Tomorrow is the first day of October. Where did September go?
Has school year at your house turned from new and exciting to dull and boring? Has the initial hope and promise of a new year turned into same as last year?
It’s hard for any kid to remain excited about school. If you’ve got ADHD, it’s even harder.
People with ADHD have short attention spans. That’s not just in their 40 minute algebra class, but in the bigger picture of things.
Have you even watched your child become so interested in something that they are oblivious to the outside world? Maybe a new video game or a new sport. And then a few weeks or months later, they’re not interested anymore? (We ADD adults are just the same.)
That same sort of thing can happen in lots of places in our lives.
When you struggle with something and maybe you’re not so interested in it anyway (think school), it’s easy to lose interest. And when you lose interest in school, grades can plummet.
So how do you keep school new and exciting for kids with ADD?
It ain’t easy.
One of the most effective things that you can do is to help them relate what they learn in class to things that they are interested in. This isn’t easy and it takes some time, but with practice it gets easier. You might want to begin with a subject that they are having trouble with in school,
Math, for instance, touches our lives everywhere. You can use sports, cooking, shopping, money, and more to teach math concepts.
Need stronger reading skills? Play to your child’s interests. If they are a sports fan, get them a subscription to Sports Illustrated or another sports magazine. Let them read the sports page in the paper and work on the stats while you’re at it.
If they have a government or civics class, take them to see the real thing in action.
In other words, find ways to bring learning out of the textbook and into real life. Make it new and exciting and just watch what happens.
