Strategies with ADHD

Many parents approach me asking how to control ADHD symptoms without medication. I am a parent of an active girl. I know how difficult it is to think of an idea to give your child medication on a daily basis to control his/her active behavior.

He is always in motion- having hard time sitting still, staying focused during the instruction.

These are some of well known and discussed characteristics of students with ADHD. Will they attend to a teacher’s instruction better if they’ve gotten a 1:1 aide sitting right next to them? From my observation, my answer is “maybe not”.

Having an extra body in the context often distract the student even more, especially if the student is craving that attention. We may also see a prompt dependent child sooner or later. The function of some of the off-task behavior may be to gain attention.

Nevertheless, these students struggle at school every day, and so are their teachers. Teachers want to treat everyone equally while holding up the high expectations in their academics and behavior. But, we quickly notice that these students would need specific interventions and strategies in action. Otherwise, they will fall further behind.

Here is an informational talk on ABA Inside Track, which I felt is greatly applicable in daily teaching. Let’s educate ourselves on how to work with students with ADHD.

Also, I found it helpful to work on Executive Functioning Skills specifically to work on reponse inhibition, sustained attention, persistence, and so on.