How can I teach my child with ADHD to finish activities?

One of the biggest lessons your child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) needs to succeed in the real world is to press on and finish activities, even when she feels bored or irritated by them. You can teach her this lesson by pairing it with a more fun version and a powerful coaching tool -- the Half-Hour of Power. This is a half hour that is fun and sets the stage for success.

During the Half-Hour of Power, your child gets the opportunity to indulge in some fun physical or artistic activity. It could be going for a walk, shooting hoops, drawing, or Rollerblading. This half hour is nag free, meaning she gets to do her activity without being told to get back to work or do something more productive.

The other part of the deal is that you tell her she gets this in return for successfully completing her Half-Hour of Irritation. You can work with your child to design what this will be. It should consist of tasks that are not intensely frustrating, not strongly resisted, but that are mildly irritating and require persistent and consistent follow-through.

As your child learns to push through irritation, she will gain the skills for persisting in the face of even larger upsets and frustrations. A good choice of activity for the Half-Hour of Irritation could be creating a plan for organizing her week, filing papers, cleaning her room, doing laundry, or if she is mastering some discipline such as a musical instrument, it could be some aspect of practicing that is mildly irritating to her. By pairing these two half hours together, your child will have the motivation to complete the Half-Hour of Irritation while gaining the unstructured time she needs to indulge in what fills her with delight.

As your child's coach, you will want to teach him to honor taking time out. Whether he spends some time daydreaming or just plain ol' resting, encourage him to take some time off. Time-outs like these have not been valued in American culture, to our own detriment some might argue.

But you can introduce the notion of the siesta to your family and gain the benefit of some downtime. Plan a siesta this weekend, a period when the whole family simply rests. You can tell your child that taking a siesta means he either has to nap or quietly read.

This way, he will either be building his reading skills or at least learning the wisdom of honoring the body's need to take a break. The American ideal of constant activity in the service of productivity will take a toll on your child. By creating a siesta, your child will learn to honor his body's natural rhythms and may be encouraged to let his imagination run wild.

If you want your child to create new things and be an innovator, it is essential that he learns to appreciate and honor his own imagination and not dismiss it as a waste of time. The weekend siesta can be a time the whole family can use to rest, rejuvenate, and imagine.

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