Educating With ADHD
17 Sep
At the conclusion of ADHD Awareness Week, it seems appropriate to talk more about the different educational requirements of children with ADD/ADHD. In this article by Thomas E. Brown, Ph.D., taken from his book Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults (Yale University Press, 2005), we learn that there are six cognitive executive functions: activation, focus, effort, emotion, memory, and action. Together they comprise that most complex function of the mind: attention. Many of the “symptoms” of ADHD seem to actually be an impairment of one or more executive functions of the brain.
Dr. Brown states that:
Most persons diagnosed with ADHD report significant chronic difficulties in at least some aspect of each of these six clusters. Impairments in these clusters of cognitive functions tend to show up together; they appear clinically to be related.
Executive function impairment chart shown in the article "Executive: Describing Six Aspects of a Complex Syndrome", by Thomas E. Brown, Ph.D.
Armed with the understanding of cognitive executive functions, and how they can break down, we can easily see how a traditional school environment would not be able to hold the attention of children with ADHD. Furthermore, it is unlikely that children with ADHD would be able to successfully learn and achieve in this environment, which does not generally provide assistance and support in overcoming difficulties with these cognitive processes. Clearly other solutions are needed for these children, ones that help them understand why their brain works a little differently, and gives them tools to succeed.
