You pick up your child from his extracurricular activity and tired from your own busy day, you head home. The usual conversation ensues: “Okay, Joey, sit down and start your homework.” Joey says: Nooooooo…I’m tired. I’m going to check my email first.” Then the “wild rumpus starts!” You know how the conversation continues, so I will not repeat it.
The high school years are difficult enough, but when you are going through them with an adolescent with ADHD, it is quite a bit more difficult.
First of all, your husband and yourself must be on the same page in terms of how each of you responds to your child’s behavior, or your child may arguably try to manipulate the parent who does not agree with the other’s methods.
Second of all, I would be in close contact with your child’s teacher before embarking on any of my suggestions. In that way, if your teenager does not complete his homework or only completes part of it, the burden of deciding on the consequences that the teenager will have to face will fall on his teacher. You need to remain your child’s supporter, which we know that the teenager with ADHD desperately needs, instead of his sargent.
The idea here is to encourage your child to do his homework while decreasing arguments between your child and yourself. Here are some suggestions to begin our week of entries associated with the very important topic of helping adolescents with ADHD.
1. After you walk in the door, have a cup of tea, coffee, etc. with your teenager. Talk about anything, but do not talk about his homework. Talk about popular topics, such as American Idol, his favorite sports team, whatever…anything except his homework
2. Tell him in a calm voice and not in a controlling voice, that he will have about 20 minutes to himself, so that he can wind down from his day. Make sure, however, that he is “on the clock,” which he monitors himself. It is especially important for teenagers with ADHD to become accountable for their own homework. If he does not honor the 20 minute rule, the best thing that you can do is tell him with some humor that the time has come to do his work.
3. Tell him that he will be permitted to go on the computer again after completing 30 minutes of work, which he will monitor himself. Do not order him under any circumstances to do his homework, because he will immediately become defiant.
4. On the first day of this experiment, if he does not do his homework after the 20 minute relaxation period, I would remind him once that the relaxation period has expired, and then I would just become involved in my own responsibilities. ( I know that this is a very difficult thing for you to do.)
5. If he does not do his homework at all on that day, I would let him experience the consequences from the teacher. If he comes to you at 11:30 at night crying that he did not complete his homework, I would have another calm and quiet discussion with him. However, this time, I would ask him in a calm voice how it happened that he did not complete his homework. I would then suggest to him that he is clearly too tired to do his homework so late on that particular evening. However, I would propose the idea to him that he might get up early in the morning and just plow through as much homework as he can. If he resists this idea, I would let it go for one day and see how the teacher handles it.
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