Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD
Focus, starting, and ADHD
Most advice about focus is written for a brain that starts easily. This area is not. It covers what ADHD actually is, how to make a start when starting is the hard part, how to bring a future consequence close enough to feel, and how to stop paying for it in shame.
What works for this
Implementation intentions
Putting things off is mood repair rather than laziness: delay removes the bad feeling straight away and the cost lands later. So the move is not more willpower, it is a plan specific enough to run without a decision.
One move, today
Write one sentence: when it is [time] and I am at [place], I will [the first small action]. Naming when and where is the part the evidence supports.
What matches
2 practicesProcessing speed is the stubborn one. It shifts a little with repeated, rhythmically paced practice and hardly at all with explanation, so say that to a family at the start rather than when they are disappointed.
Teaching a strategy will not make a slow processor quick, and telling a child to hurry up only makes the work more unpleasant. Graded practice with…
Assess, make a plan, do the work, and then keep measuring while you do it. Without that last part you have no way of knowing whether to push harder, change direction or stop.
Use more than one stream: your own measures, what parents notice at home, what school reports, and what the child says about it. Children will tell…