ADHD, homework, and chores: Getting it done

One of the situations I frequently encounter in my work as a psychologist is when parents bring their child, who is obviously intelligent, to my office, reporting that the child is doing poorly in school, and avoiding homework and chores—possibly in a dramatic fashion, accompanied by a fair amount of yelling or crying.  Behaviors like these can be very frustrating and confusing to parents, who are trying their best to encourage their child to do those typical childhood tasks.  Understandably, if the behaviors continue over time, parents may come to see their child as lazy, unmotivated, uncaring, or even defiant.  To be sure, work avoidance and associated behaviors can stem from a variety of sources.  But one common source, which can easily go unrecognized, is attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, commonly known as ADHD. 

ADHD can interfere with the performance of many tasks and daily activities.  A huge challenge for most people with ADHD is the enormous amount of boredom they experience with routine or uninteresting tasks.  Of course, just about everyone will experience some boredom from having to complete mundane work.  For people who do not have ADHD, the boredom can typically be tolerated, and they are able to motivate themselves to do what needs to be done.  But this is not so easy for someone with ADHD!  For a person with ADHD, the amount of boredom associated with mundane work can rise to truly painful levels.  I cannot count the number of times I have asked children and adolescents with ADHD why they didn’t do their work, and the response I almost always get is: “It’s SO boring!”  This intense feeling of boredom can be extremely hard to overcome.  It is critical to realize that in most cases, the child wants to get the work done, at least as much as a child without ADHD wants to complete those mundane tasks they know they are supposed to do.  So, the child without ADHD is not actually lazy or unmotivated.  The issue for the child with ADHD is that the work is so painfully boring they cannot muster up the extraordinary amount of motivation it would require for them to tackle it. 

Another common complaint I hear from children and adolescents with ADHD is that the work just seems like “way too much.”  This may be perplexing to parents, because to the parent, the work may appear well within the child’s ability to complete.  The parent may recognize—quite accurately—that the child has the intelligence to do the work.  In fact, I often hear parents comment—again, quite accurately—that the child could finish the work in a matter of minutes, but instead they spend an hour dawdling and complaining about having to do it!  To make the situation even more confusing (and frustrating), when the child finally starts the work, they may actually be able to do it within a matter minutes, just as the parent predicted!  Yet the next time they are faced with a similar task, the same thing happens again.  In these situations, it is tempting to see the child as lazy or even oppositional.  But in reality, for many children with ADHD, the task truly appears to be overwhelming.   Perhaps because of the amount of boredom associated with it, or difficulty focusing on one piece of the work at a time, each time they are faced with the task, it looks like a towering mountain of work that will take “forever” to slog through.  So the result is that the child procrastinates and tries to avoid doing the work in any way possible. 

Unfortunately, the situation often does not end here.  Parents may become increasingly frustrated or downright angry with the child, which is certainly not a desirable state of affairs.  Parents may form inaccurate perceptions of the child as lazy, unmotivated, oppositional, etc.  Moreover, the child also may form problematic perceptions of themselves.  They may come to see themselves as stupid or incompetent, or conclude they are just a “loser.”  Or, they may become angry at the adults for constantly trying to force them to do things that are so boring and seem so overwhelming, especially if the adults, in frustration, have said negative things about the child.  The child may then opt to fight back, defiantly refusing to do what the adults say.  Which, in turn, can lead to a host of further problematic interactions.

The most important take-home message from the foregoing discussion is that, for a child with ADHD, all of these perceptions are likely inaccurate.  The child is not actually lazy, unmotivated or oppositional.  Rather, it is the child’s ADHD that makes completing the task truly difficult for them, far more so than most people without ADHD realize.  The child then resorts to procrastination, avoidance, or refusal as a way to deal with the situation.  Which, unfortunately, does not work out well in the long run for anyone.

So what can a parent do?  The first step, of course, is to get an evaluation from a qualified professional to determine whether the child really has ADHD.  Although ADHD is not a rare condition, diagnosis can be a tricky business.  Other disorders can produce effects that look a lot like the symptoms of ADHD.  For instance, depression and anxiety can cause troubles with concentration and with sitting still.  Or, in a reverse way, problems associated with ADHD can cause a child to become anxious or depressed, so the ADHD may be hidden underneath symptoms of anxiety or depression.  And it is certainly possible for a person to have two or more disorders which are not directly related to one another at the same time.  As one can imagine, considerations like these can make diagnosis complicated, so it is important to get an assessment from a trained professional. 

