ADHD: 6 Articles

Help for Kids With ADHD for Back-to-school and Throughout the Year

ADHD August 5, 2021 10:00 am By Joshua Shifrin, PhD

What would happen if four kids with ADHD teamed up to help each other do better at school? They’d create The Homework Squad. Prisha, Mateo, Michael, and Hunter meet and decide to work together for a year to identify and test different skills to help them. Dr. Joshua Shifrin’s book, The Homework Squad’s ADHD Guide to School Success, provides strategies and skills to help kids improve reading, writing, math, listening, memorization, concentration, and more! Here’s an excerpt: We decided to call ourselves the Homework Squad. We made a pact: Meet every Tuesday after school. Research at least one study skill each week to help our ADHD. Test the skills together. Add every skill that works to our super-sacred, ultra-official guidebook: THE HOMEWORK SQUAD’S ADHD GUIDE TO SCHOOL SUCCESS We’ve now met for a whole school year and have come up with over 100 amazing ADHD study skills. KINGDOM KEYS The Homework Squad discovered that some ideas kept popping up over and over again in our research. We decided to label these skills the “Kingdom Keys,” because they are so important for unlocking an ADHD brain. Some Kingdom Keys include: Pace, don’t race. Many ADHD students want to finish every assignment quickly before they get bored, or because it’s overdue. Slowing down can actually help them finish faster. Break it down. ADHD students can feel overwhelmed by thick books, big projects, or long tests. Breaking an assignment into small pieces can be the key that unlocks success. Set goals and reward yourself. Build in rewards for your hard work. Treat yourself when you reach a goal. Practice. Any skill worth truly mastering is going to take practice. We know it’s a cliché, but practice really does make perfect. These key skills turn up in some form in most of the chapters because they are fundamental to developing good study habits. In each chapter, the Homework Squad listed the most common challenges we faced. For each challenge, we’ve put together the tricks that worked for us. At the end of each chapter, you’ll find a fun journal prompt that encourages you to try out one of the tricks and reflect on whether or not it worked for you. We don’t expect every single trick to be a good fit for you (that would be slightly weird), which is why it’s a good idea to try them on for size. We suggest grabbing a separate journal. Go ahead and answer some or all of the questions once you read the chapter and decide which tricks you’d like to use in the future. ★“Meet the Homework Squad, four very different and racially diverse students with one thing in common: their ADHD diagnosis… The tips and tricks, appropriately, are not one size fits all, so readers are encouraged to try them all and keep track of what works… An important, affirming, and beneficial resource.” —Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW

Help for Kids With ADHD for Back-to-school and Throughout the Year Joshua Shifrin, PhD 2021-08-04T21:29:36-04:00

AD/HD Resources for Your Child: Preschool Through College

ADHD October 22, 2020 10:00 am

October is AD/HD Awareness Month, but kids live with AD/HD year round. Magination Press has published nearly twenty books to support your child with AD/HD, from preschool through college: picture books for the younger ones, journals sharing the experience and how-to-manage books for older kids, and guides to prepare for, apply to, and succeed in college. Check out the full collection of AD/HD books here. Books for Little Kids My Whirling, Twirling Motor and My Wandering Dreaming Mind by Merriam Sarcia Saunders, LMFT, explore the experience of having AD/HD and the negative messages kids often hear about their behavior, providing positive messages emphasizing strengths and accomplishments. Hear Merriam read My Wandering Dreaming Mind aloud here. Also, check out this post about supporting a child with attentional issues featuring an excerpt from the Note to Parents and Caregivers from My Wandering Dreaming Mind. Baxter Turns Down His Buzz: A Story for Little Kids About ADHD by James M. Foley, DEd, describes how Baxter Bunny learns strategies to calm his buzzing mind and zooming body. Read interviews with Dr. Foley and with Baxter's illustrator, Shirley Ng-Benitez. Putting on the Brakes Putting on the Brakes: Understanding And Taking Control Of Your ADD Or ADHD, Third Edition by Patricia O. Quinn, MD and Judith Stern, MA, remains the essential go-to resource for kids, parents, and professionals looking for tips and techniques on managing attention disorders. It provides kids with ADD or ADHD with practical ways to improve their organizational, focusing, studying, and homework skills. Read an interview with Judith Stern here. Magination Press also published a supporting Activity Book and book of 50 Activities and Games for Kids with ADHD. Books especially for girls Get Ready for Jetty!: My Journal About ADHD and Me by Jeanne Kraus "Written in diary form, this is a realistic portrayal of ADHD and how it affects children...the narrative is informative and entertaining, and the protagonist is believable and likable. The layout and colorful, fun illustrations do a great job of drawing in readers. Youngsters who like realistic fiction and are interested in learning about ADHD will appreciate this book."—School Library Journal Read an interview with Jeanne Kraus here. Attention, Girls! A Guide To Learn All About Your AD/HD by Patricia O. Quinn, MD, introduces readers to other girls with AD/HD and their experiences. It also provides strategies to manage attention issues and the many parts of life AD/HD affects. This award-winning book is great for tweens! Learning to…Books for Kids With AD/HD Collection Magination Press has a series of workbooks helping kids with AD/HD to build their executive function, empathy, emotional regulation skills, and attention spans. Here are two books in the series: Learning to Plan and Be Organized: Executive Function for Kids with AD/HD by Kathleen Nadeau, PhD provides examples and fun activities to help kids manage time, plan projects, and gets things done. Learning To Slow Down And Pay Attention: A Book For Kids About ADHD, Third

AD/HD Resources for Your Child: Preschool Through College Eileen Hanning 2020-10-21T23:47:35-04:00

ADHD Tips: The Upside of Daydreaming

ADHD October 31, 2019 10:00 am By Merriam Sarcia Saunders, LMFT

October is AD/HD Awareness Month! A child with attention issues is typically unaware when they’re daydreaming or forgetting, so they’re unable to prevent it. When a child experiences constant correction for executive functioning that’s outside their control, they may begin to internalize the frequent reprimands. So, if the behavior is undesirable, they conclude that they must also be undesirable. But because children often find alternate ways of coping, sometimes the drawbacks of executive functioning issues can be flipped to a positive, and it’s important to point those out. Emphasize positives by encouraging activities that strengthen them. If they are curious, what are they curious about? Check out library books on the topic, get a microscope, create a scavenger hunt. Note aloud the amazing things their curiosity uncovers. If they are forgetful, perhaps it is because their mind is so busy! Ask the child what’s on their mind—you may discover something you didn’t realize, and you’ll help them begin a practice of self-awareness by being mindful of their thoughts and behavior. If they daydream, you may find that their imagination is a spectacular thing, filled with creativity and joy. Perhaps they are artistic or tell wonderful stories. Give them a sketchbook to keep by their bed or record their stories to play back for later. Dive into their imagination with them! Find real-life examples of how the child’s positive qualities can make a difference in the world, such as Madame Curie’s curiosity winning her the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, or Neil Armstrong’s risk-taking sending him to space, or how this humble author’s imagination helped to create this very book! For every corrective comment, incorporate a practice of sandwiching it with positives. “You are so observant! But now is not the time to be noticing the birds, we are doing letters. Later you can tell me all about your awesome detective powers and what you noticed the birds doing.” This exclusive excerpt is from the Author Notes in Merriam Sarica Saunders', LMFT, new book, My Wandering, Dreaming Mind, to be published by Magination Press in April 2020.

ADHD Tips: The Upside of Daydreaming Merriam Sarcia Saunders, LMFT 2019-10-28T14:22:44-04:00

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