ADD/ADHD – How Your Child’s Physical Activity Levels Impact Academic Organizational Skills
ByPerhaps your child has had a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD. Maybe you are just noticing some struggles your child is having and you are beginning to wonder. First let’s get clear on the difference in ADD and ADHD. ADHD is “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” which means unusually high physical activity levels at least most of the time. ADD refers to people with many of the same distractibility traits as the person with ADHD but notice the missing “H” or the lack of hyperactivity. To make matters really confusing the official designation of “ADHD Inattentive” refers to people with the distractibility but not having the hyperactivity.
The reason it is important to be clear about the distracted child’s activity level is that both the learning and daily activity strategies and medications if used will be quite different for the two different types of child.
The best strategies for helping a child with high levels of activity will center around helping him structure or limit the direction of his activities. If your child has low activity levels you are looking at much more of a motivation, encouragement and support based approach for helping her get organized for academic success. Often, but certainly not always, boys tend toward hyperactivity and girls are frequently underactive or have normal activity levels.
Both types of activity levels will be helped by some common strategies such as advance planning followed by step by step monitored follow through.
