Collaborative Responsibilites
School is socially and academically stressful for children with ADHD as well as for their parents and teachers. All parties - parents, teachers, and students - can work together to create a sense of control and empowerment for the child. The table below lists some specific goals or behaviors that should be increased and suggests strategies for all parties to help achieve these goals.
| Goals to Increase: |
Teacher |
Student |
Parent |
| Channeled Motor Activity |
- Reduce wait time
- Allow activity fillers (doodling)
- Active response curriculum (e.g., whole-class voting, choral responding)
- Provide jobs and responsibilities
- Allow short activity breaks between assignments; do not take away recess
|
- Join a club or sport
- Set specific times for activities
- Take things with you to be prepared for delays
- Keep a small notebook to write ideas or tasks
|
- Encourage daily time for physical activity and do not take away sports
- Provide constructive activities during delay time (e.g., church)
- Require jobs and reasonable responsibilities around the house/yard
|
| Channeled Verbal Activity |
- Seating arrangements in clusters
- Use peer tutoring as both tutor and tutee
|
- Keep conversations on the topic of the current subject
- Plan out conversations using small pictures
|
- Bring a child friend over for supervised structured fun activities and reinforce appropriate behavior
- Bring student back to focus of conversation (on track)
|
| Self-Esteem |
- Focus on student's strengths (avoid disability areas) (e.g., grade content and originality, separately from handwriting or spelling)
- Provide access to privileges
- Suggest parent readings
|
- List those things about yourself you like
- List those things in others you like
- Ask questions when you don't understand
- Ask for praise when you feel you have done something well
- Ask for feedback in areas you feel you get criticism
|
- Focus on the child's strengths
- Set goals that can be easily reached
|
| Appropriate Reactions to Frustration |
- Do not take away physical education or recess
- Give choice whenever possible
- Suggest parental/family counseling
- Suggest parent support groups (e.g., Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorders)
|
- Keep a picture diary or log of feelings with events
- Identify settings or events that trigger emotional overreactions
- Decide what to say and do for these moments
- Remove self from group when upset (self time-out)
|
- Spend fun time together as a family; tell stories at dinner
- Reward efforts at attempts to control
- Provide active ways to release energy or require time intervening to "cool down"
- Accept the child's feelings even though the behavior may not be acceptable
|
| Increase Compliance |
- Allow choices
- Set limits on what the child cannot choose or a few important rules with reasons about safety, comfort, learning, and communication (i.e., rule directed and not personal)
- Identify alternatives to physical punishment or taking away sports and club activities
- Assign peer or group projects
- Set up communication with parents
|
- Establish several routines, with reasons why to do them
- Follow the routines you have established by making them fun
- Follow directions by making them your own (e.g., rewriting, restating, or rephrasing)
|
- Give choice to which assignment to work on first
- Reward for completed work with a desired activity/privilege
- Allow choice of the order of tasks
|
Excerpt from ADHD and Education: Foundations, Characteristics, Methods, and Collaboration , by S.S. Zentall, 2006 edition, p. 289-290.
© 2006, Merrill, an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
