10 Strategies to Help Your Child with ADHD Concentrate

This post is written by Kelley Spainhour, a special education coach and health writer on the IDS Clinical Team.

It’s 4:30pm on Wednesday afternoon. 

You’ve just finished afternoon snack and laid out all the folders and all the papers from his backpack. 

You’ve cleared the kitchen table, turned off the TV, and sent your partner out to stroll the baby to rid the home of all distractions.  

You are settling into the dreaded Homework Time. 

This is the time when you lay out your clear expectations with matching rewards and consequences. You are consistent. 

This is also the time when you are baffled by how hard it still is for your 10-year-old to sit for 10 minutes to complete his math worksheet. He fidgets and fusses and finds excuse after excuse until you both are near tears. Your partner comes home from walking the baby, phone rings, dinner calls, and the worksheet ends up half-done and thrown back into the backpack. 

The ADHD Basics

If your child has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), this scene might sound familiar. Children with ADHD struggle with initiating tasks and sustaining attention (inattention), being overactive (hyperactivity), and acting without thinking (impulsivity). 

The DSM IV is a book practitioners use to diagnose and categorize mental health disorders and conditions. The DSM IV recognizes 3 subtypes of ADHD:

• Predominantly Hyperactive 

• Predominantly Inattentive 

• Combined Type 

Common symptoms of the 3 subtypes include:

• Overlooking or missing details

• Making careless mistakes

• Seeming to not listen when spoken to directly

• Difficulty sustaining attention

• Being forgetful

• Problems with organization

• Failing to follow through with tasks

• Dislike for tasks that require significant mental effort

• Fidgeting and squirming when seated

• Blurting out, talking nonstop (mainly hyperactive type) 

• Getting up and running around when expected to be seated (mainly hyperactive type)

Many of these challenges are very familiar to parents of children with ADHD. Take heart, mom. Deep breaths, dad. There are strategies that help. 

Here Are 10 Fresh Tips You Can Implement Today to Help Your Child Concentrate at Home: 

1. Offer Genuine Empathy

It really is hard for your child to concentrate. Research shows there are decreased receptors in the frontal lobes in individuals with ADHD. The frontal lobe controls our cognitive skills, including attention, problem-solving, judgment, memory, language, and emotional expression. 

They aren’t faking this — they are struggling. And they need your support. So be their shoulder to cry on, and biggest cheerleader. Be their listening ear. 

2. Change up the Environment  

Maybe your daughter does work best when she has her work set out before her on a cleared desk in a silent room.

Or maybe she works best sprawled out on the floor, on top of the dining room table, curled up with a clipboard in a closet, using a slant board on a beanbag, bouncing on an exercise ball, or on the front porch. Be open to what (usually) works for your child.   

3. Break up the Tasks

Chunking. This is a word that teachers use to describe how to break up a project or assignment into smaller pieces. Children with ADHD often find projects overwhelming if not paralyzing when trying to imagine how to go from blank page to final draft. 

Breaking up the work helps children gain confidence as they go. It is especially gratifying to use a visual tracker to show progress. Seeing progress increases motivation, and helps propel the project forward and get the assignment done. 

4. Use the Timer

The timer is your friend!  Use the timer to manage pre-planned breaks in the work (see #3 above). 

You know your child best. Does he love competition? Try challenging him with, “See if you can finish 8 math problems before the timer goes off!” 

For adolescents, try the Pomodoro Technique, a simple time-management tool. Set a timer for 25-minutes and work on a single task with no deviations or interruptions from that task. 

When the timer goes off, cross the item off your list and then take a 5-minute break. Go for a walk, check social media, etc. After the break, begin another 25-minute work session. 

5. Stick to Your Routines

Many children find changes in routines challenging. Develop a typical afternoon/evening routine that works for your family and stick to it as much as reasonably possible. That may mean that you say “No” to some activities and events so that you can say “Yes” to consistency and security for your child learning to manage his ADHD. 

When you know there will be a change in the typical family routine, preview this change a day or two before and share what will happen that will be the same and what will happen that will be different. 

6. Movement

Solve equations while bouncing on an exercise ball. Walk the living room reading MacBeth. Play catch as he memorizes the Declaration of Independence. 

Let. Them. Move. 

Increased movement of children with ADHD is associated with improved cognitive functioning.  

7. Music

Plenty of parents and teachers think it is helpful to a child with ADHD to eliminate all distractions, including music and background noise. But, many children with ADHD actually focus better with music. 

Anni Layne Rodgers with ADDitude Magazine writes, “Music is rhythm, rhythm is structure, and structure is soothing to an ADHD brain struggling to regulate itself to stay on a linear path.” 

Music also increases dopamine levels in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps to regulate attention, memory, and motivation. 

Bottom line: let your child listen to Mozart or Madonna – whatever floats her easily distracted boat. It will help. 

8. Practice Concentrating with Games

When the stakes aren’t high, meaning the book report isn’t due tomorrow, practice concentrating through fun games. 

Try a puzzle. Consistently working for 5 or 10 minutes on something that requires quiet concentration will pay off over time. 

9. Accommodations

Depending on the unique academic and medical needs of your child, he or she may need formalized accommodations written into a 504 Plan or Individualized Education Program. Consult your child’s teacher or pediatrician if you think formal interventions may be needed. 

One of many possible accommodations may include shortened homework assignments. So, be an advocate for your child. Ask how their school can better work for them. 

10. A Word about Threats, Punishments, and Rewards

They don’t work. At least, not in the long run. Parents become exhausted trying to enforce limits with threats of new items to take away. 

Shame and guilt just don’t work. 

And, even when there is a positive pressure for desired rewards, children may feel stress and pressure to perform when striving after these rewards. 

Focus instead on empathetic relationship-building and teaching your child strategies to work with and around the symptoms of his or her ADHD.

You Are Not Alone

Raising a child with ADHD can be tiring, frustrating, and lonely for the parent and for the child. But it doesn’t have to be. Try a few of the strategies above and let us know how it’s going. 

Need more individualized help? Contact us here to tell us more about your child. 

Kelley is available for Special Education Consulting in the East Tennessee area. If you or someone you know needs support, email her here or schedule a free consultation. To learn more about Kelley's writing, visit www.spainhourcopywriting.com and follow her @spainhour_copywriting.