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I'd love to hear about what you find to be effective when teaching students with ADHD. I have read a bit about it and I've talked to lots of parents and teachers... anyway, I'll chime in later, would love to hear our thoughts

I'm sure that if I had grown up in the 90s instead of the 50s, I would have been labeled ADD. Those of us born in 1948 just got things like this:

"James needs help in learning to listen to and follow directions."

I had that checked every report card, with my name of course.

In fact, it took me many years to learn how to DELIBEREATELY ignore fools, some of whom were my teachers.

I have some trouble with ADHD students, for obvious reasons, but I have more in common with them then with the "normal" students, who think slower.

The ADD and ADHD students sometimes vex me, but often they are also the most interesting of my students.

Gary, that makes two of us. I'm still not entirely convinced that ADD is just a fabrication to make it easier for teachers to avoid having to learn how to deal with boys. AMEN to your 2nd comment!

I agree with you guys. ADD and ADHD seem so overdiagnosed that I sometimes informally use the label "Y chromosome syndrome" to describe boys with normal behavior.

For normal active kids, you need to keep the activities interesting and at an appropriate level of difficulty, maintain high rates of positive reinforcement, and have an overt and predictable routine.

Now if the kid really has an attention deficit, it will be impossible for him or her to focus even on a favorite activity for more than a few seconds. Of course you won't know what the child's behavior is like outside of lesson time, so you'll need to talk to the parents about the child's ability to focus during other activities.

I may have also been labeled ADD as a child if they had such a diagnosis back then. However, my behavior was strictly due to abuse and treating me with drugs would have made it worse I'm sure. I know from speaking with a friend who is a psychologist that abuse in homes and school these days is astronomical in proportions (over 80% kids today experience some form of abuse), so I always keep that in mind when working with kids that I suspect are being treated for ADD/ADHD.

I also know that diet is a huge contributor to these disorders and the American diet is rife with sugars and white flour to the point where it makes such symptoms worse.

Both of these are things I cannot change. It's not my job to diagnose or try to resolve unless, of course, I have some kind of proof there is abuse going on. Most often it's emotional though, and that is very hard to make a case for.

I try to make lessons as safe an environment as possible for them, and orderly. These two things are great for all kids, but especially necessary for ones who are exhibiting such symptoms. The ones with seemingly difficulty sitting still or paying attention will need far more structure in the lesson, perhaps visual ways of showing them how they are doing and what's coming up next.

These specific methods have been discussed in the past, so please do a search on this site for them. Also, if you have a particular student that you are teaching that you suspect has ADD/ADHD, let us know specifically what he/she is doing and we can try to address that. Each child is different and you need to first think of the broader issue of what ADD kids need before developing a specific regimin that will help.

I have had learning difficulties my whole life. I am dyslexic, memory problems.

I can learn most everything but I learn more slowly and often have to arrange things differently to learn things than what other people would learn it which often drives people cracy. I have to tell people that they have to write things down because I will not be able to remember things short term.

It would he helpful if you described some of he problems because ADHD is a huge subject.

So things related to piano playing. Do they play without mistakes. Do they look at the music and not their hands.
Can they count? How do they practice? Can they play a scale?
Are they 12 or 112? Are they able to express themselves or are they not able to expess themselves in words. How long have they been playing piano, 3 months or 3 years?

Why do you think they are ADHD? Why don't you think they are not dyslexic? What method books are you using to teacher this student or all your students? How long have you been teaching piano 6 months or 6 years? Why wouldn't you post anything about the person's piano difficulties so you can get relevant feedback?

I have attention issues. My problems stem from my mind constantly racing, resulting in difficulty in focusing. I've been like this since childhood. I've always been able to pick things up quickly or fake them, so it never seemed apparent as a child, so it was never really noticed, or labeled. But as I get older, I've noticed more and more of a problem, and have been able to rationalize it out. Maybe this can help you figure out what might be going on with some your students, music-wise, and figure out what methods you can use to help them.

1. I click out while playing all the time. I can be reading sheet music, and if I know a part well, I just play and start thinking about something else. Then I realize what I'm doing and often have no idea where I am in the music and just stop.

2. I get extremely impatient with sections I'm having problems with. If I'm having a hard time with a passage, it's hard to slow down and focus. So my brain starts going, from why I can't do this to I am so annoyed I can't do this. Then I just go on to something else. There are days I can turn off the chatter in my brain and just focus, and I fix these areas.

3. It's hard to play slowly. Especially if you know how something sounds and you play to keep up with the soundtrack in your head. My hands are racing along with my brain. Along with this has come with problems playing through mistakes. When I mess up I want to start all over to try to make it sound right. This is obviously not a good way to go about learning things, and things start out great and the end is always bad.

4. If I can do something initially, I think I have it and then I move on. This is an issue when playing. I can play something pretty well a few times in a row, think I have it, and move on. Then when it becomes lesson time, I don't have it.

5. I can also look you dead in the eye, listen to you explain something to me, catch a few key phrases here and to make the proper responses to what you're saying, but my mind has wandered so far off I really didn't take it in. So if you explain to me how best to practice something, I only heard chunks and promptly forget. It can get embarrassing asking someone over and over to repeat. (And annoying - I know I hate repeating myself!)

