ADHD Parenting

Ready. Set. Best Year Yet!

Use this action plan to devise the best year yet for students with ADHD. Click each image below to learn how to strengthen executive functions, control impulses, focus when it matters, organize and manage time, build self-confidence, remember not to forget, prioritize important tasks, complete homework, regulate emotions, and maintain motivation.

By ADDitude Editors Verified Updated on October 14, 2024

Maintain Motivation & Resilience

These strategies will help your teen tap into their “grit.”

Teachers and parents can take advantage of these strategies for training focus, combatting procrastination, and prioritizing effectively to achieve the success that drives future motivation.

When we create learning environments and activities that help students feel safe and confident, we reduce their chances of experiencing failure and increase their chance at success.

Does delayed executive function maturity make it hard for your child to achieve his goals? Here, tips for practice, patience, and perseverance for children and teenagers with ADHD.

Traditional carrots and sticks don’t motivate students with ADHD – that much is clear. But these strategies do.

Why do adults and children with ADHD or ADD have strong motivation and executive function for some tasks and never find the cognitive spark to do others? Learn more.

Learn about seven important executive function skills, their relationship to motivation, and how to improve each skill. Learn more.

Foster Friendships & Regulate Emotions

Required reading for any parent whose child has felt excluded — or whose child has excluded others.

Students with ADHD thrive in a positive classroom environment, and peer interactions and relationships play a big role in shaping that learning experience.

While your child has strengths, it is the weak executive functions — the management system of the brain — that affect their social skills.

ADHD can cause specific immature behaviors, causing kids to be an outcast amongst peers. Learn how praise and getting involved in activities can help.

How to help your child make friends (and keep them) this year. Learn more.

Teach your child how to deal with a bully and become an upstander for other neurodivergent kids with these strategies.

Children and teens with ADHD may lose friends because of deficits in social executive function skills – the underlying processes that are involved in social skills ranging from perspective-taking to reciprocity and cognitive flexibility. Learn how to help them.

Initiate & Complete Homework

Research suggests that the soundtrack to your child’s homework should comprise these 21 songs, proven to change the electromagnetic frequency of brain waves for optimal focus.

Learn ways to treat dysgraphia – a disability that impacts writing abilities – and to improve handwriting for a lifetime.

With these homework routines, teachers and parents can replace after-school tantrums with higher grades..

Hurdles with writing trace back to executive functioning — our brains’ ability to absorb, organize, and act on information. Learn more.

12 ADHD-friendly strategies for creating calm, avoiding burnout, and staying organized during homework time.

Spare your family drama and fights by following this homework system designed for children with ADHD and learning disabilities.

Kids with ADHD often struggle with homework, but each one struggles in a unique way. Here are specific solutions that really work for kids with ADHD.

Secure Accommodations & Self-Advocate

These academic and organizational tips are designed to help high school students with ADHD finish homework, execute long-term projects, manage their time, earn high grades, and avoid feeling overwhelmed.

“Daily report cards are among the most powerful evidence-based tools that educators have to encourage better behavior in students. A strong report card system has a few key elements that make or break its effectiveness.”

Know your rights if the school refuses to evaluate your student for learning differences.

8 straightforward steps — from requesting a school evaluation to monitoring accommodations — to help parents develop the best IEP or 504 Plan possible for kids with ADHD.

Learn how to help a student with ADHD understand and communicate their learning needs to teachers and parents.

Here are some of our favorite solutions for addressing common ADHD challenges at school.

Remember Not to Forget

A working memory deficit could explain his difficulty working out math problems in his head or with reading retention. Take this self-test.

Improve working memory in children with ADHD by using these 10 exercises that lighten the mental load by externalizing reminders.

Learn faster. Retain more. Perform better on tests. Yes, really. With these research-based techniques for studying with ADHD .

Educators must do more to support students with learning differences for whom working memory is an area of need. The following are a few strategies and pointers for educators.

Research shows that students with ADHD don’t need to study harder or longer to conquer exams — they just need to study differently. Here’s how.

Weak working memory impairs a child’s ability to follow multi-step directions, tap into old information, or quickly recall lessons. These 15 exercises and strategies can help.

