There is a great number of Filipino children diagnosed to have Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity Disorder, popularly known as ADHD. Sad to say that most of Philippine schools are not equipped to handle ADHD children.

     What really is ADHD? It is a learning disorder characterized by difficulties that interfere with effective task-oriented behavior in children, particularly impulsivity, excessive motor activity, and difficulties.

     The predominant features of ADHD are impulsivity, hyperactivity and inattention. Impulsivity is the inability to stop and think before acting. ADHD children are also unable to resist distractions, work for a long time, and inhibit the dominant or immediate reaction to an event. Hyperactivity is the display of excessive movement not required to complete a task. Inattention is poorly sustained attention or persistence of effort or task.

     Handling ADHD children requires a great amount of patience and dedication. Below are some tips for handling ADHD children:

For Teachers

1. Plan for a classroom set-up.
2. Create lessons that are:
   1. short and properly paced yet meaningful
   2. Engaging and interesting
3. Provide reinforcements for positive behavior.
4. Motivate the child to listen by making clear his goal for listening.
5. Provide specific feedback on correct and incorrect responses.
6. Frequently call out cues or signals to assist the child in redirecting their attention to the appropriate task.
7. Celebrate the student's successes.
8. Make them aware of the benefits of learning.

1. Develop memory scripts.
2. Memory encoding strategy
   1. Rehearsal strategy
   2. Organizational strategy
   3. Elaboration strategy

1. Recognition memory task - involves recognizing a stimulust as something you have seen, heard or somehow experienced before.
2. Recall memory task - involves retrieval of information without any cues. It encourages more mental effort.

For Parents

1. Be focused. Set clear goals for yourself as a parent and for your child.
2. Relationship is the key. Establish a good parent-child relationship. Remember that any form of discipline will work.
3. Spend some "special time" with your child each day.
4. Be a good listener.
5. Be clear with what you expect.
6. When a child lives up to the rules and expectations, be sure to notice them.
7. Mean what you say.
8. Do not tell a child 10 times to do something.
9. Never discipline a child when you are out of control.
10. See the misbehavior as a problem you are going to solve.
11. It is important to have clear consequences for broken rules.
12. Give your child choices between and among alternatives, rather than dictating what he will do.
13. Parents need to be together and support each other.
14. Keep promises to the children.
15. Children learn about relationships from watching how their parents relate to each other.
16. Children live up to the labels we give them.
17. Teach children from your own real life experiences.
18. In parenting always remember the words "firm and kind".
19. Do not yell or berate an ADHD child.

Cleofe Perez is the Assistant Principal for Early Education in Xavier School.