ADHD
Love and Support
Students with ADHD suffer from mood swings and most of the time they will start many projects at once but they won’t feel capable of finishing them after their honeymoon has gone. You need to encourage them constantly about their capability and their responsibility of continuing with the task even when the task doesn’t seem appealing anymore. It’s important that you remember this; since most of these students suffer from parenting neglecting at home, and some have been even been psychological abused due the confusion their behavior generates as if they don’t care.
Some students with this condition have been submitted to long treatments of drugs that have made them insecure of themselves even more. Some of these students can present laps of stomachaches in the middle of the class, and in stressful situations their body will reject their meds. Please be supportive the most you can and try not to interfere with their parent’s decisions since it can only make it worst for them at home. Concentrate in your lessons and how to help them throughout the school year.
Discipline
Students with this condition tend to have lots of punishments throughout their entire life. So you will eventually feel sorry for them; but remember that we all humans need discipline for life, therefore do implement discipline in class impartially but remember to do it with the point of improve someone’ s behavior. Discipline should help a person, not destroy them.
Tips for organization
- Color coding: Students with this condition are usually forgetting their personal material everywhere. This is the student that will tell you that his dog ate the homework, but this is the student that indeed won’t be lying about it. They tend to lose or break their mobile phones easily; so don’t be surprised if they forgot their textbook or schoolbag. So, having one color per subject or topic will indeed help them to remember what to take. Also, it provides some sight color fun to their brain.
- Agenda: This is the student that no matter the age you should insist and double check if they wrote their homework because they may intend to do so but they will easily forget in the process of opening their notebook. If you can, do it yourself. Some schools have an interactive platform online where you can upload the activity and also set up some reminders (you should be doing this with this student). If your school doesn’t provide this, maybe you can teach this student how to use their electronic agendas and make sure they set an alarm or a reminder of the activity needed. Talk to parents if they wish to be involved in this process at home.
Social engagement
This is the student that is usually very popular in between students and staff. This student will probably know everyone in the school premises (and its neighbors) since he/she isn’t afraid of engaging in conversations. Also have tremendous social skills that help them survive when things get rough. But, because they get mood swings, sometimes they will end up in social arguments and even in fights. This student will also practice one or two sports, and will show up to your class with bruises or wounds. ADHD is more common in boys than in girls, but given the case it works the same in both genres.
LIDIA AVILES 