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
3 practicesNobody tolerates something unpleasant for no reason. Before starting anything difficult, get clear about what you want on the other side of it, in your own words.
Something like: I want to sit an exam without being sick, so I am willing to practise feeling uncomfortable. The sentence has to be yours. A goal…
Explain the calming corner on a quiet Tuesday, not in the middle of a meltdown. New instructions do not go in once a child is already rising.
Walk them through it when nothing is happening. This is where it is, this is what you can do there, this is how you come back. Let the whole class…
Whatever the correction is, teach it before you need it. A routine the child already knows can be started with two words instead of a negotiation in front of everybody.
Show them the table, the worksheets, what happens when they finish, and let them try it once while nothing is wrong. After that the instruction is…