Provide one-to-one instruction as often as possible. A class buddy, who gets along well with the child, can be helpful to reinforce instructions and directions. Make sure activities have plenty of hands-on involvement. Schedule the most important learning to take place during the child's best concentration time(s).
In general, children with ADHD are right-brained learners. They prefer to learn visually — by watching or doing a task in an activity-based, hands-on format, not by listening to lectures, practicing drills, or memorizing. There are many ways to implement visual learning outside the classroom.
ADHD can affect a student's ability to focus, pay attention, listen, or put effort into schoolwork. ADHD also can make a student fidgety, restless, talk too much, or disrupt the class. Kids with ADHD might also have learning disabilities that cause them to have problems in school.
“Studying is about performance, so repetition is key,” Savage says. “Many people with ADHD [may have issues with] working memory, which means you can't easily retain what you've learned. So, take notes in class, read the chapter more than once, and review everything over and over again.”
Struggles with reading, writing, and math are common among students with ADHD. Use these strategies and tools to help your child overcome these and other learning challenges in core school subjects.
Adolescents with ADHD fail more grades and perform worse on standardized academic achievement tests than matched controls.
ADHD affects learning by causing kids to have difficulty paying attention in the classroom, overlook details, have difficulty following directions, and struggle to finish schoolwork on time.
Children with ADHD struggle more with boredom and putting mental effort into challenging tasks. Virtual learning or in-person school with more rules may lack the novelty and excitement. Teachers may need to find new ways to keep children with ADHD from being bored and keep them engaged in learning.
It isn't at all uncommon for kids with ADHD to take somewhat longer to complete tasks especially when the assignment is cognitively challenging.
ADHD can make completing tasks such as school work, homework, or work projects much more difficult. However, there is no clear link between ADHD and IQ. A person may have a high, average, or low IQ score and also have ADHD. ADHD may cause a person to interrupt in class or perform poorly on tests.
It's normal for children to occasionally forget their homework, daydream during class, act without thinking, or get fidgety at the dinner table. But inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity are also signs of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), sometimes known as attention deficit disorder or ADD.
A lack of self-acceptance. Prohibitively expensive medications. Here, commiserate with fellow ADDitude readers as they share some of their biggest challenges of managing life with ADHD or ADD. > Creating rituals to keep track of things.
Being Forgetful Every Time
According to the American Psychiatric Association, one of the common ADHD struggles a person can experience involves being forgetful. A person with ADHD might find it hard to remember things just said a few minutes ago or follow instructions.
Starting from an early age, children with ADHD struggle to memorize math facts and are prone to making errors on simple math problems. As they progress through school, they may struggle with word problems and more complex calculations by missing key details or having difficulty sequencing problem-solving steps.
Many children with ADHD have trouble with their working memory — the ability to keep information in mind so it's available for use. Some also have a hard time with retrieval, the process of reclaiming information that has been stored away.
Reading is a struggle for adults and children with ADHD alike. Many children with ADHD have difficulty with reading comprehension,8 while both adults and kids with ADHD tend to lose interest, miss details and connections, lose track of where they are on the page, and become easily distracted.
Because of distractibility issues with ADHD, helping children practice reading in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming is key to reducing frustration, Ho says. Snyder recommends reading or having your kids read in a space that limits distractions. This may help them to stay focused and better absorb reading material.
Students with ADHD benefit from consistent routines and classroom expectations. “Educators will see success when they provide explicit instructions and reminders regarding expectations for behavior,” Woodward says.
Make Tasks Interactive
Where possible, make tasks and activities interactive – for example use whiteboards rather than always writing in workbooks. Ask the child with ADHD to hand out the whiteboards – this will help expend some energy and make them feel that they have an important role in the classroom.
Similar to the hyperactive symptoms, impulsive symptoms are typically seen by the time a child is four years old and increase during the next three to four years to peak in severity when the child is seven to eight years of age.