Transitions and ADD

30 September 2008 By Brenda 0 In Life Skills, School

Have you ever really thought about what your child’ school day is like? About all the information he has to absorb every day, to understand and remember? It’s more than most of us have to handle each day, and probably more than we had to deal with when we were in school.

One of the characteristics of Attention Deficit Disorder is difficulty making transitions. Transitions are very hard for someone with ADD. Moving from one thing to another - at the speed most people would like us to - can be hard.

Now I know that our minds are constantly transitioning from one thing to another, so it seems odd that to do so when someone else asks us to should be difficult. Still it is.

If you wonder if your ADD child has trouble making transitions, all you have to do is look at their sleep habits. Do they have trouble settling down and going to sleep at night? Do they have trouble waking up the next day? Think about when they were toddlers. Were they more resistant than most to changing from one activity to another? Leaving the playground to go home?

ADD often shows up or begins causing real trouble when a child is in 4th - 6th grade. At that age, kids have moved into the “upper el” and most teachers are adding more subjects to their day and making the move from one to the other more distinct. It’s a way to help prepare them for middle school and changing classrooms throughout the day.

For a kid with ADD, studying math for 50 minutes, then abruptly changing to history or language arts can be a bit of a shock. They need time to make the move from one subject to another - more than a few seconds.

There’s nothing we can do about changing classes and abrupt transitions.

What you can do is this: educate your child on what’s happening. To understand that they will need an extra bit of time to catch up with the new subject will go a long way in helping them adjust.

Then give them a little visualization to work on. Have them picture closing the math part of their brain (or their math book, if that’s easier) and then opening up the next subject’s part of the brain. If they work at doing this, eventually they’ll get pretty good.

Give it a try and see.