Teaching Your Attention Deficit Disordered (ADD) Child
"Try everything and keep what works,” is a great axion for the parent of an attention-deficit disorder (ADD), or attention-deficit hyperactive disorder child (ADHD). The following are suggestions that may prove helpful in working with your student.
- Set firm, clear-cut guidelines in following daily schedules and rules of appropriate behavior (include expectations and consequences).
- Make directions clear, state them simply, and give them one at a time.
- Provide much encouragement, praise, and affection for tasks accomplished well. ADD children are easily discouraged.
- Give them responsibilities that provide immediate success to help them feel needed and valuable.
- Begin with simple tasks at first and gradually build toward more complex ones.
- Reward effort, persistence, and desired behavior.
- Give meaningful, additional help and allow for frequent reinforce ment.
- Never intentionally embarrass or degrade your child/student.
- Limit the amount of sensory stimuli in the child’s immediate academic environment, such as visual stimuli—bulletin boards, pictures, objects in immediate work area; auditory stimuli—radio, television, and other environ mental noises; kinesthetic stimuli—objects within reach that provide touch sensation or foster play activity. Provide these one at a time, at appropriate times.
- Develop varied sensory approaches (sound, visual, touch, physical movement) for teaching your ADD child. When new experiences involve a myriad of sensations (such as multiple sounds, movements, emotions, or colors) the ADD child will need extra time to complete the task.
- Limit activities that promote destructive tendencies, such as television, video games, computer games, play fighting.
- Pace the child’s academic work in short segments. Five 10-minute assignments achieve more than one longer, 30- to 45-minute assignment.
- Between these study assignments, allow ample opportunity for strenuous physical activity.
- Set predictable intervals of “no-work” periods that the child may earn as a reward for effort. Use contingency contracts (a written agreement negotiated between student and teacher in which the student agrees to do something the teacher desires and the teacher, in turn, provides something the student desires; e.g., write an agreement that after the student completes 25 math problems, he or she will be be able to spend an afternoon with a friend).
- Give directions one at a time; be specific.
- Reduce the amount of written work required.
- Involve the student in activity-oriented learning.
- Be sure the student completes activities he or she has begun.
- Have the student reproduce a design while looking at a model and then reproduce the design without looking at the model. This can include paper/pencil designs; sculptures using papier-mâché, wire, clay, etc.; cross-stitch or other handiwork; jigsaw puzzles; paper folding; tangrams; building blocks.
- Supply one-on-one or small group rather than large group situations to provide growth academically, behaviorally, and socially.
- Prepare the ADD child for new situations in advance. S/he is especially sensitive to his/her limitations and can easily become frightened and discouraged.
- Notice whether or not the ADD child withdraws during noisy, stimulating recreational situations. This may signal coordination or auditory processing difficulties that may need extra practice during less stressful conditions.
- Maintain a non-stressful family climate, providing emotional warmth and physical contact.
- Parents often intrinsically know of ways that work best with their child. Center on ways that work best for your child, rather than what works best for you.
