highly distracted zero focus

Post Reply New Topic

My 7yo son is homeschooled, he is highliy distracted by any sound or sight. A dust particle floating in the sunlight coming thru the corner of the blinds will distract him. His sister has to be dead silent, the cats cant walk upstairs, etc...he hears the tiniest of sounds and cannot work thru it. Also, if it is silent, if no one is in the house with us, or his sister is asleep, he then distracts himself with his own thoughts. He then starts to drift and daydream, stare into space, and completely forget what he was or is doing. I have to CONSTANTLY redirect him, over and over every other second back to task. he is unable to do it himself.

How can I teach him or help him succeed in a world of signts and sounds, and no matter what even in a perfect world he is distracted by himself. It took him 90 minuites to copy write 12 words and 3 sentences, and he didnt even succeed in doing that task. ANd not that he cant write or copy, he can beautifully it just took that long casu ehe was distracted and not focused.



I cannot imagine him in a classroom of 28 kids, I cannot imagine how he will succeed with zero focus and attention to ANTYHING but video games. he can focus on that thru fireworks, screaming children in the house, thunder storms, etc...

how do I effectively help him???

My son is seven and highly distractable, too. We have a reward system to get him through homework. If your son is able to focus if sufficiently incented you might want to give that a shot. Give him a very generous time goal that you think is easily reachable, but significantly less than how long he is taking now. Make sure he knows that the work has to be neat and complete, in case he is tempted to whiz through it to get to more fun stuff. You could give him a daily reward tailored to your son's interests and tastes and maybe one at the end of the week, if he satisfies the goal everyday.

It has helped us. He still takes more time than he should but I did not want it to be too hard for him to achieve success. Plus since we are not homeschooling it gives us some flexibility for when his assignments get longer as the year goes on, which is what they do around here.

For some children with distraction issues, multitasking is better than single focus. Think about a video game, you have to focus auditorily and visually on one part of the game, while moving and manipulating your hands to do something else. For these children, something to focus their attention on while completing a mundane task like copying can actually help. So maybe having a fidget toy in one hand while writing with the other hand. Having a white noise machine, soft orchastral music, ticking, or repetitive noise to block out distracting noises. The theory is that on mundane tasks their mind is not fully engaged so they are easily distracted. This is background, subliminal distraction, not actually doing two tasks at once like watching TV and working on work. Sometimes standing up while working, or bouncing. or sitting on a balance ball, will get the physical/brain connection, just enough to keep them tuned to the task. This is not true of all people with attention problems, but only a group of them. However, I think it is worth the try. Adults who do this wiggle their foot, click their pen, play background music while working or doodle while listening to a lecture.

thanks for the ideas. I used to give him fidgets but he will focus solely on them, but maybe worth a try he is a bit older now. Also, I might try to have him write 3 words, then do a math problem, then a sentence, etc...

thanks I hope this helps him!

I used to drive my parents crazy by doing my homework with the stereo blasting. Sometimes, having one predictable overwhelming stimulus that I controlled was easier to manage than having all kinds of stimulation to screen out. You can try all kinds of different stimuli: strong mint gum, weighted lap pads, strong scents, etc. The idea is to find the thing that overrides all the other stuff.

I didn't figure this out until high school, though - so this idea may be something that has to wait for him to get there developmentally.

MMJMOM

Will you let us know what you try and if any of it works?

Today I mixed up all the work. He stil had his spelling list to copy and 3 sentences, but then he did ELA and Math alternating. He did 3 math problems, and then 3 ELA sentences, back and forth till he was done and it went well.

he then had a fairly long break to go to speech and OT, lunch and back to work but on the computer. Much better today...