ADD/ADHD
Knowing The Why Behind The What

As a Learning Coach a number of my clients bring with them ADD/ADHD along with their highly visual, randomly non-sequential mental processing abilities. Some of my clients take meds while others don’t. With that being said, if taking a drug were “a magic bullet” to effective learning and performance, I wouldn’t have a practice.

ADD/ADHD has 3 primary symptoms: impulsivity, distractibility and bouts of excessive energy. ADD/ADHD as a syndrome is not one of attention deficit as much as it is one of attention inconsistency. While meds can improve a child’s compliance and help him finish things once started, it does not take care of all of the issues. As far back as 1990 we could see via PET scans that children with ADD/ADHD had reduced cerebral activity in the frontal areas of the brain. This area was responsible for not only concentration and attention span but language development and logical sequential reasoning. The PET scans also showed increased activity in the occipital or rear lobe, the primary visual area of the brain.

You might ask yourself the question, “How do the results of the PET scan translate into anecdotal evidence?” Looking to my clients I can tell you what they report as some of their personal strengths and weaknesses in learning.

· Struggles with phonemic awareness & phonics (they under perform due to difficulty with the fine-tuned hearing necessary to discriminate vowel sounds within words)
· Can learn a word more easily by sight when a word is connected with a picture and the child understands its meaning
· May have trouble decoding words without regular patterns i.e. thought, though, through, cough, rough, bough
· May have trouble with non-literal text and comprehending sarcasm, satire, allegory, metaphor and slang.
· Trouble with spelling (spells phonetically and inconsistently. Memorizes the words for the test but then does not apply them)
· Is a non-verbal processor and experiences delays in auditory processing as he struggles to turn spoken words into visual images
· Poor logical sequential reasoning leads to poor organizational skills and operations that require ordered steps.
· Struggles when writing with patterns of organization in works of compare/contrast, cause & effect, definition and even narration.
· Non-sequential thinking makes prioritizing needs and task difficult
· Views large projects as overwhelming rather than breaking down the whole into smaller steps
· Has trouble keeping one’s space (backpack, desk, room) tidy. Difficulties in establishing proper place, position and condition of one’s things, leads to misplaced items and homework assignments.

As a parent of an elementary school age child with ADD/ADHD, you need to endlessly educate yourself about the various learning challenges which accompany his attention struggles. By identifying your child’s individual learning style and looking for the right extra educational intervention, you can best support your child.