ADHD
How ADHD Can Affect Learning
Does your child struggle to hold their attention during class or while learning subjects they find disinteresting? Do they speed through their schoolwork or reading, leading them to misinterpret the goal or message? These are common struggles for children with ADHD. Their grades and interest in school can be clear indicators of mental exertion. However, just like the uniqueness of your child’s personality, ADHD affects everyone differently. It is also important to note that comorbid (accompanying) symptoms, and diagnoses are common.
Potential difficulties may be present in the following areas:
Neurological
- Saliency, understanding what is less or more important
- Working memory
- Exerting mental effort
- Concentration
Language Processing
- Determining the purpose or message within spoken or written language
- Processing all relevant details accurately
Communication
- Accurate conveyance of own thoughts
- Speaking at an appropriate pace
- Presenting ideas sequentially and completely
Behavioural / Social
- Organization
- Time management, task initiation, and task completion
- Task prioritization
- Restlessness / hyperactivity
These common areas of difficulty can result in incompletion of classwork, falling behind the school curriculum, and learning-based anxiety. While these issues seem manageable for some, they can be highly discouraging to the student, presenting as a lack of care in their schoolwork or learning.
During sessions, we tackle the learning-based struggles with your child. Helping them develop the appropriate skills in mathematics, reading comprehension, and writing gives them a strong foundation to succeed in school and life. Building the confidence of a child with ADHD and fostering a sense of pride through responsibility over their education is a fundamental step in developing their autonomy.
Accommodating Their Learning Needs
At Mind Over Learning, we specialize in gaining an understanding of your child, with a focus on personalizing their sessions. By integrating their special interests, our instructors help students in focusing on specific tasks. Pairing this with our structured, one-on-one lessons, ensures students with ADHD will learn in the best way possible. Our recognition and care for each student’s individuality fosters a sense of interest and curiosity, essential for their learning experience.
Through a balance of adaptability and structure, we recognize students with ADHD require an instructor who can hold their attention and interest while learning. To provide a positive learning experience, we build on their success, resulting in an easier process for the student. In each session, our instructors consider and accommodate the student’s daily learning state while maintaining routine, predictability, and stability.
At our center, we offer a comfortable, distraction-free learning environment. By creating a safe and learning-conducive space, with low to no visual or auditory stimuli, we can ensure students are learning in the best space possible. Our instructing rooms are also equipped with ample space for students to move and learn. With our positive and friendly staff, we also maintain a familiar physical and virtual space for everyone.
Understanding Your Child at Mind Over Learning
We recognize different diagnoses or neurological designs can exhibit the same or similar symptoms, allowing us to understand each student individually. Actively seeking awareness as to why symptoms are present, aids us in tailoring our remediation on a causal basis.
The discovery and assessment processes are highly important in gaining insight into the student’s learning experience with us. With this knowledge, we can then pair the student with the right personality, while determining an effective, safe, and engaging teaching strategy for the individual. This also allows us to modify the teaching plan to focus on skills the student requires, not wasting time on known concepts or skills.
Through structure-based learning and positive instructor-student connections, we offer guided autonomy, establishing a foundation for students to succeed and build their confidence. With the consistent use of individualized topics, teaching concepts and skill-building will not be encumbered by curriculum-based topics or timelines. We recognize students with ADHD may require skills to be broken into absorbable segments, and taught to mastery. Learning is not a standardized process, and with that knowledge, we find the best pace for each student to thrive.