A Parent's Guide to ADHD and Hyperfocus

As a parent of a child with ADHD, you may have noticed a frustrating paradox: your child can spend hours "hyperfocused" on video games or Legos, yet can't seem to pay attention to homework. This isn't a willful choice, but a core feature of ADHD, which is better understood as a disorder of attention regulation, not a lack of attention. Children with ADHD can focus very well at times and even hyperfocus, but they struggle to turn their attention on and off as needed.

To help your child, you can:

• Meet Basic Needs First: Ensure your child is consistently getting enough sleep, proper nutrition, and exercise. If your child is going to bed at a different time every night, that’s a much bigger impact than most people think! Addressing hunger or pent-up energy lays a foundation for better attention regulation. Consistency is key for building good habits, and this is especially true for ADHD children!
  

• Identify Hyperfocus Triggers: Pay attention to what puts your child in a hyperfocused state. Beyond high-interest activities, this could include deadlines, timed challenges (like "beating the clock"), or working for a reward. Once you identify these triggers, you can use them to your advantage when a child needs to focus during homework, academic projects, chores, etc.
  

• Schedule Wisely: Have your child complete less interesting tasks first. Once they enter a state of hyperfocus, it can be very difficult for them to switch to a different activity. Completing less engaging work while they are still mentally fresh can help them succeed. At Huntington Learning Center, for many of our students with ADHD, we use a whiteboard agenda or paper agenda with a checklist component to get students to focus on “checking things off.” And we front load their program with more tedious work, while saving their favorite curriculum for the end of their sessions.
  

• In addition, as more and more teachers in Elk Grove move assignments and tests online, parents need to monitor their students more closely. When students, especially those with ADHD, are working on their Chromebooks, they have wide, unfettered access to many apps and games, and can become easily hyperfocused on other things when they should be doing assignments or even working on a test! School district Chromebooks do not have the level of security or site blockers that most parents assume they do.