Teaching Children With Attention Deficit Disorder Takes A Special Touch

Attention deficit disorder is affecting many children nowadays and, unfortunately, it's causing teachers to throw their hands up at the profession they so dearly love. Many teachers are quitting and are finding other career avenues because they find teaching children with attention deficit disorder too difficult. Teaching is no longer the straight forward job it used to be. Nowadays, kids with ADD don't listen, they can't concentrate, their attention spans are shorter than ever and it's causing the teachers a lot of frustration. If you're a teacher and you find yourself teaching children with attention deficit disorder, you should try to talk to the parents and you need to have patience. It's going to be a long road but you can get through it.

Talk To The Parents

The parents should be the ones trying to get attention deficit disorder treatment for their child. They shouldn't just dump the child on you, as the teacher, and expect you to deal with it. It's not fair. Hold a parent/teacher conference and discuss the child's behavior, the symptoms the child is exhibiting and try to come up with a solution together. It's likely that the parents are going through the same thing at home. So together, you should be able to come up with a plan to help the child along with their schooling.

The Parents Won't Cooperate

Unfortunately, teachers today are dealing with parents who either don't care or they want to shift the blame onto the teachers for their child's bad behavior. Any teacher who has dealt with teaching children with attention deficit disorder knows this; that parents don't want to believe that they, as parents, are to blame for anything. It has to be something else. It has to be genetic, or problems at school, or anything else besides the job they've done so far as parents. If this is the case, and the parents won't cooperate, then you're on your own. But don't give up, whatever you do. You owe it to the child, and to your job's code of ethics, to do whatever you can to successfully begin teaching children with attention deficit disorder. It takes a special touch, it takes patience, and it takes a lot of knowledge regarding the disorder; but it can be done.

So if you find yourself teaching children with attention deficit disorder, don't just quit. Try to find a solution. Work with the parents. Work with the children themselves. Do everything within your power to guide that child, to show him or her the correct way to behave, how to learn, and how to succeed. Only then can they ever hope to grow into fully functioning adults. And imagine how proud you'll be when you know that you had a hand in that successful transition.