Let’s face it. Taking a test is a stressful experience for almost everybody. I mean, you’re being quizzed on what you remember from weeks and weeks of classes in a silent room and you can’t ask for help. How could it not be stressful, right?

For kids with ADHD, test taking can be extremely frustrating. There are so many distractions! If you’re testing in a room with other kids, you can easily spend the entire testing period just watching them. And trying to organize your thoughts and focus under pressure can make it almost impossible for your brain to function at all.

Not all homeschoolers administer standardized tests, but usually there will come a time when our kids have to take an exam of some kind. We’ve learned some great test taking tips for ADHD kids that we’re happy to share with you today!

Test Taking Tips for ADHD Students

Rest and eat well before the test.

Getting plenty of sleep the night before the exam is critical to doing well. Unfortunately, resting in general can be difficult for kids with ADHD, so we can help our kids by establishing a good bedtime routine before the exam, so that they’ll be in the habit of preparing for sleep long before they face the anxiety of testing day.

Earlier in this series, we talked about the value of a protein-heavy diet for people with ADHD. Eating a good meal with plenty of protein before an exam can also make it easier for the ADHD brain to focus on the material at hand.

Practice, practice, practice.

Practice exams are an excellent way to help kids prepare for the big day. If you’re creating and administering your own tests for your homeschool, such as for a subject exam, give your kids a few pop quizzes on concepts they’ve mastered. These smaller quizzes can help them isolate key concepts to study for the full test later on.

If your kids are getting ready for a standardized test, take advantage of online practice tests. There are practice tests for the ITBS, CRCT, SAT, ACT, and just about any other standardized test you can think of. When you administer the practice exam, try to recreate the testing environment: no talking, no bathroom breaks, and a set time limit. This will make the actual test experience a little less frightening.

Sit in the front of the room.

This one is a tip that personally works for me. I attend college online, but I had to take a few final exams on campus last semester. It was the first time I had taken a standardized test in over a decade, so I was not thrilled.

This time, though, I sat in the very front row of the class. The room was full of people, but I hardly noticed them. It was just me and the Scantron. That was a huge help, because I had very little to distract me.

If your child will be taking a test in a group, encourage him or her to sit as close to the front of the room as possible. Cutting down on visual distractions can go a long way to test taking success.

Get even more test taking tips for homeschoolers, including kids with ADHD, in our free printable “Test Taking Strategies for Homeschoolers”! This printable includes five suggestions that kids can use during the test to make it easier to pass their exams the first time. Download your free copy below!

>>>>> Test Taking Strategies for Homeschoolers <<<<<

Have your ADHD kids struggled with test taking? How do you help them conquer their pre-exam butterflies? Tell us your suggestions in the comments!

Don’t miss these other posts about teaching children with ADHD!

Plus, get even more suggestions for homeschooling kids with ADHD successfully in my book Homeschooling with ADHD!

This post is part of 31 Tips for ADHD Homeschooling series! Stop by tomorrow for Day 26: Managing Screen Time for Kids with ADHD!

If you have kids who are living with ADHD, you’ve probably experienced this scenario:

You assign your child some schoolwork. You walk away. You come back 15 minutes later and your child is sitting in the exact same position he was in when you left. You look at the schoolwork. He has managed to write his name and that’s it.

You ask: “What have you been doing all this time?!?” The answer you get is: “Um….” or “I don’t know. I was just….”

As frustrating as this sounds, it is pretty normal. Since kids who have ADHD have a hard time maintaining their focus long enough to finish something, it can seem as if your child will never learn how to do his schoolwork without you standing right there.

The good news is that our kids with ADHD can learn how to work independently, but they’ll need some help from us to do it.

Tips for Helping Kids with ADHD to Work Independently

Start with bite-sized assignments.

Start small, and I mean very small. If you use worksheets, assign your child ONE problem or question and ask him to complete it before you come back into the room. If that goes well, assign ONE more. If that one goes well, assign ONE more, then stop.

At this point, it doesn’t matter if the work is done correctly. It may not be. In fact, your child’s answers may not even be in the same galaxy with the right answer. But if he did the work on his own, that’s a victory for that day.

Stay close to your child while he works.

