?

More intentional organization now means less stress later

Organization:

Everything gets lost or set down somewhere.
A pocket wall chart helps them keep organization of what worksheet or task isn’t completed yet.
Less messy piles of papers and lose materials
Less lost materials or easier to find when it’s lost
Labels help focus and organization
A larger version of a checklist

We have a entire wall as a white board. This is a quick escape of the mundane worksheet.

It can help:
-Visualize
-Work out problems and easily erase or correct
-More interactive and colorful
-Helps focus

I bought a bulk box of medium, large and small binder clips.
-Clip pages completed together
-Helps focus eyes on pages incomplete
-Visually marks next step
-Helps create a visual label system

These are a necessity but also can be tricky. Depends on how you want your schoolroom area to look and what system you have.

Cube units for schoolbooks
Visual organization that is clear
Same location to avoid confusion
Provides routine and expectation
A safe place to keep work to avoid less lost items

This is still a process for us but what I have found most helpful is brightly colored pencil boxes for crayons, colored pencils, markers and activity materials.

Each bucket/basket has one material which is invaluable to scattered minds
Clearly marked boxes with labels to help find and keep together
Separation of items keeps focus and clean up easier for a distracted child
Better for activities

Every child in general has good day and bad days. For us, a big dining room-like table in our school room helps with clutter control.

The station or safe space can still become a mess but this is our son’s “station”
A safe place where your child can sit, stand, bounce or sit under it like a tent to work.
A place where all materials he needs are all in that area and he has a safe, wide open space to spread out his book, notebooks and activities to work on them as he goes.
A routine place to go to for retreat and focus

Schoolwork

Over time I tested a theory after many frustrating Fridays wherein our sons missed multiple questions on their math tests. They either skipped over questions, didn’t read the instructions or answered the previous question on the next questions box. I had to find a solution!

Highlight key words or instructions on tests and worksheets. This draws the attention to the directions, section and question.
For more struggling students, I went so far as to expand to three or four highlight colors. A third color to highlight the problem elements (words/plus or minus symbols etc)
Box in styles of questions: orange highlighter around word problems, yellow around addition problems etc.

We keep many styles and types of binders and pocket folders in our house school supply room. While not every brand or style is sturdy, they are cheap and reusable or replaceable.

I like the binders for most subjects like history and spelling that are constant opening and flipping. They last longer too.
The pocket folders are also helpful because they have more bright color options and you can write the label right on the front of it. It has clasps that are more annoying but can be helpful for a thinner resource material booklet and temporary resource use.
We like pocket folders this for language vocab and writing.
Bonus! They can fit in the wall pocket chart easily so they can grab the folder for quick access to the subject all in one place.

Most kids like hands-on activities but particularly for ADHD children, the energy to focus on pencil/paper is low.

Coloring pages, hands on crafts, booklets, interactive notebooks (see American History) and science experiments are most helpful.
Rethink and revise- our child may struggle with math but after baking a cake or cooking dinner, they have learned to measure, use time, read a recipe and so much more.
Learning can be as formal or informal as you choose and for us, some days with an ADD child, you take the informal and creative approach.

We have a basic checklist template that we update on a weekly basis. It has columns for each subject, what they need to read and complete and a box to check when it’s complete.

Helps child and parent keep organized
Keeping simple boxes with page numbers and chapters helps us refocus our attention on completing the task correctly and minimizing confusion.
Allows children to click checkboxes for completion
Keeps a good timeline for material/content taught over year

Life in the

Day to Day

The everyday details that help you get through

There are more and more fidget toy variations popping up in the market these days.

Various fidget toys like pop-its, twisty toys, snakes, squishy ball and cubes.
We have many of the classic “spinners” and then a variation of mini and large fidget toys that we accumulate over time.
They are strewn all over our house in every room
Toss in a purse or bag when going on a trip or to store
It helps refocus their energy and often calms them down.

No quiz is perfectly accurate but these are fun assessment tools to evaluate in an informal way what behaviors you notice in your child and ways to adapt to them.

We knew our middle son exuded many characteristics of ADD but as we watched our younger son struggle more and more with completing basic chore tasks and schoolwork, we reviewed another quiz online and found that he had more of the behaviors than we anticipated.

What we thought was “laziness” was actually a bigger issue – he was struggling to stay on task, focus and stay in place while working. While this is not an excuse for him skipping schoolwork or losing items, it helped us approach him differently.

Despite differing opinions, in our house, chewing gum is a viable option for focusing.
Our middle son has a terrible nail biting habit and over time with the use of fidget spinners and gum we have slowly gotten him away from the habit. This stems from many issues, some not known. But one we are quite familiar with is that he is a deep thinker, most likely NT and has trouble focusing because of ADD.
While chewing gum, he can shuffle side to side at his station while writing in his journal and chewing gum and we have found over time, he writes betters, focuses better and bites his nails less.
In the same way that some of us stick out our tongue inadvertently while focusing on a hard physical or mental task, same with ADD. If gum (limited of course) helps this, we see this as a success.

Not just schoolwork is challenging for ADD. Daily chore tasks or reading can be difficult. We have many rewards both short and long term for our children and this helps incentivize the ADD child who may forget what they were saving up money for or get sidetracked easily on a daily task.

There are also rewards like extra movie night or popcorn night if they do all their cleaning and schoolwork completely that day.
Whatever motivates your child, encourage it. We have a very relaxed and informal reward system but we also present it intentionally to the children in clear ways so that the two of our children that struggle most with focusing on completion of tasks can see that if they complete the hard work, they can have fun play time. This is a life skill that can be taught at any age.

Music is a huge aspect of life, especially in our household.

We have music playing for cleaning, for fun and for working. In a world full of technology resources, there are a multitude of options at your fingertips for this.
Some day we use headphones with ipod.
Other days we blast the music on the big computer speakers.
Maybe a phone playing our Amazon Music app in the background softly helps. Playlists can work.
This helps our sons focus on the task they have and they know when it starts playing that is the cue to start focusing in on a task or work. It also can be just fun to keep the mood light and happy when trying to complete a task.

Each child has a specific chore list on a dry erase board in our house. As they complete it for the day, they check it off. It also helps us as homeschool parents who can see if something is not checked off, remind the ADD child to check if they completed the sweeping or dishes and then allows us to do many check-ins like their schoolwork check-ins.
It keeps them accountable and focused on the daily routines. Routines are great for children but with ADD, sometimes even the best laid plans go awry. That’s where systems of check-ins and checklists that are visual and colorful help immensely.

Pick, Choose, Experiment:

As you know with any child, one size does not fit all. However, every ADD/ADHD child goes through a different experience when it comes to their approach to school and life tasks. While some children have severe ADD and others have mild, it can be challenging but also greatly rewarding.

Regardless of your situation, lifestyle, approach to homeschooling and attitude, hopefully these personal “life hacks” on a more day to day will help you approach your ADD child or children better.

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While nothing is easy when it comes to children, the joy of parenting and homeschooling is that you aren’t raising a child, you are raising a future adult. So set your focus and mind to what goals you want for your future adult children. Rely on and allow your homeschooling journey to be an ever-changing adventure full of wonder and rewards – with just a bit of ADD chaos mixed in perhaps.

Surviving At Home

Our family of five – surviving homeschool