Helping a Child With ADHD Succeed in School

Develop a Rewards and Consequences Plan

Work closely with the teacher to create a rewards system by which your child can achieve success, key to a beneficial behavior plan. Students with ADHD often struggle with planning and contemplating future rewards and consequences. This makes it very difficult for them to achieve success with long-term rewards programs that are common in elementary school. If a student with ADHD can't earn accolades and rewards like her peers, it will weaken her self-esteem and cause her to stop trying to regulate her behavior and meet goals altogether.

The most widely recommended classroom behavior management system for ADHD is a goal chart with daily rewards. To implement this system, choose two to three behaviors your child needs to work on regulating and state them in the affirmative; that is, wait until you're called on to speak, begin assignments within three minutes of being told, etc. There should be multiple checkpoints for each goal so that regulating a challenging behavior most of the time gets rewarded. Start with daily goals that are easy for your child to accomplish and add more difficult goals as he masters them. Track positive progress by marking times throughout the day only when a goal is reached. Keep the chart on the student's desk so he can see his progress and stay motivated. At the end of each day, give him a small reward when a certain number of goals are reached.

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