Teachers and parents can take advantage of these strategies for training focus, combatting procrastination, and prioritizing effectively to achieve the success that drives future motivation in their students with ADHD.
Use these strategies to collaborate with your child or student on tools that will inspire their participation and buy-in.
1. Choose Meaningful Incentives
Instead of threats or punishments, use earned privileges that link effort to satisfying accomplishment. For example, finishing half of the reading assignment earns a student a short snack break. Completing the full assignment earns them the privilege of chatting quietly with a friend, drawing, or shooting hoops.
- What does your child love? Make a list together of small and big incentives.
- Link the “have-to” tasks to the “want-to” activities. Assign preferred activities to follow specific, unpreferred tasks.
2. Measure Capacity for Focus
Focus is the spotlight of attention. Many kids with ADHD are aware when they return from drifting off, but not when focus begins to fade.
- Create coping strategies your student can employ when they realize they have been distracted. Do they have a note-taker so they can listen better without writing? Will you help them fill in the gaps?
- Brainstorm specific ways to deal with distractions when they arise.
- Agree on a way to cue students to return to work that doesn’t feel humiliating.
3. Improve Initiation
It’s tough to get started on a task that seems impossible or insurmountable, so begin by meeting your student where they are — noticing and rewarding effort as much as outcome.
- Break down assignments and chores into smaller parts — a few science problems or a page of reading to warm up. Set realistic goals.
- Create, laminate, and post steps for getting started that explicitly lists the resources and tools needed to complete a task. Instead of repeating instructions, refer students to the list, which should include visual cues.
- Present information in bite-sized chunks to avoid overwhelm. Ask your kids to repeat back what you are asking them to do.
4. Confront Procrastination
Procrastination is the sometimes debilitating byproduct of anxiety and negative thinking. Many kids with ADHD give up before they start trying. Procrastination is an attempt to limit mistakes and reduce future shame.
- Encourage your child to do a small portion of a daunting task without editing, erasing, or throwing it away.
- Address negative expectations based on past struggles and explore what’s different now. Notice all efforts positively.
- Decide which tasks are easy, medium, and hard. Establish an order for approaching tasks that make the most sense to the student.
- How long can your child sustain attention before becoming distracted? Have them work for this amount of time, take a quick break, and return to the task. Tie a few of these together until a longer break is necessary. Use analog clocks and timers to assist.
5. Teach Prioritization
When students become overwhelmed and immobilized by the length of their to-do lists, help them organize their brain dump based on urgency and importance.
- Highlight or number urgent tasks — those with time pressure — and anticipate interruptions to their progress that may seem urgent but actually don’t require immediate reactions.
- Draw attention to important tasks that reflect your child’s interests, purpose, and fulfillment. Which to-do list items are both urgent and important? These go to the top of the list. Save the important-but-not-urgent items for a time when your student is in a productive and/or creative flow.
Source: By ,No Motivation? 5 Steps to Build Drive and Confidence, Additude Magazine, Reviewed on October 17, 2023