dysTalk Managing Adhd - Talks - dysTalk

About the speaker: Fintan O'Regan is a former head teacher and is currently a behaviour management consultant. He is a renowned expert on ADHD, with several published works on the subject and is the education director of ADDISS.

Further information about this Talk

Further Reading:

The following books have been published by Fintan O'Regan:

Understanding AD/HD: Frequently Asked Questions
ADHD (Special Educational Needs)
Can't Learn, Won't Learn, Don't Care: Trouble-shooting Challenging Behaviour
The Challenging Behaviours Pocketbook
Surviving and Succeeding in SEN
How to Teach and Manage Children with ADHD
Educating Children with AD/Hd: A Teacher's Manual

Key Points Covered in This Talk:

• The problems children with ADHD have: The difficulty is not so much behavior as the learning process of what they need to do that children struggle with. Children with ADHD often know what to do but are unable to do it. Failure at school and at home can lead to frustration and low self-esteem and challenges can result in terms of behavior.
• Combining structure with flexibility: Children with ADHD can be successfully managed and taught both at home and at school by adopting three major principles: Firstly children with ADHD need structure through consistency, rules, and "tough-love". Secondly, flexibility is needed to compliment structure, because some things will need to be adapted for some children from what we would expect of most children in order to ensure they can manage the structure and consistency trying to be achieved. Therefore while there should be three or four key rules both at school and at home that children with or without ADHD should conform to, these should be complimented with flexibility in other areas. Children with ADHD (just like those without ADHD) are responsible for their own behavior and actions and ADHD cannot be used as an excuse for bad actions. In order to prevent such actions arising it is important to give children a choice of their actions so they are not put in situations where they take wrong options. A key area where flexibility is required will include time-keeping. Children with ADHD have a poor sense of time. It is therefore important to help children with timekeeping. While being late to class should not be accepted, help should be given in this area. At school it may be helpful to allocate another child to act as a mentor to ensure a child with ADHD gets to class on time.
• Relationships: This is the third key area that is important in managing children with ADHD who often have problems forming peer relationships and with socialisation. They can be provocative, be bullied and sometimes be provocative victims through irritating their peers. Peers and classmates in school therefore need to have some information in advance about why children are different. Some of the most successful programs in schools have involved assemblies talking about special needs and how it effects different individuals. Children with ADHD can form successful friendships but it requires both parties to understand each other's point of view. For example, children with ADHD need to understand the importance of taking their turn. This is equally important at home where siblings may feel parents are devoting more of their time to their brother or sister with ADHD. It is important that siblings in families of children with ADHD also receive some one to one time and get some attention and understanding of their needs as well. A child with ADHD can dominate parent time and parents should always ensure they have some respite so that they can dedicate time to other children and siblings.
• Practical suggestions for teachers when teaching children with ADHD: Children need to be stimulated within the school environment. Many schools are successfully teaching children with ADHD by breaking down certain tasks into small chunks; experimenting with seating arrangements to find out the place of least distraction (both for the child with ADHD and his/her classmates); and by implementing options such as work stations where children can work individually from time-to-time. There are two main approaches for successful teaching: Firstly distractions need to be reduced as much as possible. Secondly distractions need to be increased to a certain extent to ensure that children with ADHD are stimulated to learn in an effective way.
• Organisational skills: Children with ADHD will lose things. Rather than penalising them for this teachers need to consider not just what to teach students but how to teach them. This means they should help children with their study skills. In a school environment the unstructured time needs to be structured as much as possible by increasing supervision or applying peer mentors.