ADHD Tips, Tricks, & Strategies for Parents & Teachers

Need ADHD tips and strategies? Are you or someone you know challenged with ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder)? If so, you may know that struggles with organization and follow-through occur often and can disrupt daily life. It’s so easy to focus on the struggles and spend much less time, if any, thinking about solutions or strategies to help.

So, we hope you will read on for some strategies to help with the management of ADHD symptoms and challenges. These tips will be organized into three separate weekly articles with lists, depending on who might use the information. This week’s post is the first of those three articles on this topic, each prepared for a specific group of individuals.

If you are a parent or teacher of one or more children with ADHD, then this week’s article is for you. We hope you’ll find the following list of ideas and strategies to be helpful for your child(ren) or students who struggle daily with ADHD:

ADHD Tips & Tricks for Parents & Teachers

1. One of the most important things to keep in mind with your child or student who struggles with ADHD is to think in “small bytes” when imparting information, making requests, and doing tasks.  Isolate, focus on, or mention just ONE thing. Present one fact, one step, one question or one chore at a time until it is accomplished or completed.

Dialogue Suggestions:
a.  Parent:  “Molly, let’s first pick up the clothes on the floor.”
b.  Teacher:  “Let’s just focus on the first question at the end of the chapter.”

2. Good communication between parents and teachers is critical for every student’s success in school.  However, when ADHD is part of a child or teen’s life, excellent communication between home and school is essential and can determine a student’s achievement level for an entire year (or more.)  Decide early in each school year to establish good communication channels to best benefit your child or each student.  Always inform all concerned in the method and approach for best communication results (school email system, protocol for phone messages, etc.)

3. Consider ways to change the white background of book pages to a more soothing, less visually-stressing color. Think about using pastel-colored paper for printing worksheets for the classroom, if you are a teacher. Colored overlays can also be very good for this, too.  Also, tools like the Reading Focus Cards sets are color-customizable with a choice of 3 colored reading filters included for each focus card.

4. Think about using a sound therapy machine or a simple CD player with nature sounds can relax some students and help block out other distractions. (In a classroom, headphones may be needed for these or other students in the classroom.)  In addition, these same tools can also soothe a child at the end of a long, hectic day, so sleep comes more easily.  Also, it may be good to know that the use of a few drops of lavender oil (from a pharmacist, online resource for vitamins or natural remedies, etc.) on a child’s pillow can provide the natural aromatherapy needed to induce sleep without the side effects of medication.

5. Plan to introduce just one of these strategies above (from 1 to 4) each week. To try more than one may make any other attempted strategies less effective or not effective at all.  Keep in mind, “This one thing I do,” for you, your child or your student.

In Summary

These is only a small sampling of tips and tricks for children and students with ADHD.  You may have already discovered others that work well, too.  If so, please tell us about them in the comments section of this page and will certainly appreciate your good input.  We wish you much success with these strategies. Hopefully, they will help improve the quality of life for your child, your family, your students, and your classroom.

All the BEST of learning SUCCESS with ADHD!