How to Help Your ADHD Child Improve Their Focusing Skills.
Many students with ADHD are bright and have strong academic skills. However, they often struggle to stay focused and on-task for long stretches of time. As they move through school, the workload increases quickly and weak focusing skills can affect all aspects of school. Help your ADHD child increase their focusing skills with the ideas detailed below.
Visual Schedules
When students with ADHD have multiple assignments to complete and activities to partake in after school, they may feel overwhelmed. They might not know where to start or how to fit everything into a limited time window. Creating a visual schedule can help! Together with your child, create a schedule of all activities and assignments they have on a given day on a large poster board or even a smaller sheet of paper if that works better for them. Write out an organized schedule for completing these daily tasks. For example, a visual after-school schedule might look like the following:
3:15-3:30pm snack
3:30-4:30pm work on homework
4:30-6pm soccer practice
6-6:45pm dinner
6:45-7:30pm complete any remaining assignments
7:30-8pm shower and get ready for bed
You can even draw or cut out pictures depicting each item and paste them on the visual schedule – like a picture of an apple for snack, an image of a homework sheet for homework time, and a picture of a shower in the getting ready for bed section. By creating a visual schedule, your child will feel less overwhelmed, more focused, and more in control of completing their tasks in a structured, organized manner.
Organized work space
Creating a designated homework space for your child with ADHD can help them avoid distractions and stay focused when completing their school work. This space should ideally be a desk in their room, but a spot on a communal table in the kitchen or dining room can work too. The key is consistency; your child should always complete their homework in this designated space. You should also make sure this space is fully stocked with all the supplies they may need for completing their assignments, including pens, pencils, scissors, paper, etc. If the supplies run low, refill them right away. This will help prevent your child from wandering around your home mid-homework session, searching for missing supplies and finding distractions as they look for these materials. Additionally, if your child works on a communal table, create a portable homework bin containing all the supplies they may need for completing their work, which they should bring with them to and from their room when they complete their school work.
Pomodoro Method
The Pomodoro Method is a great technique for helping students with ADHD stay focused for longer stretches of time. To use this strategy, your child should sit down at their designated work space to begin working on their homework. They should set a timer for 25 minutes, work for that period of time, and then when the timer rings, take a 5-minute break. After that break, they should set their timer again for 25 minutes, then take a 5-minute break when it rings, and do this same cycle four times. After four Pomodoro cycles, they should take a longer 15–30 minute break before starting the next four cycles. This system will help build structure into their study time and should increase their ability to stay focused for longer periods of time.
Active Reading!
Many students with ADHD lose focus when reading, which can negatively affect their ability to comprehend the material. To combat this challenge, teach them a tri-colored highlighting strategy to help them become a more active, rather than a passive, reader. To use this strategy, explain that when we read, there are three elements we should look for: the topic, which is one, two, or three words describing the passage (like snacks or rain). They should highlight the topic in blue. The second element they should look for is the main idea, which is what the author is saying about the topic (like types of afternoon snacks). They should highlight the main idea in green. Finally, they should look for the important details, or salient information describing the main idea, and highlight these details in yellow. When sitting down to read a passage, your child should read it through once, then go back through the passage and highlight the topic in blue, main idea in green, and important details in yellow – making them an active reader and improving their ability to stay focused when reading.
As students move through school, the academic and focusing demands increase rapidly. Help your child stay focused and on-task with these strategies and they will be well on their way to success in school.