I got this idea from a fabulous blog post by Coach Carlene, and it really does work. Stay in the same general vicinity with your child. Don’t stand around waiting for her to finish, because that can just make her anxious. But remain near enough to observe discreetly.

When Tigger does her independent work, I try to stay nearby. If she’s at the dining room table, I’ll use that time to clean the kitchen. If she’s working on the sofa, I’ll go fold laundry on the other side of the living room. Just having me in her line of sight does wonders for her focus.

Give lots of praise.

When your child completes something on his own for the very first time, shower him with praise! Don’t focus on the accuracy of the work. Even if it’s accurate, that’s not the goal (yet).

The goal is for him to stick with his work without needing you to prod him along. If he does that today and you give praise for it, he’s more likely to try again tomorrow.

Have you had trouble helping your kids with ADHD work on their own? How do you encourage them to work independently? Share your tips in the comments!

This post is part of the 31 Days of ADHD Homeschooling series! Stop by tomorrow for Day 23: Homework Strategies for ADHD Kids!

We’ve been talking about ADHD all month long – what it is, how it affects people who have it, and how the brain of a person who has ADHD operates. If you’re just finding our series or if your eyes have glazed over because of all the posts so far, don’t worry! Today we’re going to start talking about what we can do to help our kids with ADHD learn. 🙂

One of the main concerns for people who have ADHD is maintaining focus, not just attention, but focus. Focus is what helps us start a project, pay attention to it, and complete it. For many people with ADHD (like myself), starting projects and assignments is easy. It’s the finishing that gives us the most trouble.

If you’re homeschooling (or even if your kids attend public school), they’ve got to learn how to finish their assignments, whether they have ADHD or not. But if you’re teaching them at home, you’ll have a lot more room to adapt as a teacher. So – here are a few homeschool teaching tips for ADHD kids that you can try this week!

Homeschool Teaching Tips for ADHD Kids

Use lots and lots of energy.

Now when I say “lots of energy”, I mean LOTS OF ENERGY. Think Robin Williams in Dead Poets’ Society. Stand on tables, jump up and down, burst into song in the middle of a sentence…you get the idea. And I’m only half joking.

The days that our school lessons went the best were the days that I came out and put on a show during class. When I make the lesson memorable, the kids pay attention and do a better job of focusing. Not only that, they actually remembered it the next day. (My personal struggle is being consistent with this, which as a mom with ADHD, I’m not.)

Remove any distractions.

Depending on the type of stimuli your children respond to, you might have to get rid of lots of things in your school space. My kids are easily distracted by visual stimuli, so I had to take down my beautiful map of the world which hung on the wall in front of our dining room table.

I loved that map, but every time I stood in front of it to teach, my kids’ eyes went directly to Murmansk, not me. Our homeschool room is pretty boring now, but the kids have done better work this year.

Separate siblings, if necessary.

As much as I liked the idea of a one-room schoolhouse type of class, I ended up having to separate some of my kids, especially during certain subjects. My two oldest kids are very competitive, and the younger one will try to rush through his work to catch up with his older sister.

So I started having him do his work separately. Without that peer pressure, his work improved immensely. Plus, Tigger had an easier job staying focused on her lessons.

Do you have any tips for teaching kids with ADHD? Feel free to share them in the comments!

This post is part of the 31 Days of ADHD Homeschooling series! Stop by tomorrow for Day 22: How to Get Your ADHD Child to Work Independently!

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably been there. Standing in front of your child, struggling to keep your voice calm while saying, “I’m going to count to five, and if you don’t stop screaming by then….” In fact, I think I just did this a few days ago.

Lots of parenting books offer suggestions for how we can help kids to calm down and listen, but there aren’t a lot of books about how parents can calm down. All parents get frustrated and irritated by their kids, but for parents with ADHD, these everyday irritations can lead to major blowups.

For the longest time, I couldn’t understand why I had days when I was perfectly equipped to manage my kids and then I had days when every little thing they did would set me off. But that’s the inconsistency of ADHD for you. I’ve also learned that there are certain “triggers” that cause me to overreact and, now that I know what they are, I’m having an easier time managing my emotions.

So, today I’m sharing a few of my personal calming tips for parents with ADHD!