6. If I am super interested in something, the opposite occurs. For example, when reading, if I am reading something fascinating, I won't stop. I've gone through 8-hour marathons of reading, because I'm so wrapped up in it I won't put it down. I won't realize I haven't eaten, or heard the phone ring. But if I have to read something not so interesting, I'll read over it and not comprehend a single thing. Sometimes I'll go through a page or two, my mind will drift, and I have no idea what I just read. This may happen several times in a row. I just lose focus that fast, and I don't even realize it at the time. If I have a piece I'm working on that I happen to like a lot, I will zero in on it and often ignore other assignments or exercises.

7. I often look for the shortest route so I can do something else.


In a nutshell, my mind races so fast sometimes I don't know how it got from one place to another, and it happens in a matter of seconds. It has gone on many years, I've sub-consciously developed coping mechanisms to function normally. Its seems like such a simple fix - clear your head and focus solely on the task at hand. But then you get frustrated because you can't, and that leads to more racing.




Morodiene, you hit the nail on the head with this.

This is what I've found to be helpful with me. Obviously with kids you'll have to make it far more entertaining.

- I need clear instruction, and I need to be made to do it a few times (ongoing, not just in one lesson) to make sure I'm doing it, or I haven't slipped into other habits, until it's apparent that I'm doing.

- A clear understanding on where I'm going with something and where it will lead me, so I won't start wondering about that and go on another mental tangent.

- Some sort of structure. Being assigned solid number of reps to do when doing this or that helps. A list of what I need to do and things to cross off is very helpful.

- I had to force myself onto the metronome (it took a looooong time to get myself there!), and it's actually become soothing. It's a distraction, and it makes me follow along.

- Constant activity.

- Head off impatient or frustrating moments when possible. Not always easy to do, but there are situations that could be steered off into different directions.

- I keep a log of what I've worked on every day so I can plainly see when something's been ignored.

I've started making changes in the past 6 months, and it has made a difference.

I hope this can help someone!

Aimee, thanks so much for posting all this. I found it very enlightening.

I have taught in classrooms with ADHD students. Sometimes, as I was dealing their behavior problems, I wondered if they were really ADHD kids or just kids who _chose_ to act out every 3 minutes.

And, no, there was nothing I could do to engage them. I was supposed to get special-ed helpers in my classroom since I had more than two of them at the same time, and I didn't get any help. It was a pathetic situation.

Wonder how ADHD your student turns out to be after a month of spending an hour per day doing rigorous physical fitness and consuming no sugar, caffeine and fast food?

Perhaps teachers are being unreasonably asked to be acting more like frantic birthday party clowns and babysitters instead of being teachers because students are being delivered to them by parents in a condition that is completely unfit and poisoned by a toxic diet.

Give them only few but very clear limits and stricktly stick to them _always_. They otherwise will not / can not take them serious.

Give them short and clear explanations, and repeat them more often. They will pick them up in the one or other moment.

Give them more awards for their achievements (at least verbally) than you would do it for other kids and prepare the classes in a way that they have frequently the chance to become awarded. But please don´t point out what they are doing wrong. They experience so much frustration in so many situations, that you don´t want to add burden on their higher risk to become depressive and more likely then others one day start to take comfort i.e. in drugs, especially that it is proven that kids with this desease do NOT learn from their mistakes like normal kids do! So, no reason to point out their failures - especially not in a class of their leisure time.

Don´t forget that they suffer a concentration deficit, and are not necessarily stupid.

Show them that you like them, although they are difficult. They will love you for this and then find it easier to pay attention to what you are saying.

I've coached a kid with ADHD at chess. Working with this kid was like watching a fast forward newsreel of his life. In between narratives of what he had for dinner and his trip to summer camp there were a few minutes of brilliance. He just had to be ready. Sometimes I had to do some prompting, sometimes he came to it all by himself. I estimate that out of a half hour we probably had 3-5 minutes of readiness. He eventually did quite well and became the second ranked K-5 player in the metro district.

In general, whatever you do with neurotypical kids will work. You just have to do it at the right time, do it more often, and be more focused. Think of it as if it's a teeter totter. The kid is on the extreme end and you have to balance it on the other.

This is huge. I don't think the general populace really understands just how bad sugar and white flour products and chemicals in food are. How many people really read the ingredients on things they buy? How many try to buy as much fresh produce as possible? It takes extra time and effort, and I honestly think most people feel they can't afford to eat better. But when you have children who are always more susceptible to effects of things (you don't give kids regular strength tylenol, you give them children's tylenol, for example), things that you may be fine with could be disastrous for a child.

John, someone right after you talked about the "Y Chomosome" factor. I read that and laughed because I have been saying for years that this is a huge factor. Now, since world-class players are hardly dominated by women, I would say that many of the male "problems" are also potential strengths.

I would say the converse is equally true of women, even young ones.

Since the discussion is about “attention deficit”, aren't we talking about three problems?

1) Ability to stay focused (and that is a HUGE are right there).

