Managing Stress for a Healthy FamilyAsk The Expert
Building Better Homework Habits
How to Talk to Your Kids to Promote Change There’s nothing more stressful than nagging your child each night over homework or arguing in the morning about misplaced assignments. In my nearly thirty years of helping kids with ADHD do better in school, I’ve found that nagging and lecturing a child about schoolwork might produce…
Read More“Everyone’s So Tense All the Time”
It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It “When there is no more blame or criticism in your eyes, when you are able to look at others with compassion, you see things very differently. You speak differently. The other person can sense you are truly seeing her and understanding her, and that…
Read MoreAsking Powerful Questions
How to Help Kids Become Independent and Productive Over the years, my tutors and I have homed in on many strategies to help kids with ADHD in school, no matter the area. In math, we’ve taught tricks to learn the multiplication tables and games to master the Pythagorean theorem. For our reluctant writers, we’ve developed…
Read MoreHow to Say the Right Thing at the Right Time
Often people with ADHD have a history of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Maybe we make a cringe-worthy comment we wish we could immediately take back. Other times we don’t know what to say and we just fumble along. Or we monologue and stumble into inappropriate comments. This history makes us afraid…
Read MoreI Don’t Speak to You That Way. Please Show Me Some Respect!
A snarky, criticizing tone is one of the hardest things to tolerate. When it comes from a child, it is easy to see how parents can find it disconcerting. Children and teenagers with ADHD often can’t read the social nuances of body language, facial expressions, mood, or tone of voice. This challenge often results in…
Read MoreFearless Advocacy
Pro Tips for School Team Meetings FOR MOST PARENTS, school team meetings provoke dread, anxiety, and frustration—especially when you’re still new at this. Some of us charge into the meeting like the mighty lioness defending her cubs. Others feel more like the baby rabbit staring helplessly into the headlights of a speeding car. Having…
Read MoreHome-School Collaboration: It’s Important for Children with ADHD
BEHAVIOR THERAPY is an evidence-based psychosocial treatment for children with ADHD. It uses a behavioral approach to provide support on how to change antecedents (such as effective instructions or routines) and consequences (such as rewards or loss of privileges) to decrease challenging behavior and enhance positive behavior on the part of the child. Positive effects…
Read MoreCreating a Cooperative Environment at Home
Taking Stock Are these thoughts familiar to you? I wish my kid(s) listened to me better. I find myself nagging much more often than I’d like. I am not sure which of my child’s misbehaviors I need to nip in the bud now and which ones I can ignore. I wish I had more…
Read MoreAttention Magazine October 2019
Building Relationships in the Classroom
SCHOOL CAN BE A VERY LONELY PLACE for children with ADHD or learning differences. Thanks to programs like Sanford Harmony, their school lives may soon feel far more welcoming. Sanford Harmony is an innovative, social-emotional learning curriculum that provides classroom teachers with tools and strategies that help all students feel they belong and have something…
Read MoreYou Don’t Know Jack: The Teacher Letter
FOR YEARS, WE APPROACHED EACH NEW SCHOOL YEAR with renewed hopes and rejuvenated expectations. Certainly, we thought, this would be the year when everything clicked and our son Jack would take off like a rocket through the academic stratosphere. The trials and tribulations of the last year would be lost like so many discarded booster…
Read More