Children with ADHD frequently have difficulty regulating their emo-tional state. These children tend to become easily frustrated during challenging tasks, when confused, or when bored. Helping your child maintain the level of emotional regulation required to work productively on homework is dependent on your own emotional state. Children are exquisitely sensitive to the emotional state of their parents; therefore it is critical that you find a place of calm and comfort as you navigate the demands of homework.
One of the most significant challenges all parents contend with while doing homework is their child’s feeling of boredom. It is widely acknowledged that boredom is a stressor, and it’s been my experience that children with ADHD are especially prone to strong responses out of boredom. As adults, we’ve developed coping mechanisms for the stress of boredom. Children, however, have not yet fully developed this skill.
If your child is especially susceptible to the detrimental effects of boredom, move through homework tasks as quickly as your child is able.
Use good judgment about when to take short exercise breaks to shoot basketball hoops, dance, do a yoga pose, or jump rope. Nothing dissi-pates stress better than physical activity. You can also move back and forth between academic tasks if you find that that is a successful way to manage your child’s stress. While you can provide encouragement and gentle reminders to stay on task, you will best help your child maintain focus and sustained effort by modeling a high level of focus and effort yourself.
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Transitions
All of us know the experience of getting comfortable with a task and wanting to stay with it. Once a child acquires some momentum and comfort working on a particular school- related task, he or she may want to stick with it instead of moving on to another homework task. In situ-ations like this, it can be helpful to remind your child that he or she can return to whatever it was that he or she was working on, but that it’s important for him or her to shift to another assignment. We can facili-tate this transition by taking out the next assignment, for example, the dreaded math worksheet. Once the assignment is in sight, a child is more likely to be willing to transition into it. It might also help for you to put away the work your child has completed as he or she starts the new task. If your child still expresses reluctance to transition, try encouraging him or her to work on the new task for a fixed amount of time, perhaps five to ten minutes.
Although children with ADHD are prone to distraction, it’s not uncommon for them to experience a level of hyperfocus that prevents them from shifting their attention appropriately. If your child’s hyperfo-cus seems to be leading to a beneficial outcome, such as writing at great length or generating an incredibly elaborate illustration for an assign-ment, it might be good to simply allow him or her the time he or she needs to finish. These experiences will undoubtedly be the foundation for sustained attention skills in the future.
If, however, the degree of hyperfocus is so significant that it is at the exclusion of all other things, help your child transition to another activ-ity by first suggesting that he or she work for a few more minutes on the current assignment. Then switch to another activity with the under-standing that the new task will only be for a short while. As long as you keep a track record of being true to your word, your child will trust these adjustments and, in time, will acquire the capacities to shift back and forth between high- interest and low- interest activities. The main point here is that it isn’t reasonable to expect your child to make transitions while completing homework on his or her own. He or she will need your support and presence at the start of a new activity for transitions to occur smoothly.
162 Helping Your Child with Language-Based Learning Disabilities
Time Management
The need to effectively manage one’s time is an essential life skill.
Few environments require more attention to careful time management than school. For children and teens with ADHD, the rigorous time structure that school demands is incredibly difficult to deal with.
In time, most children, teens, and young adults with ADHD will develop the capacities to be punctual, establish a reasonable plan to complete homework, study for tests, and submit work on time. While these capacities are developing, however, your child will need a signifi-cant amount of support from you.
Throughout this book, I’ve encouraged you to stay apprised of every facet of your child’s schooling demands. Time management is no excep-tion. From simply making it to the bus stop on time to completing a project with a four- week deadline, a child with ADHD desperately needs help. Without time management assistance, these children encounter many setbacks, which only worsens their negative thoughts about them-selves as students. This negative self- image can be avoided by following these five simple principles of time management:
1. Think of yourself as the time manager.
2. Make yourself aware of all the important dates and timelines your child is required to adhere to.
3. Create a few visual organizers that are simple, clear, and easy to read: a large month- at- a- glance calendar for school- related matters, posted on a wall in your house; a week- at- a- glance cal-endar, so your child can visualize what the week will bring; and a day- at- a- glance calendar, so that each morning your son or daughter can visualize what lies ahead for the day.
4. Provide your child with daily reminders about important matters, such as submitting homework assignments.
5. Provide your child with a clock and watch that are easy to read.
As your child gets older, teach him or her to recognize the passage of time. Discuss how time is a valuable resource that must be used judiciously.
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All this being said, make sure your child also has opportunities to not be worried about time. Many of us know what a pressure- cooker life has become, and no one is more vulnerable than a child who is already struggling. This may require that you sacrifice obligations and activities that seem essential to participate in, because sometimes you and your child need a free day to experience life without strict timetables.
For more tips on providing highly supportive homework help, see this book’s website at http://www.newharbinger.com/40989. There, you’ll find a step- by- step checklist for collaborating with your child on com-pleting homework and other assignments.
Conclusion
If your child has ADHD, invariably he or she will have slowly emerging executive functioning skills. In order to meet the demands of studying, homework completion, time management, and keeping schoolwork organized, your child will need highly collaborative support from you.
The amount of support you provide will vary and, at times, be quite significant. But I know of no other way to effectively help children with ADHD experience success at school and acquire executive functioning skills.