How to Help ADHD-Afflicted Kids Achieve Goals: In 3 Steps
Goal achievement is serious and difficult business. Learning how to do it correctly is a valuable life skill that applies to virtually every area of human endeavor. It’s not just for schoolwork or athletics; it will be applicable to careers and projects later in life. But for a student with attention-deficit disorder (with or without hyperactivity), the entire process of setting and chasing a goal can be especially difficult. But are there some things that you and your child can do to help improve the chances that a goal will be achieved? Yes!
The first thing is to ensure that they are setting the “right” rings of goals. Along this line, the acronym SMART can be used to keep tabs on the five properties that goals have when they are set with success in mind. After the goal has been established, then you need to get to work tracking your progress. This is easier said than done, but it can be helped along with accountability partners and can be given the proverbial shot in the arm with a handful of promising psychological techniques like anchoring, creative visualization, self-affirmation, and positive/negative reinforcement.
As usual, the devil is in the details. So, let’s dive in to some of those.
1. Set the right kinds of goals.
This might seem a bit odd to read. A goal is just a goal, right? Not so fast! It is possible for people to get off on the wrong foot goal-achievement-wise by setting wrong – i.e., inappropriate – goals. So, straightforwardly, you need to help your child or teenager set appropriate goals from the word “go!”
How do you do this?
There’s actually an acronym that can guide you: SMART. What are “smart” goals? Let’s take a look.
S – Specific.
The initial “S” stands for the word specific. What does it mean for a selected goal to be specific? Basically, this comes down to two things.
- In the first place, specificity has to do with the language a person uses to express the goal. The goal needs to be stated in a helpful way.
This really boils down to clarity versus obscurity. Encourage your children or students to avoid ambiguous and vague words. Insist that they use precise language wherever feasible.
For example, “Do better in school” is a vague goal.
Have them try this instead:
“Raise my grade in English from a 74.5% to at least 80.0%.”
The second formulation has two immediate advantages over the first one. It doesn’t just refer to “school” – without qualification; it speaks about English class. This is an advantage because it’s going to assist with accountability. Relatedly, the second goal doesn’t leave the hoped-for improvement in vague terms (“do better”). Rather, it puts it precisely. We want to see the relevant grade go up 5.5%.
- Specificity is also going to make effective goal-tracking possible.
This is just to say that specific goals lend themselves to other things – like measurement – that vague goals do not. So, specificity is the foundation upon which a good goal is based. This needs to be in place for the other facets of goal-setting to work and, ultimately, for the goal to be realized.
One further thing: How will you know when you’ve reached the end? Part of being specific is going to have to do with sharply defining the result. It may sound obvious, but you’re going to want to have a good, clear idea of what your project will look like when it has been completed.
M – Measurable.
“M” designates measurability. When specifying a goal, you’ll want to ensure that you can always get a fix on where your child or teenager is in relation to the goal. This has got a somewhat mathematical flavor.
To put it another way, a measurable goal is going to have a well-defined starting point as well as a clear-cut ending point. At any given time, you want to be able to tell “where you are” with respect to your goal. In terms of helping your student, having a measurable goal will lay the groundwork for this measurement task.
Consider, again, our sample specific goal, stated earlier: “Raise my grade in English from a 74.5% to at least 80.0%.”
This sort of goal lends itself quite well to measurement, since – in principle, at any time – you should be able to calculate your child’s grade-point average and tell how he or she is doing in terms of achieving the goal.
A – Attainable.
Talk of goal tracking segues nicely into the next letter. This “A” is for attainability.
Here’s the basic point. We don’t want a goal that your kids have virtually no chance of achieving. The goal should make them stretch. It needs to be challenging. But it should also be within reach.
There are a couple of aspects to this.
Firstly, the goal should be practically possible. The goal has to be in-principle doable. For most adult readers, this probably doesn’t need much elaboration.
Secondly, the goal should be feasible for the pertinent student.
Let’s continue to use our hypothetical English student’s grade as an example.
Let’s suppose that the goal were: “Raise my grade in English from 74.5% to 100.0%.” This goal is specific and measurable.
