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Children with attention and organizational problems are more common now than ever before. In
Unfortunately teachers have twenty to thirty students to work with on a daily basis. A teacher may have good intentions; it is just not feasible for her to have to organize your child. The task belongs to the parent; the teacher will usually be glad to assist you in any way possible.
Here are some tips on Organizing Your ADHD children/students:
See what you can do to help organize the child's environment. Use dividers and folders so he can easily find things. Teach him how to organize himself better. These are skills that he does not know, or are harder for him to do than the average child…and needs to learn.
Help the child to organize his written work or numbers. Allow the child to move a pencil or his finger across the page while reading. If he's writing, allow him to use one or two fingers for spacing between words. During math, graph paper may be very helpful to organize his numbers and columns.
Your child/student will function better when able to anticipate times requiring increased concentration. A visual representation of the day's schedule will provide another opportunity to internalize classroom routine. This is helpful at home too with posting routines on the refrigerator.
Completing school work and maintaining behavior during the school day can be exhausting experiences. Large homework loads on a regular basis can become discouraging for him and very stressful for the parent involved. Attempt to break down long-term assignments into steps to lessen your child’s feeling overwhelmed. Emphasize practice and assignment completion on the word processor to lower the frustration many students feel with written work.
Model an organized way of life, and model the strategies you use to cope with disorganization.
Establish a daily routine and schedule. Show that you value organization or reinforce organization by having a "room fairy" that gives a daily award for the most organized room, or back pack.
Use individual assignment charts, pads, or envelopes that can go home with the child to be signed daily by parents if necessary. Develop a clear system for keeping track of completed and uncompleted work.
Develop a color coding method for your child in which each subject is associated with a certain color that is the subject’s textbook cover and on the folder or workbook for that subject.
Develop a reward system for in-school work and homework completion. One example of a system that reinforces both work quality and work quantity involves translating points earned into "dollars" to be used at the end of grading period. For children needing more immediate reinforcement, each completed assignment could earn the child a small reward at the end of the week.
Write a schedule and timeline on your child’s bedroom door to provide due dates for assignments each day. Divide longer assignments into sections and provide due dates or times for the completion of each section.
Tape a checklist to the child's desk/door or put one in each subject folder/notebook that outlines the steps in following directions or checking to be sure an assignment is complete.
Make study guides or outlines of the content you want the child to learn, or let the child build her/his own study guide with worksheets that have been positively corrected and handed back at school.
Be clear about rules, and follow through with consequences. If you say it---do it. Nothing is worse on an ADHD child then not following through with your promises/consequences (good or bad).
Encouraged the child to utilize assignment sheets, broken down by day and subject. You can make these on your home computer and save them as you find they are working for your child. He can record assignments at the completion of each task.
An organizing time at the end of each day can be helpful to gather the necessary materials for the assignments and develop a plan of action for completion. This may sound simple; have the child lay his clothes out the night before so there are no added headaches prior to going to school.
Your child/student can become overwhelmed with floods of paper and be unable to find the needed materials. It is often helpful to carry only two work folders, one that contains work to be completed and one with work to be turned in to the teacher. Reviewing these work folders should become a regular part of the daily routine, with irrelevant work removed each day.
Some students now take a small dose of their medication when they come home from school to aid in studying/homework completion. Check with the doctor about the time period of maximum medication effectiveness to help set-up a sensible homework schedule.
Quite often, variability in work performance will be related to the teacher's style and your student's temperament. Teachers tend to instruct using their own preferential learning style. Sequential teachers may help by providing more structure for him but the teacher may become frustrated with his disorganization and behavior. Random teachers, while not providing external structure, may be more likely to utilize flexibility in adjusting to his needs. Attempt to place your student with teachers who have similar styles that have proven effective for their particular needs. Some teachers have received training in dealing with students with attention problems that would make them a particularly effective resource.
One of the simplest interventions with the most power is to have an extra set of textbooks at home to minimize the problem of not having the necessary homework materials. Most schools will be glad to accommodate this (if they have extra at school).
Since fine motor activities and spelling can be a problem, consider a major emphasis on using a word processor at an early age. Software to practice keyboarding should have stimulating graphics to motivate their use. Using a "spell check" program is critical.
Along with the "executive process" of organizing for homework, a daily check-in time can be helpful in preparing for a successful day or evening. Checking the child’s homework, communicating changes in the daily schedule, can ease stress in ADHD children.
Your student should have a regularly scheduled time for cleaning his desk at least once a week. This will improve his ability to find his materials. It may, however, require the assistance/instruction of an adult to make this a successful experience; likewise a regularly scheduled time to clean his room at home. You may actually help him at this task until he gets a pattern of doing it correctly himself. This may require you to go to the school and check the desk or cubby every week until the routine is established.