Verbal and non-verbal working memory are two essential batteries powering what Dr. Russell Barkley calls your brain’s GPS system — the one that keeps you on track, on time, and in control. Learn how to keep them charged.

Build Self-Confidence at School

Responding to bad behavior with neurotypical parenting techniques is counterproductive because it ignores the root problem. Here is a better way.

When teens with ADHD feel less than adequate, parents should use these strategies to help them bolster their self confidence, make healthy choices, and develop a positive perspective on the future. Here’s how.

Daily challenges and corrections at school can demoralize a child and trample her confidence. How to end the cycle.

These ADHD teaching strategies will help all students — but especially those with ADD — learn to the best of their ability in any classroom. Get started.

No child with ADHD can succeed at school if he believes he is less smart or less capable than his peers. Here is a better way.

Many children with ADHD, battered by daily criticisms and admonitions, have low self-esteem as early as second grade. Make a powerful difference with these reframing strategies.

Chronic stress at school can make kids (particularly those with ADHD or LD) dread going — and change their brains for the worse. Learn more.

Organize & Manage Time

The most critical tool for building these executive functions? The right planner. Here it is.

Want to make sure that your child gets his homework done every night — and learns about planning and how to prioritize? Teach them to use a homework planner.

11 tips for cementing your family’s routine.

Here, learn how to use calendars and clocks to teach your child the value of strong priorities and to help him be on time more often.

Paper planners outperform digital ones for ADHD brains. Here is what makes a great planner.

Chaotic desk? Forgotten homework? Missed deadlines? Your child needs these ADHD organizing tips.

Reliable schedules for mornings, after school, and bedtime make a tremendous difference in setting expectations, building good habits, and improving ADD-related behavior. Learn more.

Resist Distractions and Focus

dopamine menu lists an assortment of pleasurable, healthy activities — from appetizers like yoga poses to main courses like a HIIT class to sides like white noise — from which ADHD brains can choose when they need stimulation. Learn more.

Research shows that physical activity — even a little foot-tapping or gum chewing — increases levels of the neurotransmitters in the brain that control focus and attention. Learn more.

“Procrastivity” is a self-defeating ADHD time-management habit can be helped by cognitive behavioral therapy approaches that teach patients how to prioritize tasks. Learn more here.

You can’t train away executive dysfunction. But you can more consistently get things done by creating systems in your life that support these brain processes. Get started here.

Soothing, effective fidgets for students with ADHD who focus best when they are chewing, squeezing, picking, or — yes — spinning. See our picks here.

Children with ADHD experience a lower level of brain arousal, which means they are easily distracted by internal and external stimuli. Use these school and home strategies to improve focus and comprehension.

For inconsistent focus, use these teacher-approved accommodations to put some real muscle behind his 504 Plan and put the attention back on learning. Get started.

Control Impulses and Behavior

Back-to-school supplies for students with ADHD — from erasable pens and highlighter tape to wiggle seat cushions, and more — that improve focus, organization, and classroom engagement. See the list.

Educators share their top tips for developing stronger executive function skills and independence in students with ADHD and learning differences here.

The Good Behavior Game is one of many classroom behavior interventions — backed by research — that inspires better behavior from students with and without ADHD. Here is how to play.

Is your child experiencing behavior problems at school? Use this step-by-step guide.

Time-outs and lectures won’t magically cure the impulsive tendencies of kids with ADHD. But these real-world tips for teachers and parents just might.

Lack of impulse control may be the most difficult ADHD symptom to change. Medication can help, but kids also need effective behavior management strategies in place — clear expectations, positive incentives, and predictable consequences — if they are to learn to regulate their behavior. Get started here.

Teach students to regulate their emotions with these ADHD strategies.

Forge Stronger Executive Functions

Executive function deficits may look like absentmindedness or forgetfulness. Learn more.

Learn about your child’s seven executive functions — and how to boost them.

“Executive dysfunction is ubiquitous in children with ADHD, which helps to explain why so many students with attention deficit are reprimanded for forgotten homework, disorganized projects, running out of time on tests, and more.” Learn more.