2) Dyslexia. My understanding is that this has nothing to do with focus, overall intelligence or memory

3) Memory.

So my first question: what are we talking about here?

Is this ADD? My learning style is very individual, geared to my own mind and the way I learn. No one, and I mean NO ONE understands how I learn, so generally I get almost zero help in any area if I ask for help in HOW to learn. That I do better by myself. And for the record I don't think there is a da mned thing wrong with me.

I think there is some “wiggle room” here in applying “ADD”. I have encountered what I would call “severe cases” of ADHD in which I found it absolutely impossible to work with a child. For the moment lets not get into parenting and diet, but those are huge factors. For instance, if young Jayden is sucking down huge amounts of soda and caffeine, obviously has no self-control whatsoever, and “Mom” is in the room observing the whole thing with not a clue that anything is seriously wrong, there is a lot more going on than ADD.

Let's talk for a moment about really bright kids who are properly diagnosed, where the parents are fully on-board, supportive and effective, aware of the problems. I have one student like this. He came to me on meds, I don't think for a moment that he was not carefully monitored for diet, and I think his parents are great. Just first-rate. So we work together. Obviously I am not going to share his name, but I did have a great problem teaching him. Some lessons would leave me shaking, torn between the need to scream at him for being a jerk and the knowledge that he could not control himself and that he was TRYING.

Fast forward to a few years later. We still have hard lessons, but he is aware of “how he is”, and it helps when I remind him, over and over again, that I am just as impatient as he is, that many of the things that drive me nuts about his listening are things I share, and so on.

I can't listen to people talk for more than about 20 seconds before I am “away” unless the people talking are making sense to me and are not presenting their ideas in

S----U----P-----E-----R-------------------S-----L------O-----W------------------M----O-----T----I----O----N

In other words, I secretly tell myself how stupid most people are, and how they do not deserve to be listened to, then I think my own thoughts or make an exit. Well, my ADD and ADHD kids, the ones who are aware, are actually excited when I say that. Because suddenly we are not in different worlds.

Another thing I seem to share with these kids is the ability to concentrate like a demon for HOURS, if it is something that is FAST and EXCITING and involves MOVEMENT. I have to LIKE what I am doing, a lot. If I don't like what I'm doing, it doesn't matter if my life is on the line as the result of what I pay attention to. Everything turns into noise.

If I don't like music, I can't hear it. I tune it out.

If I read a book, ANY book, and don't like it, I tune out.

When I was forced to learn music I did not like, I tuned out.

So, as I suggested before: Do I have an attention problem? Or do I have a problem pleasing other people, including teachers, by pretending to care a a whit about something that bores the crap out of me?

My conclusion: the ability to concentrate is a spectrum, the ability to sit still and “behave” when what is going on is mind-crushingly boring is a spectrum. And the ability to be tactful about being bored to death is a spectrum.

So sometimes, when someone says, “What did I just say?” my reaction is embarrassment, because I went off again and really should have listened.

Usually my reaction is, “What you just said is boring and probably wrong. Stop being so boring and I will listen to you.”

And that is EXACTLY what many of these kids are thinking, but they are not allowed to say so.

I've been there...

Nice post Gary D.
(I'm glad you got my 'Y chromosome syndrome' diagnosis and laughed rather than taking offense.)



+1
Which is why meetings are so stink boring, because the content must be presented so that the weakest link could possibly get it. Which leaves minds like yours and probably to a lesser extent, mine to their own devices.



My standard reply in this situation, which I teach some of my clients to say, "I'm sorry, I wasn't listening."
It's simple, direct, and true, and at least the form is polite.


Someone else raised the issue that kids with ADHD are not cognitively impaired. Cognition is probably normally distributed in this population, but remember that if a person has not able to pay attention to much of what happens in the world, there is probably much knowledge and many skills that he or she has missed that other kids in the same environment have mastered.

One of the main reasons that the world of master pianists is not " hardly dominated by women " has more to do with the fact that until quite recently most women were not allowed to work outside of the home after marrying age and that touring as a performing star was generally considered unbecoming for women in many cultures and societies.

In other words, it is not the men have an advantage for playing the piano at a high level but rather that women have been discriminated against and discouraged against and prevented from becoming performing stars.

There is even evidence to suggest that women have great advantage in playing the piano due to the make-up of their brain which has a larger corpus collosum and better integration between the left and right hemispheres thereby more easily using the entire brain (ratio + emotio) which is necessary for sensitive piano playing.

In addition, many of the women pianists we do have (and have had) I much prefer to some of the top-billed male pianists. For example, Mario-Joao Pires, Bella Davidovich, Martha Argerich, Teresa Carreno, Mitsuko Uchida, Clara Haskil, Alicia de Larocha, Anna Kratvchenko, Yuja Wong, etc. etc.

I had an article saved that suggested women were under represented because they were too smart to spend the huge amount of time to master piano given the low expected return.

I'm paraphrasing, and badly.

I can't find the article now.

Can the author substantiate that idea, or is it just an opinion coming out of nowhere? I hope the author is a woman, and not a young one.