If your teen suffers ADD, you see firsthand how much they struggle with lost assignments, forgetfulness, late school work, messy environments, and other daily hurdles to productivity. You can help them overcome some of these struggles through organization. Learn how organization helps ADD, through practical tips for making life easier.
Specifically How Organization Helps ADD
Teens and even young adults with ADD face many labels in their lifetime. Among these labels are irresponsible, lazy, and careless. But you know in your heart how much your teen wants to succeed in life. So how can you help them do better as part of daily living?
Consider how being disorganized affects your teen. With ADD, simple messes and lost items become the defining factors between success and failure in school assignments and other life goals. But these problems are not a personality problem. Instead, they are clear effects of your teen’s ADD and the condition’s executive functioning deficits.
In other words, your teen struggles to plan ahead, set priorities, start tasks, self-monitor, remember and complete items on their to-do list. Even getting them to commit a to-do list to paper seems like a mountain of disorganization to climb. Knowing these are not character flaws can help you find ways to beat the disorganization and help your teen succeed.
Remember that with ADD, your teen needs solid structure and support. With help, they can learn how organization helps ADD in their life. Through some good habits and your assistance, your young person can excel.
Ways to Organize Your Teen with ADD
Remember that ADD is a condition requiring mental health treatment and therapeutic support. Through this treatment and support, you hopefully gain many skills, tools, and tactics for helping your teen improve their life. Through these treatments and support systems, they pick up on ways to live a more productive life, too.
Strategies for organization in ADD start with dedicating one space at home to distraction-free study. In that space, provide all of the supplies they need to complete their homework or other tasks. Before the end of each day, help your teen review completed homework, listed assignments, and organization of his or her book bag for school.
Label your teen’s drawers, cabinets, or boxes for the items they hold. This makes finding things easier. Do the same for medications. Divide doses by days of the week, so you can keep up with whether they took their medication. Ensure your teen cleans their work space, room, and other areas at the end of each day, for a fresh start on the next one.
Most importantly, remember that helping your child or teen through these tasks requires patience and kindness. The more frustration you show, the more disorganization and frustration they suffer.
Treatment for Your Teen’s ADD
As said before, your teen’s ADD requires treatment and support. For some teens, troubled behaviour stems from frustrations of having ADD or other mental health problems. Therapies and treatments that help improve teen behaviour and daily living include:
- 30 day assessment and intervention
- Individual therapy
- Group therapy
- Family therapy
Venture Academy in Ontario and Alberta provides these important treatments and therapies for your troubled teen. Call Venture Academy now at *DM_DirectNumber format=period orig=(855) 281-5813* to learn how organization helps ADD and how treatment at Venture Academy improves your family life.
