timers

ADHD Supplies – Things that Aren’t On the List from the School

As school starts back (sigh!), we’re all scrambling to buy everything on the school list, and to stock up on those things we’re going to need. (If you’re not stocking up, you need to read School Supplies for the ADHD Inattentive Family.)

Lately, however, we’ve run across some other things that you might want to consider, items that really might help your child slow down and pay attention…ADHD Supplies.

1. Cushions and Ball Chairs. We keep hearing about how helpful seat cushions and ball chairs are for kids and adults with ADHD – or not! Wiggly kids need to get wiggles out, and inattentive kids sometimes need to wiggle to help them focus. The cushions act as sort of a shock absorber for the motion. Parents have told us that they buy one for school and one for home. Some kids even use them at the dinner table.

Some of the seats have textures to help kids with sensory issues. And yes, they come in adult sizes. You might need to wiggle a bit, too.

2. Timer. We’ve written a lot about timers for ADHD, but this cube timer
has really become popular because it’s so easy and fun to use. Just flip it over to the time you want, and – ready, set – GO!

3. Unbelievably ear piercingly loud alarm clock that also shakes the bed! Although they are doing fine as adults (take that as a word of encouragement!), a couple of our boys are like their mother – they can sleep through anything. They can’t have slept through this alarm clock, though! We got it for Ash, and it’s not only insanely loud, but it has something that you put under your mattress that shakes it violently. We love this.

4. Fidgets. Pencil toppers, textured rulers, chewable jewelry, puzzles, and velcro…things that our kids can play with to help them focus. I love the ones that sort of blend in to regular school supplies. Here are some ideas for ADHD fidgets.

5. Labels and Sharpies. I’ve always been of the opinion that you could label anything with a Sharpie. You may have heard the story about how I wrote our cell phone number on our children’s leg when we traveled overseas. No language needed. If a child got lost – they just showed the number.

A black fine tip marker can write on a tiny fabric label on a sweatshirt. A thicker Sharpie can label the pages on the side of a book. (If you have to pay a fine – it’s worth it!) A silver Sharpie will keep power cords and chargers organized – and keep your Uncle Bobby from taking yours by accident.

If you want a ~~more sophisticated looking~~ neater option for your clothes, you can get iron or stick on labels. I bought some personalized iron on labels for my dad’s felt hat that he didn’t want to mark up, and they were great!

So – what supplies are on your list that might not be on mine? What have you found that you just can’t do without?! Share them below.

Smart Cube Timer. Smart Cubed.

If timing’s everything, this little timer can become very valuable at your house. Take it to wherever the desired task is. 5 minutes of math problems for your daughter? Go! A family cleaning blitz of the playroom? Get ready and go! Use for everything from cooking to homework to quiet time (otherwise known as naps.)

Simply set the timer with your time selection facing up. Get busy until you hear the loud alarm. Set the timer back to zero to silence it.

NOTE: Each color has a different set of times, for example, the purple one has Choose from 5, 10, 20 or 30 minutes and the white has 5, 15, 30 or 60.

And at this price, you may want more than one. Maybe you need one per child or one for upstairs and one for downstairs. Think about how good timing and a Smart Cube Timer could help your family. Teachers, think about how you can use this in your classroom.

A lot of our readers have these timers, and the reviews are really good.

Take a look at the timers here. I’m setting the timer now. You have five minutes. Ready, set…GO!

Purchase your Data Tex time here!

Top Ten Stocking Stuffers for ADHD Kids – and Adults

We don’t want to steal any of Santa’s magic, but since he’s really busy this time of year, we thought we’d give you a list of things that we’ve found our ADHD kids appreciate finding in their stocking!

1. Fidgets. – These cool things give a child, a teen, or an adult, something to fiddle with – instead of chewing their nails, rocking their chair, twirling their hair, poking the kid in front of them…Here’s a list of fidgets for adhd.

2. Sharpies. Label everything with Sharpies. Water bottles, books (we labeled the outside pages of our boys’ books even if we had to pay a fine!), backpacks, jackets, sports equipment, iPods, keys, and make note cards attractive and fun.

3. Silver Sharpies. Label everything black with Silver Sharpies. Water bottles, books, backpacks…and yes it deserves a listing all by itself.

