Is Your Child with ADHD Heading for College? Take These Steps to Help Them Succeed
Parenting a child with ADHD can be challenging. You and your child have both successfully made it this far, though. Now is the time to take stock in your accomplishments and strategize the future.
Most likely, when your child was younger, a more hands-on approach was necessary. Now that college is approaching, they will need to be more independent of you.
When looking for ways you can help your child succeed in college, consider the following.
Formulate a Game Plan
The trouble with significant milestones in a child’s life, like attending college, is that the child often overlooks many challenges that accompany this new independence. As a parent, the problem with milestones like this is even more profound.
You now have to find a way to gently guide your child with ADHD in their new lifestyle. In addition, you have to accomplish this while remaining slightly less connected than ever before.
Start off on this new challenge by developing a plan together. You’re creating a preemptive strike against chaos. Examine your child’s new lifestyle as a whole to determine the areas you should focus on together.
Create a Schedule
Help your child create a realistic schedule that will be easy to follow. Although the early morning class three days a week may seem like a perfect fit, factor in all the variables in this option.
For example, is it really possible for your child with ADHD to wake up, prepare for class, and be attentive at that hour?
The subject matter might be tailor-made for your child. If the time slot isn’t a good fit, though, consider a more reasonable option.
Create a Balance Between Work and Fun
While college can be an enjoyable experience in the life of a young student, it’s fundamentally an academic experience.
When struggling with ADHD, a college student has many distractions. To help eliminate these distractions, they will need to sustain a balance between work and fun.
In terms of school work, help your child choose a quiet place to focus and study. Your strategy needs to implement a work before play kind of approach, as well. It may be difficult at first, but will soon become second nature for your child.
Use a Calendar
Keeping track of class schedules, homework assignments, and social activities can cause chaos in your child’s life. Struggling with ADHD invites enough chaos already, so do your best to help them avoid this confusion.
In this day and age, there is no shortage of devices or even apps to keep a person organized.
Help your child start a calendar system and show them how to keep it updated. Similar to a financial budget, this is a time budget for your new student. Applying this type of organization will help stop the everyday stressors from clouding your child’s mind.
Research Social Societies
A social society could be a fraternity, sorority, or a club. While many of these societies impart great favor in some circles, some do so at a high emotional and physical cost. Others are simply party houses with fancy names.
Research these social societies to uncover common practices among them. Avoid the ones prone to heavy drinking as there is a significant link between ADHD and substance abuse.
Help your child with ADHD locate clubs and groups aligned with their interests. When your child’s time is spent engaging in healthy activities it leaves less time to fill with unhealthy practices like partying and heavy drinking.
Stay connected
Most importantly, stay connected to your child. Keep the lines of communication open.
This is a new experience for both of you, so be supportive of any struggles your child might be experiencing. Even when you’re a great distance from each other, you can help keep your child grounded in his or her core character values.