Calming Tips for Parents Who Have ADHD

Identify your “buttons”.

As I mentioned above, the first thing I had to do was to pay attention to my “buttons”. You know, the ones that kids always find a way to push? 🙂 These buttons are different for every parent. Some parents are oblivious to loud noise and don’t mind it at all. Others need a quieter atmosphere.

Here’s my trigger: Noise from several sources ALL AT THE SAME TIME. And, of course, I decided to have four children who tend to recreate this exact environment. When I have one child on the floor shouting “Mom!”, while another is in the kitchen doing schoolwork and shouting “Mom!”, and two more are in the room calling “Mom!”, I tend to lose it.

So, my solution is to avoid that scenario whenever possible. I set one child up with an activity, then another, and another – until everyone has something they are assigned to do. I tell them to come and sit down in the living room quietly when they finish and then wait for me to explain the next thing. That keeps everyone from yelling “Mom!” at the same time.

Know your limits.

Stop overcommitting. Just stop it. And I know this is hard for a lot of us who are living with ADHD, because we really do want to do every single thing. But overcommitting puts such a strain on your brain, which may already be not performing at its best, that it can make you into an angry mom.

I’ve been attending college, working, and homeschooling my kids for the past couple of years. It was going fairly well until my husband went back to work full-time this past summer. He had been saving me by watching the kids when I studied. But after that, it was totally on me to keep the kids on task with their schooling, take care of the house, get my work done, and take my classes. Suddenly, I turned into some kind of Mother/Incredible Hulk hybrid. It was not pretty.

Recently, I’ve been reevaluating my choices, which I’ll talk about in a future post. And I’ll be cutting some of my obligations back, so that I can go back to happy mama mode again.

Cut out the multitasking.

Okay, this one is particularly hard for many parents with ADHD. If you have a brain that’s going in multiple directions, you’re probably used to feeling like Stretch Armstrong. (Remember those stretchy dolls you can pull in all directions?)

Unfortunately, that’s our natural inclination but it’s usually not the best thing for us. Many people with ADHD perform best when they can do lots of things in a single day, but one thing at a time. And I’ve found that to be true.

If the kids are in the living room watching TV and I’m trying to study, I’m going to be irritable when they interrupt me. (Which they will.) Now I know better. I sit out there with them and do something that doesn’t require intense concentration, like meal planning or writing a post like this. That way, I’m less irritated by interruptions, which keeps me calm.

Have you struggled with keeping your cool as a parent? Share your calming tips for parents with ADHD in the comments!

This post is part of the 31 Days of ADHD Homeschooling series! Stop by tomorrow for Day 20: How to Use Worksheets with Your ADHD Child!

Have you ever had a day when your child just didn’t want to do anything related to school? And I mean, nothing. No writing, no reading, no drawing, no math, no nothing.

Since we’re currently homeschooling three kids, there’s usually one that is just not in the mood for school that day. Initially, I thought that I should just give them a day or two off, but when those uninspired days stretch into weeks, then we have a problem.

All kids need to form connections to what they’re learning, but children with ADHD need to do so even more. Developing a strong interest in the subject at hand is generally the best way to help kids with ADHD maintain their focus. (This explains why some kids with ADHD can watch TV for hours on end, but won’t sit still to read.)

What can you do when your ADHD child is feeling uninspired? Here are a few suggestions to help you motivate your ADHD child to learn!

Image: danilkorolev / Dollar Photo Club

How to Inspire Motivation in ADHD Kids

“Strew” Their Path with Various Subjects

If you’re familiar with the philosophy of unschooling, you already know all about “strewing”. (If you’re unfamiliar with it, this is a great book about unschooling.) We’re not unschoolers, but I love the art of strewing our kids’ paths with all kinds of things. I might get a book that covers a new topic or have the kids watch a short documentary about a part of the world we’ve never covered. There’s usually something they see that makes them want to know more.

Strewing is especially helpful for preparing the ground when you’re ready to introduce a new concept. For instance, if I know we’re going to talk about East Asia in an upcoming geography lesson, I might learn how to say a few words in Japanese and mention them at the dinner table. Then, the kids generally want to know more about Japan, which makes the subject much more interesting when we cover it in depth later.

