Lisa,

You asked a question about ADHD students and the military. Some of my ADHD students have entered the military and here is my experience: ADHD children still have quite a bit of difficulty when they enter the military. The new military requires recruits to be able to operate complex equipment quickly and efficiently. The military also requires soldiers to pay attention to many demands and perform appropriately without reminding. Here is a short synopsis of what has happened to a few of my ADHD students: One young man received an early termination. They basically sent him home. Another of my students wrecked a few motorized vehicles, she went home after two years. Another recruit regularly performed poorly on exams, so – while he is still a soldier, he has not been able to advance to more complicated jobs and is disappointed
with his experience. Another young man has been given many chances to pass an exam and he finally passed it on his final try, so he is now able to apply for advancement.

Many parents mistakenly think that the military will be able to teach their son all the things that they, the parents, were never able to teach him. I’ve tried to hold these parents and young men back from using the military in this way. It frankly, rarely works and sometimes disastrous things happen. I think other parents with children in the military will agree that to be successful, potential soldiers must exhibit at least basic attentional abilities. While many people mature greatly through their military experience, military
enlistment is not meant to solve young people’s problems.

Any parent that wants their son/daughter to be successful in the military might want to begin early to raise their children’s attentional abilities. And YES, attention can be taught. The secret is to use INTENTION to raise ATTENTION. I know it takes a tremendous amount of time to work with these kids, but any work done will pay huge dividends. You first want to improve students’ attention to visual and auditory stimuli so that they can develop both global and discrete attention to detail.

My 22 year old and I were just reminiscing about this today. When he was younger and had to sort tons of toy junk or clean his room, I had to stay on top of him and always insist that he sort the easy things first. Instead of gathering up the obvious things like crayons and pencils, he would pick up the most obscure widget, usually a broken toy piece, and ask what he should do with it. He told me today that this was very hard training for him; he found it extremely difficult to focus on the obvious instead of the obscure. He feels that he is so much better now, and that his training paid off. As a child, he was so ADD that he put away a tennis shoe in the refrigerator, more than once! He put an open can of tuna fish away in the cupboard! He often lost his school books and I had to repurchase them over and over. At the end of this summer, he will graduate from college with an Accounting Degree.

So, be encouraged. The best thing you can do to improve attention span is to play games everyday without fail. Play Scrabble. Always give each child a dictionary and let them earn points for any word they can find. Don’t ban the dictionary from your Scrabble games. What parent doesn’t want their child to thumb through the dictionary?? Play Operation, Battleships, Yahtze, Mastermind, Guess Where, Guess Who, and Risk. All of these games improve attention span. Shockingly, computer games have also been shown to improve attention span.

If, after reading this list, you think, “These games are no problem for my son, he is great at playing these”, then he probably has situational attentional difficulties. This means that while he does have the capacity to attend, he has not yet developed the ability to attend to things that don’t interest him. Attending to things a person is not interested in requires advanced attentional abilities and separates the men from the boys.

One effective way to gain advanced attentional skills is to put the older student into challenging group situations where the group has to work as a cooperative team. But, be careful. Never leave a child or put a child in situations that are not appropriate for that particular child. Listen to your own heart and don’t be pushed into placing the struggling child into circumstances that are beyond their abilities.

Blessings, Randi