Practical time management techniques to help your child with ADHD

Living with ADHD can be stressful for both the child and the parent, and this is especially true when a deadline looms.

Whether you're trying to help your child complete homework assignments on time or just trying to get out the door for an appointment, time management is often a struggle for children with ADHD. By taking some simple steps to make the concept of time more concrete for your child, you can help them learn to adjust their pace to meet deadlines large and small.

Time is an abstract concept; it is a measurement of something that can't be seen, but only sensed. According to Piaget's stages of cognitive development, most children aren't ready to think abstractly until age 12. Before then, children ages seven through 11 function in the concrete operational stage, meaning that they can use logical thinking about aspects of the world they experience concretely.

While it may seem easier to hand children a digital clock to tell time, the numbers just don't mean much on their own. Give your child an analog watch or clock, as learning to tell time on an analog clock creates a strong base for the development of time management skills.

Once your child is accustomed to using an analog clock, place a large wall clock within easy reach of where he or she does homework. For a given assignment, ask your child how long he thinks it should take to complete. (For younger children, checking with teachers about how long they expect a child to spend on homework can be helpful.) With a dry erase pen, mark the clock by colouring in the "wedge" of available working time. For example, to mark a 15-minute wedge of time, colour in a quarter of the clock, starting at the current time and ending 15 minutes later.

As your child develops a stronger sense of time, you can begin to apply time management skills away from the desk. Using varied colours of construction paper, trace a wedge of time on the working clock to cut out paper wedges representing varying amounts of time. Use red for the five-minute wedge, orange for 10, yellow for 15, purple for 20, blue for 30, and green for 45. Label each wedge with the number of minutes it represents.

The next time you need your child to do something around the house within a set period, clearly state the amount of time he has and hand him the appropriate wedge. This concrete reminder of time will help him understand how long he has to work, and will keep him focused on completing the task by the deadline.