With the pandemic still ongoing, many schools have resorted to online classes for this semester which can create challenges for students with ADHD. Now that students are learning from home there are a lot more distractions than in a classroom, and students who suffer from ADHD may have a harder time staying focused and driven when studying from home. Many students who may have ADHD have not been diagnosed with it, which can lead to mental health issues as well.
Along with being a strategic life coach, Janine Wright-Giustizia is an ADHD and executive motor specialist for Thrive Coaching. Wright-Giustizia helps students who have ADHD plan their time and build healthy study habits and she shed a light on some of the challenges students with ADHD face during online schooling.
“There’s not a lot of structure sometimes, especially with the online courses so there’s a lot of demand put on them to figure out when they’re going to do their work or when are they going to watch the lecture.”
One of the biggest challenges of ADHD is not being able to regulate yourself, people with ADHD often get distracted and students may not know how to cope with that and make the changes necessary to improve their study habits.
“There are four main things [to help when building study habits] that come to mind. First, is to set yourself up for success by removing distractions, turn off your phone and other things that will take your focus away from where it needs to be. Adding structure is another whether that’s allotting a certain amount of time into a project or adding structure to what your school day might look like... Some people are finding it really helpful to arrange working with someone else like doing a virtual study session… my last point is if you’re struggling ask for help, talk to the teacher, go over the assignment but get some clarity and find the starting point.”
While working for long periods of time, it is important to take breaks throughout the day. However, it is possible to make study breaks productive as doing too much can wear students down.
“If we think of that [motivation, self-regulation and executive function] as a limited resource. We start the day with a full cup of all those resources and as you work through the day that is depleting and depleting so over time you have less focus; you have less ability to kind of get stuff done. It’s important to fill that cup back up and what we know very clearly from research is that exercise is the number one way to do that.”
Although some students have not been diagnosed with ADHD, they may start noticing symptoms now that their schooling is online as the lack of structure in their lives can get to them.
“Some things they perhaps didn’t notice in a classroom environment is the difficulty of staying on top of their work, not being able to find the starting point or another thing that I hear often is all of the sudden that they’re overwhelmed too much and they can’t sort out what’s going on… As an adult it [ADHD] can be much more anxiety, that sense of anxiousness that comes when they can’t sort out where to get started.”
If students may think that they may have ADHD there are a number of resources online to do their own research, but reaching out to a doctor to understand it better is a good place to start.
“If they have a question or wants to investigate this more, they can certainly go online and find an adult ADHD self-test and just go through the questions on that is a really good starting point to see if you match up on there with their indicators. Then going to a doctor to see what the next steps might be.”
