Help your child with ADHD build stronger study skills over the summer

Summer is a great time to work on helping your child with ADHD build stronger study skills. There are fewer school and extracurricular obligations and there’s usually more time to work on setting up systems and strategies.  Help your child with ADHD develop their time management, organization, planning, prioritizing, and other key study skills over the summer with the ideas detailed below.

Set up a summer homework schedule

Most students receive some schoolwork to do over the summer, including reading books, writing reports, and completing math packets. Make sure your child with ADHD doesn’t wait until the very end of summer to start this work, as many kids may have the tendency to do. Help your child find a consistent schedule for working on their school assignments; this could be after camp one weekday, on Sunday mornings after they wake up, or just about any consistent time that suits them best. If you set a time after camp for schoolwork but your child ends up being too tired after camp to work on their assignments, change it to a day/time that suits them better. The key is finding a consistent schedule that works for your child and sticking with it.

Designated homework space

Summer is a great time to set up a designated homework space for your child, both for working on their summer assignments and for completing their schoolwork once the new school year begins. Discuss with your child what kind of space would work best for them. For most children with ADHD, working at a desk in their room, in an area free of noise and distractions, works best. However, if your child shares a room or a private desk isn’t available, carve out space on your kitchen or dining room table for your child to work consistently and try to minimize distractions when they work. Also make sure they have all the necessary supplies for completing their assignments in their designated homework space. At their desk, they should have supplies such as sharpened pencils, pens, paper, scissors, highlighters, and any other tools they may need for completing their schoolwork. If their spot is in a communal space, create a homework supplies bin that contains all the necessary supplies and have them transport this bin to their designated space for work time, then back to their room when they are done.

Time management

Time management is a key skill for school success and summer is a great time to work on it. Try the Pomodoro Method with your ADHD child. Tell them to set a timer for 25 minutes and spend those 25 minutes working straight, without taking any breaks or focusing on anything but their work. Once the 25 minutes are up, they can take a five-minute break, then work for another 25 minutes followed by another five-minute break, and so on. After four of these Pomodoro cycles of 30 minutes total, they can take a longer break of 15-30 minutes or so, where they can move around, make a call, play a quick game, or just relax until it’s time to work again. Creating these structured work increments will help your child build their focusing and time management skills, and the Pomodoro Method is a great approach to practice during the summer, before the school year begins.

Active reading strategies

Since your child will likely have summer reading to do, take advantage of this time to teach them active reading strategies. Before they begin their book, encourage them to look at the front and back covers, read any headings or chapter titles, and think of questions they may have before starting the book. As they read, have them use sticky notes to write 1-2 line summaries of what they read after every 3-4 pages and stick the notes inside their book. At the end of each chapter, they can write a short chapter summary summarizing the plot in a separate notebook. Encourage them to predict what they think may happen next at the end of each chapter and even create character maps describing the qualities of each new character as they are introduced.

Color code

Towards the end of the summer, you may begin shopping for supplies with your child for the new school year. When doing so, aim to color-code items by subject to help your child develop stronger organizational skills. For instance, you may designate blue for math, green for science, yellow for social studies, and so on. Then purchase blue folders and binders for math and corresponding colors for each class. When your child writes down their assignments in an assignment book (which you should encourage them to do!), have them to highlight the assignments in the subject’s designated color. Try setting up these color-coded supplies before the school year begins to help your child with ADHD start the year well-organized. If your child still struggles with their organizational skills, ADHD tutoring can help them tremendously.

Summer is a great time to help your child with ADHD build their study skills. Try these strategies, and they will be well on their way to academic success!