ADHD Organization at Home, Part 2
- Bring order to your child’s room. Separate ongoing projects, finished work, and school and art supplies into labeled bins, folders, or file cabinets. To make school materials easy to locate by subject, use the classroom color-coding scheme.
- Provide a shelf for books, a bulletin board for reminders, and an under-bed box for old artwork and school papers. Give your child the tools to keep his papers in order—a stapler, a three-hole punch, big binder clips. (For ADD-friendly products, log on to addconsults.com/store, and click on “Get Organized!”)
- Keep extra supplies on hand. Kids with attention problems tend to lose things, so stock up on pencils, rulers, tape, binders, and other essentials. To keep track of his inventory, post a checklist in your supply cabinet that your child can mark when he takes an item.
- Get an extra set of textbooks to keep at home, so your child doesn’t have to remember every book every day. Make the extra books part of her IEP, or request them from the teacher when school starts.
- Simplify the transport of loose papers. Homework, permission slips, and PTA letters are easily lost or crumpled. Provide three clear, pocket-type folders—labeled “Homework to Do,” “Completed Homework,” and “Mail”—that can travel in a bookbag or be slipped into a binder.
- Help prepare for the next day. As your child packs his book bag each evening, make sure that homework is in its folder and that everything he’ll need—violin, gym sneakers—is ready to go. On weekends, help him go through his backpack to remove old work from folders and to check on supplies.
- Reserve a shelf by the front door for items that are taken to school each day—glasses, wallet, bus pass and so on. Hang a hook for a backpack underneath.
- Buy your child a pad of sticky notes, and encourage him to post reminders on mirrors and doors, and other places.
- Give your child a daily planner to keep track of deadlines, appointments, sports meets, family events. Encourage her to keep a daily to-do list, and teach her to prioritize by dividing tasks into two groups: Important (Do it now!) and Less Important (Do it anytime!). Each evening, go over the next day’s schedule.
This article comes from the Fall 2008 issue of ADDitude.
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