UNLOCKING THE SECRET #3.

ADHD Secret #3: Leverage The Child’s Desire for Positive Attention.

Children with ADHD usually crave positive attention while being more likely to have a severe over-reaction to negative attention or punishment.  Using what is called “selective attention” can be very helpful in increasing appropriate behavior while decreasing inappropriate behavior. Begin to pay attention to appropriate behavior through praise while ignoring inappropriate behavior.

For example, your child is wiggling around and making silly noises while you are helping him with homework.  Ignore the behavior and say, “Let’s see how fast we can get this work done.”   When he settles down you can say, “Wow!, you are really working hard and look, we’re almost done now.”  This may be difficult at first because it’s usually the opposite of how parents tend to respond to behavior.  It’s our instinct to jump on irritating behaviors and try to correct them, simply to make them go away.

Without knowing it, we are rewarding the inappropriate behavior because, with these children, any kind of attention is better than no attention at all. Even worse, when we ignore appropriate behavior, we don’t reinforce it. So the child with ADHD doesn’t learn that appropriate behavior often leads to positive attention..  When you use selective attention, rewarded behavior will increase while ignored behavior will decrease.  It’s a parental 180-degree turnaround that can work wonders with a young child who has attention and hyperactivity problems.

Helpful Tip:  Inappropriate behavior should be ignored 100% of the time while appropriate behavior should be praised 70% to 80% of the time at first and then to below 50% as things improve.  The goal is for the child to gradually be able to control their behavior on their own.

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