Suppose that child has a diagnosis of ADHD.  The question that arises for most parents at this point is: What do I do now?  A critical first step is for parents to adopt a “supportive mindset” when interacting with their child.  That is, rather than blaming the child for not doing what they are supposed to be doing, seeing them as a person in need of support to accomplish what they are supposed to do.  As previously noted, the vast majority of children with ADHD really want to be able to do what is required of them, at least as much as children without ADHD want to accomplish those mundane tasks.  So the trick is to provide children with ADHD the extra assistance they need to get the job done.

Assistance can come in a variety of forms.  One, of course, is medication. Medication can be quite effective for children with ADHD.  Of course, only a trained prescriber can determine whether medication is a good option for any given child, and parents should always inquire regarding possible side effects.  Sometimes, in the best case scenario, medication alone is sufficient to bring about the changes parents are hoping to see.

Another sort of assistance is behavioral strategies.  These generally take the form of various parenting techniques designed to help children accomplish what they are supposed to do. Often, medication and behavioral strategies are used in combination, which can yield very good results. 

I like to divide the sorts of behavioral strategies that parents most often find helpful into two categories.  One is enhancing motivation.  As previously noted, mundane tasks are often painfully boring to children with ADHD.  To overcome this level of boredom, an extra amount of motivation is often needed.  In my experience, children with ADHD generally respond best to positive motivation—meaning rewards—rather than punishment.  And providing rewards instead of punishment is typically much more pleasant for the parents too!  Sometimes, parents are reluctant to provide rewards for things that children are typically expected to do.  But it is important to remember that for a child with ADHD, mundane tasks are much harder than for children without ADHD, so it is perfectly appropriate to provide the added incentive of a reward.  (In this connection, it may also helpful to recognize that adults often work for rewards in their daily lives, probably the most common example being a paycheck.)  It also may be helpful to note that the rewards are earned for doing a task that is challenging for the child.  So the message the child receives is that they can achieve good benefits through hard work.  A great life lesson to learn!

A common strategy for providing rewards is a weekly chart.  One useful way to design the chart is to write the days of the week across the top, and the tasks the child needs to accomplish to earn their rewards down the left-hand side.  Whatever the child earns is placed or written in the corresponding box.  Younger children are often motivated by earning stickers or stars for tasks they complete, while older children can earn points that they can spend on a menu of selected rewards, which the parent and child agree upon in advance—although new rewards can be added to the menu by mutual agreement as time goes on.  It is best to include some smaller rewards which the child can earn in a day, perhaps some extra screen time or a sweet treat, so they don’t have to wait too long to see the benefits of their work (which can be very challenging for a child with ADHD).  If the child is able to tolerate delayed gratification, rewards can also include some larger items that require saving points, perhaps a new baseball glove or a family outing for miniature golf.  A running total of points earned and spent can be kept separately.

The other category of behavioral strategy that parents often find helpful is developing ways to make the task easier for the child, or to “grease the skids.”  These strategies are many and various, depending on the type of task one is considering.  For instance, laying out clothes the night before if the child has trouble getting dressed in a timely fashion in the morning.  Or breaking homework assignments into chunks, and allowing the child to take breaks between chunks.  Or having a child repeat back an instruction, so you are sure they heard it, and limiting directions to one step, so the child is less likely to forget what they are supposed to do.

As may be apparent from the above, there are many possible behavioral strategies parents can employ—and many details that need to be attended to so that the strategies have the best chance of working!  Parents can work with their child’s health care providers on how to develop and implement the most useful strategies for their child.  There are also a plethora of books and parenting articles available.  If the presentation of ideas in this article has been helpful, further information can be found in my book Understanding ADHD and How to Help Your Child: A Therapist’s Guide for Parents, which is available on Amazon.  And on behalf of all children with ADHD, thank you, thank you, thank you, for all that you do.