4. Lanyards. These aren’t exactly fashion statements, but in certain instances, lanyards can save an ADHD kid. Keys, a sharpie, hand sanitizer, flashlight, sunscreen…can you tell we really use ours when traveling?!

5. Post It Notes. I could do a whole post on the usages of post it notes. But for an ADHD child, they are invaluable. Stick one on the back door with a note that BOLDLY says, “DON’T FORGET YOUR SCIENCE PROJECT!”

6. Pens/pencils. They can’t have too many. Joe’s famous lament “ADHD is being able to lose something without moving” was prompted by his loss of a pen. Bless his heart.

7. Gum. Especially mint flavors of gum can help a child focus. Read about that in Focus Pocus, 100 Ways to Help Your Child Pay Attention.

8. Index cards. For notetaking, flashcards, making labels,

9. Timers/apps. You can’t put an app in a stocking, but you can put in this little timer. Timers are an amazing help for ADHD kids.

10. Extras. ADHD kids need an extra set of everything for when they lose things. Toothbrushes, socks, keys, school supplies, Chapstick, contact lens solution…That’s why there’s Amazon. 🙂

PS After we posted this, our kids gave us more ideas for gifts for kids with ADHD.

A Helpful Tool to Foster Independence

At Ketchup, we’ve often recommended the use of a timer to keep your child on task for a set amount of time. This one caught our eye — it looks efficient and should help your family feel that way too.

What’s nice about this particular one is that as time expires, the red disk disappears. These are great when setting up a routine for morning, after school and evening activities. For instance, in the morning it could be set so your child would have an allowed set amount of time for breakfast, dressing and teeth brushing without you reminding her of each step. And, these do not have a loud ticking noise because we know that can be distracting!

You decide the important tasks, timings and a strategic reward for your child’s “beating the clock.” Save your voice and preserve your sanity. Let this timer sound off instead!

Try this Timer today!

How to Help your ADHD-I Child Greet the Dawn…or at least the School Bus

If your idea of a good morning is one where you don’t have to get your children up, you must be a parent. The same erratic sleep patterns that can wreak havoc with an established bedtime also make wake-up calls a repeated, frustrating exercise.

Some folks take mornings better than others, but unless everyone in your family has agreed to take night jobs and night classes, getting up in the morning remains a necessity of life.

Take a look at these tips to keep mornings more civil for all involved:

1. Pay attention to alarming details. First of all, you shouldn’t be the token alarm clock. Place a loud alarm clock out of your child’s reach so he must get out of bed to turn it off. One ring tone over another can also help…and changing ring tones periodically is a good idea.

2. Do the math first thing. Solve a basic math problem to turn off the alarm – brilliant! I’ve had pre-teens and teens who could carry on a conversation with me about breakfast and promptly go back to sleep remembering nothing later. This alarm app for your i-phone might engage your teen more.

3. Light up your child’s life…early. This depends on where you live, but if the sun comes up close to your usual wake up time, keep the shades open in your child’s bedroom. Another idea is to invest in an alarm clock that lights up before sounding off. When Joe was having major sleep problems, this is what his doctor recommended that they use for him. Try this wake up light.

4. Start the night before. Do whatever you can to streamline your morning routine. Have your fashionista diva or devil-may-care dresser choose clothes the night before. Set the breakfast table ahead of time, complete with cereal, bowls and spoons. Keep signed forms and homework pieces corralled in your child’s backpack. You don’t want to be chasing down myriad details before 8 a.m. if you can help it.

5. Rewarding what you like. Praising a good start can encourage more of the same. For elementary aged children, a star chart with a reward may entice some sleepyheads to change their ways.

6. Caffeine drip. For two of my teens, coffee in the morning helped. Or at least they told me that because they really liked starting the day with a highly sweetened chocolate caramel mocha shot of caffeine. A stimulant similar to medicine used to control symptoms of ADHD-I, caffeine introduction for your children or teens should be discussed with your doctor.

7. Drawing certain boundaries. Make boundaries tight enough for structure and loose enough for flexibility. One mom’s boundary was that her children had to be downstairs and dressed, ready for breakfast 30 minutes before the bus – or they lost computer time later as a consequence. If I had to drive a lagging child to school, it would cost them allowance. Consequences need to be set and then re-set when they stop motivating. You have to ask yourself how many times you are willing to drive your child to school because she misses the bus. As chief chauffeur and parent, you set the scales of justice, discipline and mercy.