Focus on Their Strengths

If your child has already expressed specific interests, make those the focus of your lessons for a while. The unit study approach is great for this. My boys are in a huge construction phase right now. Just about anything with a dump truck or a cement mixer on it is right up their alley.

So, we’ve been reading books about construction equipment, looking at videos of the building process, and making shape structures. I’ll probably find a way to weave in the history of construction, basic Spanish words and ASL signs about building, and more so I can cover multiple subjects.

Help Them Set Goals

We talked about the importance of setting learning goals for kids with ADHD yesterday. Goals are an extremely helpful way to motivate kids to learn. They can be especially helpful for kids who have short attention spans. When we sit down to go over a subject that I know one of the kids doesn’t like, I let them know right away how much we’ll be covering.

For example, Roo doesn’t have much interest in math, so when we begin a lesson on Khan Academy I tell him, “We’ll do your mastery challenge and then we’ll do review one concept.”  That way, he knows how long he’ll have to sit down and pay attention. When I forget to do this, I hear “How much longer, Moooommmm?” for the entire lesson. 🙂

How do you handle it when your kids with ADHD don’t feel like learning? Tell us about your experience in the comments!

This post is part of the 31 Days of ADHD Homeschooling series! Stop by tomorrow for Day 14: How to Get Your ADHD Child to Learn a Subject He Hates!

Try these other tips for teaching children with ADHD!

And see more ideas on my ADHD Homeschooling Pinterest board!

If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you may recall seeing our ADHD homeschool schedule for this school year. Well, we’re about two months in, and I’ve already changed it.

We still do most of the activities on the schedule, but the time and general format of the day has evolved quite a bit. When you’re homeschooling children with ADHD, you have to start with a regular daily routine. Once that’s established, you can begin developing your homeschool schedule. Our problem was that I started the schedule before the routine was in place. Bad idea.

So, today I’m sharing a few suggestions for how to develop a good homeschool schedule for ADHD kids. If nothing else, you can learn from me about what NOT to do. 🙂

How to Develop a Homeschool Schedule for ADHD Kids

Start with the most important subjects first.

In our original schedule for this year, we started with copywork, math, and reading. That seems to work and I didn’t change it. In our family, handwriting, math, and reading are our most important subjects, so we schedule them first.

If we get the morning off to a good start, it’s usually the best time of day for our most intensive lessons. Tigger, in particular, struggles with concentrating on her math work. She does best when it’s one of our first subjects of the day.

I’ve also noticed that she tends to do her math assignment and then promptly forget how to do it later. A few times a week, I give her a worksheet in the afternoon that contains the same concepts we learned that morning. Then she remembers it better and I don’t have to start from scratch during the next lesson.

Make room for their personal interests.

Do your kids have a favorite subject? If so, make plenty of room for that in your schedule. People with ADHD may struggle to pay attention in most areas, but if the subject is something they love, they can stay on it for hours at a time. This is called “hyperfocus“.

Roo can play with Legos for hours. Literally, hours. Tigger can read books for hours. Both of them lose interest in math within about 20 minutes. 🙂 So, if they’re enjoying an activity or a lesson, I don’t insist on stopping it at a certain time. As long as they’re interested, I let it continue (within reason, of course).

Generally, I schedule room for their interests after lunch. That way, I don’t have to rush them through something so that we can complete another subject.

Be willing to make adjustments.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve had to tweak our schedule already, and that highlights an important part of homeschooling kids with ADHD: flexibility. Since the ADHD brain operates sporadically, there’ll be days when your kids seem “on” and days when they seem “off”. Sometimes they’ll even switch between “on” and “off” in the same day, or even within the same hour.

While you’ll want to maintain the same general routine, you may have to move a few things around or even skip a couple of subjects. That’s why it’s important to schedule your most important subjects first. Once those are taken care of, you won’t feel so much pressure to complete every other thing if your kids are having an “off” day.

Have you made a homeschool schedule for ADHD kids? Do you have any tips to share? Tell us about your experiences in the comments!

This post is part of our “31 Days of ADHD Homeschooling” series! Stop by tomorrow for Day 10: The WORST Homeschooling Method for Kids with ADHD!