Back-to-School Organization Help for ADHD Children

Help your ADHD child get organized to focus more energy on learning and less on clutter as she heads back to school.

by ADDitude Editors

As early as second grade, children are expected to hand in homework without reminders and keep track of their belongings. Planning and organization are hard for any child, and especially so for kids with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD).

Fortunately, organizational skills can be taught. By working with your child to build systems and routines, you can help him go from cluttered to in control — which will help clear the decks for learning.

Solutions: in the Classroom

• Color-code books and materials by subject. Use green, for example, for science notebooks, binders, folders, and textbook covers. Red for math, blue for English, and so on. Keep related classroom books and materials in bins of the same hue.

• Post reminders of procedures and routines. Hang colorful signs to show where homework, lunchboxes, and parent-teacher correspondence should be placed. (For pre-readers, use drawings or photos.)

At dismissal you might prompt: Did you clear off your desk? Do you have your jacket, lunchbox, and homework assignment? Post checklists of procedures, such as those for library research, and hand out three-hole-punched copies for students to keep in their binders.

• Schedule a class clean-up. Provide time and assistance for students to clean out their binders, backpacks, and desks. Hold periodic desk and notebook inspections, and award prizes — a homework pass or tokens redeemable at the school store — for tidiness.

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• Post a master monthly calendar, showing upcoming activities, projects, and deadlines — and allow time for students to transfer this information into their personal planners.

• To help your students with time management, use an analog clock during lessons, to keep track of how much time has passed and how much remains. Make a game out of predicting and checking the amount of time needed for various activities. How long does it take to walk from the classroom to the school office? To complete a worksheet?

• Provide structure for long-term projects, and give ADD students a head start. Break projects into manageable parts — choosing a topic, finding research materials, submitting an outline, and so on. Post deadlines for each stage, and refer to them frequently. Let parents know about assignment due dates.

Solutions: at Home

• Buy school gear that encourages organization, such as a backpack with multiple compartments. Help your child categorize the materials he carries in it — notebooks and binders, workbooks and texts — and assign each set to a separate compartment.

A three-ring binder, with colored tabs for separate subjects and inserts with pockets for small notes, works well. Buy paper with reinforced holes, to avoid losing pages that get ripped at the rings.

One of the best school organizing systems is available for $80 at macroorganizers.com. It includes a binder, notebook, assignment sheets, and other features to help students track and turn in work.

More ADHD organization tips...

This article comes from the Fall 2008 issue of ADDitude.

To read this issue of ADDitude in full, SUBSCRIBE NOW!

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.

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• 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.

To read this issue of ADDitude in full, SUBSCRIBE NOW!