8. Write your own last stand story. Every parent has limits. For Ron, he found out the day he missed the bus the third time in two weeks. Kayla wasn’t driving him – as she had already warned him before that memorable morning. So he went to school in a taxi that day, funded from his own spending money.

With a little strategy, you can help your child or teen greet a new day with less drama. Is it true that there’s nothing new under the sun? Let us know about your latest rise and shine challenges and how you overcame them. Your latest episode and resolution might be just the encouragement that another parent needs to hear.

Got Younger Kids? Read Divide and Conquer – ADHD and the Morning Routine.

Timers for ADHD

Looking back over the last ten years, one piece of equipment keeps showing up – the TIMER. Timers have been essential in our house. There are all sorts of timers – free ones on the computer or your microwave. Timers that come as a function on a watch or a cell phone. iPhones have special timer applications. There are visual timers, timers that buzz/flash/beep, timers that sing. (Here’s a whole post about reminder clocks.) We’ve used timers for all sorts of things – like on Halloween night we set the countdown for 30 minutes and let the kids eat all the candy they wanted. That is NOT a recommended use. Here are five ways to use a timer that I do recommend.

Setting a Deadline – This is probably the most negative of the ways to use a timer, so let’s get it out of the way first. Use a timer to specify a time that a task must be completed. You can give deadline for a chore or a part of an assignment to be done. “You must be finished emptying the dishwasher in fifteen minutes.” Or “You have ten minutes to write those three sentences.” If needed, add some teeth and give a consequence if a chore is not completed in the specified time. “Whatever toys are left on the floor in ten minutes will be taken away.” Siri, Google, and Alexa both have a timer that you can activate with a voice command. (We love our Alexa Dot!)

Setting a Limit – FlyLady (of flylady.com, one of my favorites!) says that you can do anything for 15 minutes. She’s talking about house cleaning, and she’s right. Anybody can stand to mop for fifteen minutes, although for me it is hard! Your timer can be used to point out that the end of a dreaded task or activity is near.

For example, if your child dreads math, set the timer for ten minutes, and tell him when the timer goes off, he can have a break. Set the timer for ten minutes, and tell your kids that you’re all going to work as hard as you can to clean out the car.

Put a timer beside a child who is in time out, so they can watch the end of their ‘sentence’ approach. Give a child ‘five more minutes’ of bedtime reading, after which light are out. Limit screen time with the free online-stopwatch.com. My mom used to use a kitchen timer for my piano practice. Use a timer to help kids take turn with the Wii or the computer.

When Ron was two, he used to have a melt down every time my husband left for work. While his emotion was real, he needed to learn to get it out and get it over with. Thirty minutes of a screaming two year old is really too much… Finally, I told Ron he was allowed to cry for ten minutes in what we called our tantrum chair, which was in our living room away from the family. After that, his tantrum had to stop. And it did – especially because he had no audience. (One of my favorite stories is “The Tantrum Chairs”, which tells about how my husband and I almost burned our legs off trying to impress a preschool teacher. It’s a really funny tale of my housekeeping, parenting, and cleaning – um – ‘skills’. You can read it here.)

Stay on Task Reminder – When our guys were young, they fought over our Triple Tell Timer, which they could program to beep, vibrate, and/or flash at various intervals. The Triple Tell basically took the place of me nagging them to stay on task.

Challenges – Tell your kids to do as many math problems as they can before time is up. Challenge kids to estimate the amount of time they spend on a task – teaching them to budget their time better. Calculate words read per minute. Keep a record of ‘best time’ for reading, math, or spelling, and have kids try to beat their personal best while keeping comprehension and accuracy up.

To Do Reminders – There are timers – especially reminder watches and of course cell phones – that have reminder functions or apps on them. They can remind you of appointments or when it’s time to head to soccer practice. They can be programmed to give reminders to take (or dispense) medication.

My favorite? One of my sons left his cell phone near where I was cooking the other day. At 3:00 it buzzed, and I instinctively looked down to see what the screen said. My son had set himself a reminder: “PRAY.”

A good reminder for us all.

PS The Triple Tell Timer makes a great gift or stocking stuffer. Grab yours today!