Hyperfocus

When most people think of kids with ADHD, they think of an inability to focus and stay still: the kid who's bouncing off walls and chasing butterflies and constantly distracted by shiny objects. All of that is sort of true — it is hard for kids with ADHD to stay still and focused. But instead of looking at ADHD as a total deficit in attention — despite the official name — consider it to be more like a light switch: the ability to focus on any given task or thought is either there, or it's just not there at all. When the attention light switch is on, a state known as hyperfocus, an individual with ADHD can focus to the exclusion of almost figuratively the entire world.

Hyperfocus can be a boon to homeschooling. In my house it means that the same child who can't manage to sit through a single entire meal, who has had complete breakdowns over doing ten math problems in a row, also once spent nearly an hour watching a box turtle that had gotten washed up by heavy rainfall into our back yard. That child then followed said turtle into the woods to observe it until it crawled its way back to the pond nearby at a meandering turtle pace. And then that kid researched turtles until he identified the type and found photos of Eastern box turtles, their eggs, their habitat, and their diet. Finally, he drew a picture of the turtle to memorialize the occasion.

I've fought this type of either/or focus, as if I could change the way his brain works through sheer force of will and spelling drills, but after too many fights and lessons ending in tears, I couldn't do it anymore. Something had to change. There had to be a way to harness the focus that allows him to build elaborate Lego structures and recreate our house in miniature with intricate detailing on Minecraft. For him, the answer was unit studies.

I utilize Moving Beyond the Page in a different way than the standard suggestion of a year-long, incremental format. In order to keep his interest, I let my son pick out the book, science, and/or social studies unit that catches his interest. I let him go at whatever he pace he wants — fast if he just can't stay interested, but really delving deep into the things that do interest him, with extra suggested projects and our own ideas. It does make for a more haphazard approach to curriculum, and I worry about covering everything by the end of the school year, but I'll take haphazard over fights and tears any day.

We do still have our struggles; it appears very unlikely that he'll ever be a mathematician, for example, and I frequently remind him that everyone has boring, mundane tasks they don't really want to do. Not once has anyone been excited and enthusiastic about cleaning toilets or filing taxes. But my hope is that he can see for himself how to best hone his focus and that he can continue to approach learning as a positive life-long skill, instead of something he has grudgingly drag himself through until he's old enough to quit. I hope, I guess, that he'll have the determination of that turtle trudging back home and the energy of the rushing water that brought it to us in the first place.