Checklists to help ADHD and Autism Children and Teenagers

A child that has been diagnosed with ADHD find themselves lacking the ability to pay attention to details required to complete activities of daily living. Often the simple routine tasks are not completed independently without verbal prompts as the attention span of the child is limited which leads to frustration for the child, the parent and teachers. A child can build these crucial skills through consistency and encouragement.
Each task from each timeframe of the child’s day needs to be broken down into multiple steps in order to keep the child on track for the entire day. The checklists can include picture, words or a combination of both.

Morning Routine could include the following: Use toilet, wash face, brush teeth, comb hair, clean up sink, change out of pajamas, put pajamas into the dirty clothes, dress into clean clothes.

A checklist for chores would break down specific tasks, for an example sweeping the kitchen floor. Get the broom and dust pan from the closet. Pick up the rugs and shake them off. Place them outside the kitchen entry. Start sweeping by the pantry and end up at the kitchen entry, use the dustpan to sweep up the dirt. Place in the garbage can. Put the rugs back in the kitchen. Put the broom and dustpan back in the closet.

Checklists can also be used to track behaviors rather than tasks to complete. There are a minimum of 34 skills that a child with ADHD can be lacking in and need to focus on building up. The skills can be place in order of importance and worked on in that order. For example, the skill “staying on task” would not need to be added to the checklist as that is what the checklists are focusing on in whole. The checklist could track dealing with boredom, frustration, waiting your turn, doing good quality of work, patience, listening to others, accepting consequences, completing homework, accepting “no” answers, accepting criticism are a just a few of the skills to be learned.

The purpose of the checklists is to make remind the child to complete a task all completely before moving on to something else. This checklist process is meant to be an encouraging opportunity to mark success your child is making. It is a great opportunity for you and your child to celebrate his progress.

A Child's Success, A Parents Pride

How much do we have to do with our child's success in life? I mean we teach them to do many different things, we teach them right from wrong, we teach them to read and we teach them to cook, clean and work with money. We teach them responsibility, accountability, and we teach them to be nice. But how much do we have to do with our child's success in life?

Our children have to find their own way in life but as we instruct them to be a certain way, do they follow that way?

I began their school careers telling them that they needed to set aside time to study each day and find a great learning environment in which to study. They currently don't have those study habits. They do have very good grades, are very intelligent, but their success isn't because I enforced the rules of when and where to study. Their success in school is because I set the groundwork and I let them (to some extent) feel the responsibility of their choices.

I know for certain that I can not take credit for their success, I can only say that I have tried to do all that I can do. It is ultimately up to them to take what was given to them and make something of their lives.

I feel comfortable with this as I know this is how things are suppose to be done. How? This is how God has done it with me. He has taken many different routes to share with me what I need to know and what I need to be doing. It is up to me to bring into fruition what God wants me to do, what I am suppose to do, or what needs to be done.

It is up to me to accept responsibility for what I do with the information and whether or not I am able to follow through with what God wants me to do. Have you? Have you accepted responsibility for what you do? Have you accepted responsibility for what we need to do with the information that God has given to us? If not, when?

Struggling to become a Lady of Proverbs 31
Dannett