Three Most Important Ways to Take Charge of Your Child's Education

Today's blog post features a couple of things specifically for families with children or adults with ADHD. The first is an article written especially for our newsletter by Alana Morales, the author of Domestically Challenged: A Working Mom's Survival Guide to Becoming a Stay at Home Mom. In addition to being a writer, Alana is also a veteran English teacher and the mom of two ADHD kids. Despite being an English teacher, she dearly values her Psychology degree and is impressed at how often it comes in handy. You can learn more about Alana at her website, www.AlanaMorales.com.

One of the best gifts a parent can give their child is a strong educational foundation. Parenting a child with ADD or ADHD and surviving the school age years is a tough enough task as it is. One of the biggest challenges we face when parenting our kids is striking a balance between helping them develop skills to improve their academic skills and allowing them to make mistakes and then learn from them.

Here are my top three ways to take charge of your child's education:

1. Communicate with the teacher. Being the parent of a child with ADD/ADHD takes a lot of work. It is vital to your student's success for you to remain in contact with the teacher. This does not mean that you need to email the teacher daily for reports, but regular contact with the teacher will help you keep tabs on things like academic areas that need improvement, how well medications are working (or if they need dosage adjustments) and how your child is doing socially.

At the beginning of the school year, introduce yourself to the teacher (or teachers) and just let them know that you will be keeping tabs on little Johnny's progress. Many teachers will be happy to know that they have the support of someone at home.

2. See if your child qualifies for classroom accommodations.
Many parents don't realize it, but if you have a child that has ADD/ADHD and it impacts their classroom learning, they may qualify for what is called a 504 plan. At the risk of being overly simple, a 504 plan is a legal document that protects your student and stipulates that the school must make certain accommodations in the classroom to level the learning playing field.

If this is an avenue you want to pursue, the first step is to mention it to your child's teacher. The teacher will then talk to school and set up a 504 meeting. In this meeting, you will sit down with relevant school officials to determine whether your child may benefit academically from accommodations.

3. Be supportive, but don't enable.
During the school years, it will be vital for you as parents to support your child in their education. The important point to keep in mind is that supporting does not equal enabling. Enabling runs the gamut, from doing things like completing tasks for them to making excuses for their academic performance (or lack thereof).

How can you tell the difference? Look at who is doing most of the work. If you are doing more than a minimal amount, you may be enabling. If your student doesn't get something done because they mismanaged their time, that is ultimately their responsibility, not yours, and they need to be responsible for their actions. Just because they have ADD/ADHD doesn't mean that you should be there to rescue them. If they are working on a homework assignment and it takes them two hours to finish, then write a note to the teacher explaining that it was a rough night. Don't write a note asking for more time simply because they didn't start their homework right away - this is enabling.


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