Stop Interrupting! Better ADHD School Behavior

How teachers and parents can inspire better ADHD school behavior with help from these impulse-controlling exercises for children with attention-deficit.

by ADDitude Editors

The problem: The student with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD) interrupts the teacher and classmates by calling out answers or commenting while others are speaking.

The reason: Children with ADHD have difficulty controlling their impulses. Scientists believe that a problem with dopamine, a brain chemical, causes them to respond immediately and reflexively to their environment — whether the stimulus is a question, an idea, or a treat. That’s why they often seem to act or talk before thinking, and ADHD school behavior suffers as a result.

The obstacles: Children with ADHD may not be aware that they are interrupting. Even if they are, they have difficulty understanding that their behavior is disturbing or disruptive to others.

Simply telling them their behavior is wrong doesn’t help. Even though they know this, their impulsivity overrides their self-control. Many ADHD children can’t understand nonverbal reprimands, like frowning, either.

Solutions in the classroom

Kids with ADHD need reminders to keep them on target, but reminding them verbally in front of other students only adds to the disruption and can damage an ADHD child’s fragile self-esteem. Instead, try visual reminders as part of a secret “contract” with the student for better ADHD school behavior.

• Develop a gesture or other method of conveying to the student that he is interrupting and needs to stop. Only the two of you need to know what’s going on. For example, one teacher had success with a “wind it down” hand signal in the shape of a descending spiral staircase.

• Post a list of rules on the wall of the classroom. Highlight “No Interrupting.”

• Tape a reminder on the child’s desk with the initials “N.I.” for “No Interrupting.” None of the other students need to know that the initials don’t mean something like “New Inventions.”

• Call attention to a student’s behavior concretely. One teacher uses an abacus. She silently slides over a bead every time her ADHD student talks out of turn. No one else knows what she’s counting. The boy never realized how much he was interrupting, but this repetitive visual cue has helped him curb his behavior.

Solutions at home

Tell your child ahead of time that you’re going to be involved in an activity in which you’d prefer not to be interrupted (say, talking on the phone). Provide your child with a high-interest task that will hold his attention while you’re talking (for example, coloring or playing with a toy). Take a break every few minutes to visit with your child and praise him for not interrupting. You also can use the abacus method, but as part of a reward system.

• Begin the week with a pot of $5. Assign a value — say 10 cents — to each bead. Slide a bead every time your child interrupts, which translates into a loss of 10 cents. At the end of the week, your child gets to keep what’s left.

• If your child doesn’t respond well to the “negative” method, reverse the system to provide positive rewards. Slide a bead for every time your child does not interrupt, to reinforce good behavior. At the end of the week, the child keeps what’s been earned.

• In both cases, take your child out to purchase a treat with the earned money. The one-on-one attention will cap his sense of achievement and provide additional reinforcement for not interrupting.

This article comes from the August/September 2004 issue of ADDitude.

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