Five sentence summary Telling students to focus is unhelpful and potentially harmful advice. If someone with ADHD is struggling to focus, chances are that they are well aware of this and they are trying their best. Help them by determining if they need to focus right now, identifying what has previously worked in the past, and what tools and resources they might have forgotten about. Brainstorm ways to add novelty, urgency, challenge, and interest. Listen and work with the student. Telling ADHD students to focus on their school work is completely useless advice. It sounds obvious, but I recently read an article for ADHD students that advised them to focus on their school work. ADHD is defined by problems regulating attention, problems in our brains (review the science of ADHD). If we could focus on our work at will, we wouldn't have ADHD. "Try and focus" is a variation of the dreaded "Just try harder" that everyone with ADHD has heard since the beginning of time. We are trying, we do want to focus, we aren't happy our brains are like this, and we aren't purposefully trying to be difficult. Acting as though it is as simple as buckling down and focusing for ADHD learners is harmful and reiterates the idea that this is our fault and it's our own lack of willpower. Although this is rarely the case, it is this type of thinking many ADHD folks have withstood our entire lives. Combine this type of talk with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, and you've got a recipe for alienating a person and lowering their self-worth.
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