AHDHD and homeworks....

[jan9876]

hi
please share your strategies for what worked with homework difficulties! 7 yr old dd has a top up med in the afternoon and still it's really hard going. we start after she has a snack and a short wind down time after school, and then it seems impossible to get everything done. she takes forever to do the smallest amount of work. she is behind in her reading, reading at a level 2-3 years younger, and we rarely get her written homeworks completed.

I had a wobble cushion - she isn't interested in that anymore. i removed distractions, made sure there are lots of breaks, and rewards. I'm not coping myself very well with it, it seems to take over the whole day, and if she has another club on the day after school it just makes it harder to settle her, but i know she needs the club. Im exhausted and stressed by the end of every evening and wonder is it going to get better or worse? as obviously the homeworks are going to get harder.

Any tips? The teacher knows and says just do what we can,so the school aren't putting us under pressure, but i don't want her falling way behind either. thanks

With the caveat that neither of mine had ADHD what worked for us when mine were little was doing homework / reading before school when they were not tired rather than forcing them to do it after school when they were shattered. Meant we spent less but higher quality time on it. Might be worth a try anyway.

Autism not ADHD here so probably no help, but we do written homework on a Sunday. Anything that needs to be done daily is stuff like times tables, which takes less than 5 mins and can be squeezed in straight after tea or before the TV goes on. Reading we do at bedtime so it is part of the "home routine" rather than homework.

What is she having to do so often? Is it a state school? It sounds like a lot of work for a 7 year old.

I've tried the morning before, its an excellent idea, but i have so much trouble getting her ready on time even when she's up early, like this morning i though we could do some reading but she was playing and i told her a million times to get a move on. i would have to then put consequences in and theres enough of that throughout the day already. ill think about it a bit more.

maybe there is something else going on with her? she can't learn spellings or tables by doing them in 5 minutes. it takes her at least 30 minutes to learn a few spellings, as she has no memory and is so distracted. I'm at my wits end as i don't want her to fall behind, and I'm just not doing the written homeworks and sending the teacher a note instead, as i think focusing on the spellings is more important. and she has numbers to do and reading. all this takes so much time! i wonder could she have dyslexia as well :( think ill try to book an appt with the teacher. and try to focus on doing some of it in the mornings somehow.

Our DS is 8, we struggle to get anything done during the week. Homework we do at the weekend.
Reading we try and incorporate into bedtime but sometimes this doesn't work. School like them to read 3x a week which we can just about do. If he reads something other than his school book we'll write about that, they are happy as long as it's something.
Spellings, this year we're struggling but previously we would do it verbally rather than sitting him down to practice. We also wrote them on a piece of paper and stuck them to the wall in the room he spent the most time. This worked great as he'd look at them more, we'd then randomly ask him how to spell... school were great though and although 10 spellings were set, they only expected him to learn 5 which was more manageable.
We really do just the bare minimum, it's not fair to him to expect more and it's not pleasant for any of us if we try to force more on him. He has to work so hard at school that by the time he gets home he's got nothing left.

thanks sleepypaws. i might ask the school if dd can just learn the first 5 spellings, as i don't think its fair for her to have to be spending so long on them. but then she gets upset if she doesn't know them in the test.... so if she is allowed to leave out the last 5 that would really help.

I have tried randomly asking dd spellings when we are out and about or doing other stuff but she gets really annoyed about this she says I'm just doing it 'for the sake of it' and refuses to answer lol. Im trying not to put pressure on her but trying to figure out a way thats best for her to learn, its hard.

Our DS is the same, if he doesn't want to do it then he just won't, nothing will change his mind! When we first told his teachers about how much of a struggle it was they were very understanding. They said they do not want him to go through school with a negative association to doing the work so like you said do what you can in a set time then stop. I think it's important for them to also feel like they are achieving, being able to get 4/5 or 5/5 is so much more positive than constantly getting 5/10 and feeling like they have 'failed'.

It makes a lot of sense doing it that way really. I've requested an appointment so i hope i get the same understanding as you did!

I hope you do, good luck!

Yes our task with spellings was always to write them out rather than to do the actual learning, so it could just be done and ticked off IYSWIM. I suspect he didn't actually retain much of it but he had enough on his plate.

It's likely the teacher doesn't want her spending hours on homework either. Hope the meeting is useful.