What is it like to have ADD?? Part 1

If you are a teacher and have had the priviledge of experiencing a (or many) ADD students in your classroom, you might have the tendency to say "duh!" to the following list of what makes life so hard for kids with attention deficits.  However, for parents along with new & seasoned teachers, knowing what an ADD child is dealing with on a day to day basis is empowering...for you and for the child.  Hopefully this information can be use to help your child or students be more successful.  The ADD child is misunderstood and as you will discover as you read today, they can be embarrassed that they turn in messy work or do things impulsively. Most of the time I have witnessed (even in my own ADD child) that they cope with the embarrassment by acting as though they don't care.  They need someone who understands how they "tick" in the school environment.  What better person than their teacher to come along side and give encouragement and understanding.  I hope this is a great help to all my fellow teachers out there.

What It's Like to Have an Attention Deficit

*First of all, they all have serious trouble concentrating.  It is hard for them to find the right channels to tune into.  Also, their distraction filters don't work very well.  When a student needs to be listening to a teacher, he or she might be staring out the window, thinking about plans for the weekend, or dreaming of buying a fantastic new bicycle.  Such a student is "distractible."  His or her filters aren't working the way they should.

*Most kids with attention deficits don't like a lot of details.  They get bored when there is too much information to concentrate on.  But as you go through school, there are more and more little details to concentate on, and there are more distractions too.  So, concentration is a real challenge.

*Kids with attention deficits may hand in work that is embarrassing to them and confusing to the teacher.  The work might be messy, or it might have ideas in it that are not as good as the ideas in their heads. ( **have the student tell you the answers or their ideas for a story orally and then grade accordingly)

*Many kids with attention deficits are impulsive.  They do things much too quickly and without planning and organizing.  They have trouble slowing down and concentrating when they work, so they make too many careless mistakes.  Also, they don't do self-monitoring.  Remember, self-monitoring means looking over what's been done to make sure there aren't any silly mistakes.

*While some students with attention deficits are impulsive when it comes to schoolwork, others are impulsive in their behavior.  (Some are impulsive in their behavior and their schoolwork)  In terms of behavior, an impulsive person might get very angry and then all of a sudden hit someone.  She wouldn't really mean to do it.  It would just happen so fast that there would be no time to think about what she was doing and to come up with other ways of handling the situation.  Some impulsive students get into trouble because they do things they don't really mean to do...

Keeing A Head in School, Dr. Mel Levine