TIME MANAGEMENT

Today my son had to do his arithmetic homework. My son had been joining the KUMON class ever since he was 5 years. He has gone through number recognition, addition, subtraction and currently he's doing multiplication. He has been quite good in all those separate levels. But problems appear when he has to apply them in real life which in this case mix all the levels in one case.

Being an ADHD patient, my son has problem with his short term memory. Every time he moves to the next level and is busy with that level, he forgets the previous level. As with Arithmetic, he remember the subtraction and multiplication but he forgets everything about addition. As soon as he sees cases with addition he claims right away that he doesn't understand it. I'm still trying to find out how to deal with it.

Aside from the above problem, I manage to find a way out for his time management in doing his work. I read somewhere in the internet that you have to control an ADHD patient focus with a time limit. I try it with my son today. He loves competition, so I challenge him to finish his homework within a time frame and if he wins, we will be doing a game this afternoon. To my amazement he could finish his homework 15 minutes beyond the set time. I am very happy for normally he does it longer.

Time limit is a good tool to make him focus on his homework. Time management is a good tool to help him focus. Since he wins, we both agree on reward scheme. I understand that a long term reward scheme doesn't have any impact on ADHD children, therefore I develop a small rewards that will lead to a big reward. We both agree on the stars that he could gain every time he finishes his work within the time limit.

We both sat in front of the computer and developed the forms. He needs to collect 50 stars to get a new bike to replace the old one. Today he collected 2 stars because he can finish his arithmetic and language lessons on time. We both had a chance to read a story about the invisible alligators that I found on the net. I know that I have to find a story related to the program of improving his inattentiveness. For the time being I took that story simply because he likes it.

Thank you son for making my day!

THE INTERVENTION

I have set up a meeting with a friend yesterday. I wanted to develop a syllabus for my son. Who knows that syllabus could contribute to all other sons who have similar problems as my son. We met in a quite fancy restaurant. She was with her son, similar age to my son and resembles a lot to my son. That little boy was playing with his laptop in the corner beside his mom while I was sitting right in front of his mom.

She explained the methodology of developing a syllabus. I slowly digested her explanation and got a rough picture of the methodology. Just to make sure that my understanding is proper I began to explain how to introduce the methodology to my son's condition. I must say, yes, my elaboration is in accordance to the methodology. So happy I was that I went home and couldn't wait any longer to work on the syllabus. Unfortunately however, I bumped against the stumbling blocks.

The first block came from the fact that I haven't received any confirmation from the neurologist what my son's problems actually. No matter how firm I am with my son's situation I still have to count on any possibilities that is based on his professional (I hate this word ) judgments. The second block came from the fact that since I am not firm on the cause how could I define the intervention program for my son. The third, I definitely can start with the symptoms such as hyperactivity, attention and learning disabilities but how can I define the strategy and the program unless I know the main location of the problem that impacted his psychomotor hyperactivity?

My friend silently wrote down something on a piece of paper and showed it to me. She said, my son is just like your son.