My high school freshman son was diagnosed with ADD last spring and is on time-released Concerta during school hours and a low dosage of Focalin in the evenings to get through homework. He is doing better but still is pretty disorganized and has difficulty with memorization (anatomy, for example) and expressive writing. He just seems to lack “stamina” to provide thorough papers, homework assignments, etc. even though he does put in the hours behind the desk.
I’m hoping some of you can give me some advice on how to best support him. We have him enrolled at a private school with small classes and he sees an organizational tutor once a week. Any suggestions you might have on best practices for studying for tests, getting through large research papers,etc. would be greatly appreciated.
I am also working on helping him get his study space as organized as possible with a white board that coincides with his planner.
What helped your child get through high school? (That is, without losing your mind or your patience!) Thanks in advance.
Maybe help him work out his own reward system for completing a task. Done with math homework? Dessert time! 3 pages of English paper written? 15 minutes on Facebook! Reading for history done? 10 minutes of online game.
It is highly likely he can only do homework on full-strength medication, which means getting most of it done on weekends.
Also, have you had him tested for learning disabilities? Often ADD is not the full story. Dyslexia, or some other LD, can be co-morbid.
My DD has an LD that makes it hard for her to memorize, and she spends hours on weekends singing information or using a white board to play the “teacher” of the info–going over and over what she writes on the board, repeating it out loud–in order to memorize. She was told she needed to make pictures in her head, or hear the info through her ears, in order to memorize (she has a visible memory learning disability).
She also uses a tutor who specializes in working with LD kids, and to learn math, the tutor has rhymes and catch phrases that my daughter goes over and over verbally, in order to remember how to solve problems. She can not memorize basic math facts, and has an accommodation to allow use of a simple calculator on no-calculator tests (she got to calculus and they took away calculators for some tests–which was a shock to both of us!).
For research papers, I bought her lots of books off amazon on the topic (paperbacks only), so she could highlight information, use stickies, etc. It was expensive, but I’ll donate the books to the school library–using note cards really slowed the process down. Her writing process became easier over the years, but she still puts in way too many hours compared to other kids. She does take lots of breaks–walks around the block–to refresh herself.
She also shows no stamina until she is right up against deadline.