adhd - Homework problems and solutions

Often children's struggle with homework is not caused by a  lack of understanding of the task or concepts. Rather, the work and the situation have a long negative emotional history. This negative emotional arousal blocks the child's access to their skills and abilities. That is, emotional arousal that is triggered by the books, papers and other materials drains their attentional resources so that they do not have enough to complete their homework.

Therefore, before helping them with the substantive aspects of their homework, you should make sure that their knowledge and performance is not being blocked by emotional arousal. You can use WebCAER to do this by putting the difficult task on the screen between the lights. (narrated slide on how to do thislink to 122-46)

You can do this a couple of ways. If it is on a piece of paper, like a worksheet, then it is often easier to use some masking tape to tape it over the screen so that the lights still appear on either side of it.

Or, try taking a digital picture (with your camera or phone) of your child's difficult school papers, homework assignments, tests or difficult pages out of their book. Display these on the monitor, between the WebCAER lights. How to do this is described in the "Creating Sound and Image files" article.

Have them look at the homework material and think about the bad feelings it causes. As they look at the image, have them actually try to conjure the bad feelings.

Once they get into those unpleasant feelings, have him follow those feelings to all the other places they remember them, while they watch the lights. Then watch the lights until the bad feelings are gone. Repeat until he cannot conjure any bad feeling looking at the image

After the feelings have subsided, have them try to continue to do their homework while it is still present on the screen. It is often useful for them to alternate between trying to solve the problem and watching the lights.

Have them alternate between working on their homework and watching the lights every 5 or 10 minutes until their  doing the homework becomes notably easier. Many times, you will find that once the emotional arousal is down, they are easily able to proceed without any substantive help from the parent. It is always better for them to be able to solve the problem than for you to do it for them.

Whenever they get stuck doing homework, they should watch the lights a few minutes, until they feel more relaxed. This will make it much easier for them to be productive.