Speak to your child's school and prepare them for your son's condition by making his teachers aware that he has ADD. Listen to his teacher's suggestions for things that you can do at home to help prepare your son for his school experience and implement those suggestions immediately. Ask your son's teacher and counselor about any school programs designed to help students with ADD, as well as specific in-class techniques that his teacher can use to help hold your son's attention. Trust that his school wants to help and work with them.
Create and use a behavior plan that identifies specific goals for your son to follow both at school and at home. Be consistent with your behavior plan by insisting that your son follow and understand his daily goals. Provide positive reinforcement for him that includes daily incentives. For instance, you refer to your behavior plan and see that your son has met all of his daily goals and as a reward, he gets to help decide what your family will have for dinner. Follow the behavior plan through, insisting that he meet his goals and that he receives his rewards consistently.
Use your influence as a parent to help your son get interested in his school work. Read to your son and interact with the story by discussing what is happening or predicting what he thinks will happen next. Act out his favorite stories and let him see how much you enjoy the entire reading process. Use games to help your son enjoy math by teaching him math skills through dice games or memory cards. Interact with your son in a learning environment every day to reinforce how much you want to help him succeed.
Learn about how your daughter learns by watching her during your time together and looking for signs that one technique is working better than another. For instance, you may notice that your daughter is excelling at dice games, which may be a clue that your daughter learns best from a combination of auditory (talking while playing), visual (seeing the dice) and tactile (physically touching the dice) techniques. Share this information with your daughter's teacher and use this information to design other learning games for other subjects.