The biggest problem we have with Alex (obviously) is his attention. Especially when having to explain something that takes a long time. There are a few things you can do to keep the attention of a child with ADHD. One method is to speak in fragments using pauses. Use whole sentences, but rather than just run all the words together, “pause” frequently. I’ve tried this and it seems to work really well. I’ve actually tried this on an adult friend of mine with ADHD and I later explained to him that I was utilizing the technique. He smiled because he actually listened to everything I was saying.
The best way I can think to describe what it would be like to have an attention deficit like this would be, imagine trying to read a paragraph without any punctuation or spaces! Here’s an example:
howhardwoulditbetoreadthismessagewithoutanyspacesorcapatilizationoranyformofpunctuationforthatmatter
You can get the message, with a little concentrated effort. Now if I told you to read that same message, but as with ADHD, there’s another “message” or distraction (music, background noise, T.V., etc.) in the midst of that message? Like this:
howhardwouldheyhowareyoutodayitbetoreadthisdogbarkingroughroughmessagewithoutanyspacesorcapatilizationoranyformofpunctuationforthatmatter
and in the more extreme case, words being completely annihilated by background noise as in:
howhardwouldheyhowareyoutodaythisdogbarkingroughroughmessagewithoutanyspacesorcapatilizationoranyformofpunctuationforthatmatter
If you read this without reading any of the messages before, you’d be completely lost. So in order to keep the attention of one with a lack thereof you should add frequent pauses in your spoken message again, think of them as spaces in between words as they would be in typing. Think of it this way, you say the first part of your message:
How hard would it be
pause
To read this message
pause
Without any spaces
pause
Or capitalization
pause
Or any form of punctuation
pause
For that matter.
Your pauses only need be a half second to a second (otherwise you find yourself struggling to keep their attention again), waiting too long makes the brain start fresh. Imagine hearing a phrase over a week’s time? One word at a time, not able to remember the word from the previous day? It would be kind of frustrating right? It works (in my opinion) very much the same way with ADHD. You want to break up your message, keep it to the point, and not spend too much time between lines of information.
Now you might say “well that’s not practical it will take me longer to say what I need to”. The point is to be listened to right? Not just heard, not just another background noise. If you notice, T.V. programs jump from one scene to the next (usually with frequent pauses between lines, with the exception of shows like the Gilmore Girls…those girls never shut up!) So if you spoke in broken messages, you might actually be heard! It helps to turn off the T.V., radio, and whatever other background noise can be controlled.
It’s also interesting to note that Alex likes to play chess, hence the logic. Although when we played the other night (and he’s very good for his age) he was doing really well against me, until the T.V. was on! He lost major pieces very quickly and I was playing very haphazardly. When he focused (after Adriane turned off the T.V.) he was able to take a couple of my major pieces and made me work to beat him! It’s amazing what this can mean.
I also wanted to talk about something called emotional intelligence. It’s staggering the relation between success comparing IQ (logical) versus EQ (emotional). I’ll write more on this in another blog so please check back later.