My daughter is still very young and while I do not feel that she has any sort of diagnosable attention disorder and she has never taken any attention-related medication, she does struggle sometimes with the difficulties of focus and attention that many young children face. She is a very bright child, but sometimes learning is a real challenge for her. At times, she can be easily bored or easily distracted. The early days of homeschooling when she was just 5 really tried my patience (and I am known for having a LOT of patience).

I was saddened to read an article in The New York Times recently about the use of Adderall in school-age children, not just for ADHD and related disorders but for normal kids from low-income families who sometimes get off focus or have a little extra energy.

I have spoken with many families and many teachers who indicate that ADHD-like diagnoses are extraordinarily common in schools. With large class sizes, so much information to cover on a tight schedule, and teacher compensation and retention tied to achievement standards, it is no wonder that schools need everyone ready to focus and learn as quickly as possible.

The problem is that we are all individuals and even with the best possible instruction for each child, it will be difficult, if not impossible to get every single child learning at the same rate. Over a period of time, the children will likely average out to a baseline level of knowledge but at any given moment, children could be at vastly different levels of knowledge, particularly in the younger grades.

What worked for my daughter:

1) Follow her interests. Of course, this is a luxury afforded to homeschooling parents. There are no school districts or teachers requiring me to teach a set curriculum on a set day of the week. When handwriting was too combative, we switched to reading and math. We sometimes took a break from certain subjects to come back to them later. We covered what we needed to by the end of the year but in a not-so-linear schedule.

2) Choose your battles. Sometimes you have to get something done on a certain timeline. We had to use “time out” quite a bit until work was finished. But we didn’t want every day of learning to be a traumatic experience so we saved the “time out” sessions for when they were truly necessary.

3) Don’t dumb it down. When it is really hard and really frustrating to teach someone, the tendency is to teach the easiest possible things. For my daughter, this was not a good solution. She would get bored easily if things were too easy or too repetitive. Boredom just makes attention challenges worse. Keep up the level of challenge. Don’t expect perfect understanding right away but keep introducing new concepts. Spark an interest. You will probably be surprised to learn how much your child actually retains.

4) Be patient. For us, all that was really necessary was time. We did whatever we could to keep school and learning a positive experience and praise her personally and in front of people like grandparents about how well she was doing. This year has been a huge turning point for her. The maturity just came about on its own. Her attention and focus this year are much stronger. All of the information from the past two years is still in there and is now being processed in a more sophisticated way. It is very exciting to watch.

As you can see, this is all very individualized, one-on-one attention type of work. If your child is in a traditional school system, it is going to be very hard to replicate this. Some parents negotiate special accommodations with the school system while others find that even with accommodations, their children require more personal attention than the school system can provide are more suited to a home learning environment.

One of my favorite authorities on teaching attention-challenged children is Dr. Richard Selznick. I reviewed his book, The Shut-Down Learner last year (and he has a new book out now). Dr. Selznick consistently posts some thoughtful content and resources through his Facebook account.

Do you have an attention-challenged child? What has worked for you? Please share in the comments.

*I have no affiliation with Dr. Selznick other than being a fan.