ADHD - Compensating For Forgetfulness

One of the most common attributes of an ADHD girl or boy is the fact that they can be very forgetful.

Even though you might remind your child a dozen times, use the same instruction, or emphasise a desired behavioural pattern, s/he will forget your instruction almost as soon as you have spoken it.

Your child does not do this on purpose. It is just the way s/he is.

An ADHD child can immediately forget what was said and move on to the next item that attracts them.

You can give your child a message, but as soon as something else distracts, that message is completely obliterated from memory.

Your child can promise to do something, and really mean it, but then fail to remember that promise.

This forgetfulness also translates itself to forgetting directions on how to get somewhere, meeting appointments, and forgetting to do chores.

This recall deficit also manifests itself in having difficulty concentrating on a task as it is taught. Hence the term 'attention deficit'.

Most ADHDers cannot absorb the appropriate amount of information when it is first taught.

Hand in hand with this recall deficit, they are also not able to identify, and subsequently absorb, the important information from what they are being taught, or that they are reading.

Some ADHD children have significant delayed recall deficits, ie they actually do learn the work at first but then forget it later.

This means that this particular group may appear to master knowledge or behaviour, but then completely forget it a day or so later, making this very frustrating for you, the parent, as well as teachers.

This has, of course, largely to do with short-term memory and sequential memorising.

Yet despite this poor short-term memory, some ADHD children may have good sporadic long-term memory.

For example, they may astound you by remembering an incident that occurred at a family gathering some years ago.

These are one-off incidents however, and not the norm.

Your child may have good recall in one area, but not in another, such as pulling apart a toy and then putting it accurately back together again.

Because ADHD children, through forgetting, are often unaware of everything that has occurred to get to the final situation they find themselves in, Dr Ian Wallace (Sydney, Australia) came up with a sequential approach to help ADHD children own their problems.

Dr Wallace says that your child needs to be taken back to the very first instance of the activity or instruction, and be shown how each step contributed to the final outcome.

He emphasises the importance of taking the focus away from the final step itself.

For example, the final step could be that the ADHD boy was punched by another boy.

Step 1: ADHD child did not ask for the other boy's pen

Step 2: took the other boy's pen

Step 3: threw the pen away when accused by the other boy

Step 4: ADHDer called the other boy vicious names

Step 5: was chased by the other boy

Step 6: was subsequently hit by the other boy

All that the ADHD boy would normally remember, and complain about, is the final step, Step 6, that he was beaten up.

He would blame the other boy for punching him; he would not remember Steps 1 - 5 being provocations to Step 6.

Each Step needs to be written down so that the ADHD boy can be shown that Step 1 needed to be different to result in a different outcome.

This strategy of breaking the process down can be used in different types of situations, to assist your AD-HD daughter or son understand their behaviour, and begin to control it.