Watching your kid with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) read is painful. After much coaxing, your child is finally sitting down and starting to read. You start a timer for 5 minutes of reading time. Then after 3 minutes with just 2 more minutes to go, your lips start to show the curve of a hopeful smile. Then, he turns his head around and tells you that he needs to use the washroom or is thirsty. Can't he just read for two more minutes?!
On the other hand, your child has no trouble focusing at all when they are playing video games. If you allow it, your child could play video games for hours. You begin to wonder if your child doesn't have attention problems.
Why do we see two extremes of the attention span with the same child? Being able to play a video game for a long time is no indication that the child has a good attention span. Almost anyone can play video games for long time!
In the video game, the player's behavior is reinforced by rewards, such as points, level achievements and in-game items. All of these provide the player's immediate feedback and constant stimulation, which can create a reliance on instant gratification. As a matter of fact, the instant gratification is the biggest enemy of focus. It can make it more difficult to maintain focus on long-term goals or tasks that require sustained attention. With the immediate feedback, the player's desire for immediate gratification is reinforced. This also makes it harder for players to tolerate delayed rewards or complex tasks that require sustained attention, such as reading.
Children with ADHD typically have shorter attention spans than their peers. They may have difficulty sustaining their attention for long periods, may be easily distracted by external stimuli or internal thoughts, and may have trouble staying organized and focused on tasks that are not immediately rewarding or stimulating.
Being responsible parents, we all know that we need to encourage kids to read more and play less video games to improve our children's attention span. When we read, we are required to focus our attention on the words on the page or screen and to follow a narrative or argument. This sustained focus can help to improve our ability to concentrate for longer periods and to resist distractions.
How can we make it happen? Divide and conquer would be a great strategy to start with.
Divide
Instead of throwing a big chapter book or a story with lots of paragraphs at the kids and asking them to read, we can sit down with the child and break the reading material into sections. Since the children are involved in the selection making process, they are now emotionally invested in the reading, which will encourage them to finish the reading task.
Conquer
Learning from the video games, we know that we need to reinforce the child's reading behavior with a reward system. When the child finishes reading one section of the book or a story, we sit down with them and ask them what the section is about. If it is possible, ask them to write a short summary. The summary could be as short as one sentence. To make it more fun, we can give points for finishing each section. Younger children can trade their points for toys. To make your life easier, older kids could trade their points for money directly.
Every child is born with their gifts. It is up to us parents to discover them. Kids with ADHD are gifted in their own way. We just need a bit more creativity to find the reading strategy that fits our child's learning profile.
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