7 Activities to Help a Child with Attention Deficits

A child with attention deficits may have learning problems due to difficulty concentrating and paying attention. These activities are perfect for working with them - don't miss out!

Reviewed and approved by the psychologist Mara Amor López.

Written by Mara Amor López

Last update: 16 December, 2022

A child with attention deficits may have difficulty listening to instructions and carrying them out. They may also have difficulty remembering small details, organizing their things, and controlling their behavior. For this reason, it’s important to work with them, both at home and at school, with activities and strategies to help them cope with this difficulty in the best way possible.

Children with attention deficit disorder have a harder time achieving academic success. Some symptoms such as the inability to pay attention or not being able to control their impulses and sit still, among others, make it more difficult for them to perform well in school. In the following article, we’ll suggest a list of activities that can help a child with attention deficits improve their performance.

Activities to help a child with attention deficits

Below, we’re going to give you a selection of activities that can help a child with attention deficits improve their symptoms and, consequently, their performance. Are you ready? Keep reading.

Treasure hunters

This activity is very suitable for children with this disorder, as they don’t have to be seated and can move freely. That way, they develop their attention, memory, and concentration skills, which are some of the things they have more difficulties with. To carry out this game, you’ll draw a treasure map of the house or some other place. Then, you’ll hide objects in different areas, which you’ll point out on the map, and they’ll have to find them.

Puzzles

Puzzles are a very good option for children with ADHD. With this activity, logical thinking, attention, concentration, and patience, among others, are developed. The important thing is to look for puzzles with a theme that the child’s passionate about so that they feel more motivated to put them together.

Guess Who game

Who hasn’t played this game at some time in their life? It’s a classic board game and, in addition, a very good resource to work with these children. In this activity, attention, concentration, memory, patience, and respect for rules and turns are enhanced. It’s a very fun game and, being a two-player game, it can be the perfect way to spend one-on-one time with your child at home.

Find the differences

This is another activity that can be of great help for children with ADHD because it enhances concentration and attention, which is what the task requires. The child is presented with two apparently identical images, but there are small differences between them. The child’s mission is to find these differences, and to do so, they need to concentrate and pay attention to the images. If it becomes monotonous for them, you can increase the difficulty.

Memory

This is another classic game you can play with your child if they have attention deficits. It’s a well-known memory game that consists of picking out pairs of matching images from memory. This way, memory, concentration, and attention are promoted, as the child has to look carefully where the same images are in order to form the pair.

Simon Says

This game can be a challenge for children with attention deficits, as they have to be very attentive to the orders they’ll have to follow. In addition, they’ll also have to respect the established rules. It’s a good idea to start playing with only a few participants in order to keep the turns short and the orders simple.

Each car in its place

This activity will help your child to hold their attention. You just need toy cars and to follow the steps below:

1. Draw a road on a piece of cardboard.
2. On both sides of the road, you’ll draw parking spaces to park the cars.
3. On each car, put a sticker with a different letter or color and do the same on the parking spaces.
4. Your little one will have to steer the car along the road and park it in the right place.

How else can you help a child with attention deficits?

Here are some tips that will help you to have resources and strategies to face the difficulties that children with ADHD experience:

• Set a schedule for homework and free time.
• Set simple rules at home.
• Whenever you give your child instructions, keep them simple so that they understand them.
• Maintain routines at home according to their chores and the things they have to do.
• Look more at their effort than at their grades.
• Observe the child whenever you can.
• When good behavior occurs, reinforce it with kind words and compliments.
• Have frequent conversations with the child’s teachers.
• Keep commands clear, short, and as simple as possible.
• Break tasks into small steps. This way, the child will achieve small goals that will increase their motivation and make it easier for them to finish them.

Regarding activities to help children with attention deficits

A child with attention deficits has difficulties when it comes to concentrating and paying attention to the tasks they perform. This is why many of the little ones with this disorder also present learning problems. For this reason, it’s important that both parents at home and teachers at school take some measures to help them improve their attention.

These activities that we’ve proposed are a good resource to work on the concentration, attention, and patience of these children. We hope they’ll be of great help to you.