Why does my child have problems focusing on an important task?

Training with ADDCA has been a long-held dream ever since we suspected at least one of our kids has an ADHD brain wiring. Gaining huge understanding, delving into the latest research, and adding to our toolkit of techniques to help children and adults with ADHD to thrive.

We are investigating many concepts,  that we are sure are little known even to families with children with the same wiring. Diagnosis is one thing but without a depth of understanding we might not be able to help these incredible brains flourish.

Over the coming months we will share some of these concepts with you. This might help you to identify them in yourself or in your family, making sense of the sometimes confusing and difficult behaviour that we can see.

The first is the concept of interest vs importance.

Most of us might know that there are essential distinctions between ADHD brain wiring and neurotypical brain wiring. ADHD brains,  at their core,  are all about interest, anticipation, and novelty. Whereas a neurotypical brain works primarily from importance.

A child with a neurotypical brain might be able to start a task because it is important even if it is not important to them but important to their teacher or parent. If something is deemed important by others but boring to the neurotypical brain, they still have the neurological ability to pay attention to it and see it to completion.

An ADHD brain is different and works from a start point of interest which provides the fuel to start the task. This does not mean interesting from an outsider’s point of view; it must be interesting to the ADHD brain. Whether the task is important or not does not matter. An ADHD brain has always been able to do anything if it is authentically interested and has never been able to use importance, rewards, or consequences as a motivator if it is not.

This allows us to understand more about the ‘situational variability’ of the ADHD brain. The paradox between the brain being able to focus intently on something (that is of interest) and yet completely not focus on something else (that is not of interest) even if the task is ‘important’ or there is a reward at the end.

As a parent this can cause immense levels of frustration as it might appear that our child is capable but just can’t be bothered. The child might experience a feeling of shame at being asked to do something that they simply cannot do no matter how hard they try. Leading to behavioural change in a child who might become disruptive, combative, upset or even lash out to avoid the feeling of not being able to do the task in hand.

There are many tips and tools we use in our practise with parents & teachers to help with this & many other behavioural problems.