But, per subpoint number one, this goal may not be mathematically possible to achieve. If the student has already lost points for past assignments, there might not be enough points remaining to boost his or her grade to a 100%. If this is so, then it is intuitive that the goal shouldn’t be set this high.
On the other hand, maybe it is practically possible – even if only barely. Perhaps the teacher allows for extra credit, or redone assignments, or whatever. Even if raising the grade to a 100% is possible, it may not be feasible for the student in question.
Ultimately, these constraints of possibility and feasibility are there to try to ensure that the student has a positive experience with goal-setting. An unattainable goal is, fairly obviously, unachievable. And if your student if aiming for a goal that is – for some reason – unachievable, then the student is being set up for failure. And this is psychologically deflating.
R – Relevant.[1]
Here’s a bit more on the psychological wavelength, so to speak. Sometimes, we set goals at our own discretion; other times, we have them set more or less for us. I take it that the main thrust of relevance is that, ideally, you want your goals to matter to you.
There are fairly glaring psychological-motivational reasons for this. First and foremost, you care more about goals that really matter to you. Now, there is a way of reading this that makes it trivially true; namely: you care about things that you care about. But, I think that there is an important, and non-trivial, lesson in the vicinity. If your goals pertain to aspects of your life that you don’t care much about, you are less likely to follow through with the necessary steps to achieve them.
This may be because you feel as though the goals are forced upon you from the outside. Perhaps a person decides to set a goal of quitting smoking because coworkers or friends keep nagging her to do so. But if she doesn’t really want to quit, she is unlikely to care very much about tracking her progress toward this goal – or, frankly, doing anything else that would increase the likelihood of her achieving it.
There are really two ways to go. Number one, you could make it your policy to only set goals that relate to things you really care about. This is fine, as far as it goes. But, in fact, most people are not in positions where this is possible to maintain. Many of us routinely have goals foisted upon us from third parties. And this applies to our children and students! My grandson may not care – and professes not to care – about mathematics. If you practice and preach that goals should only be set in relation to things that you care about; and you don’t care about math class; then it seems that you shouldn’t set any math-related goals. This attitude will kill your academic performance and prospects pretty quickly.
Thankfully, there is another way to go. Number two, you could try to care about those things that relate to your goals. This sounds somewhat strange to say after I typed it. But I hope that my meaning is clear. Maybe, antecedently, my grandson “doesn’t care” much about math. Fair enough. But he might be able to get himself to care just enough to motivate him to follow through on the steps needed to reach math-related goals.
This can be done with something like “reframing.” Simply put, reframing is a cognitive and therapeutic method whereby a person is able to see a situation (or person – whatever) differently than he was able to before. It’s partially got to do with altering your perspective on things.
So, maybe my grandson feels that mathematics is boring, irrelevant, tedious (or some combination). He can’t see how it helps him in his life, because his interests lie more on the artistic side of the fence. But he might be able to “reframe” his view about mathematics by thinking that a certain level of math skill might actually help him in his artwork. (It might make him more precise, or enable him to do drafting, etc.) Alternatively, he could try to get more enthused about math by viewing it as a means to an end. Raising his math grade will help his GPA and, ultimately, help him to get into the art school that he really wants to go to. You probably get the picture.
T – Timebound.
The final goal-setting characteristic has to do with recommendations concerning deadlines. Firstly, you need to have them!
It won’t do you – or your student – any good to articulate a specific, measurable, attainable, and relevant goal if you don’t have a reasonable date to aim at for achieving it.
This has practical and psychological aspects to it.
Practically, having a final, target date in mind will help with time management. As you move toward the target date, it can be helpful to “chunk” various tasks and assign them to intermediate dates. In turn, these intermediate tasks will assist you in measuring and tracking your progress.
Another practical aspect pertains to a phenomenon that people sometimes speak of as “Parkinson’s Law.”[2] This is an adage that basically says that a project tends to take up as much time as you give it. This “law” could be understood as a warning against procrastination. Let’s face it, it’s especially easy to put things off – especially when a job seems daunting. As just noted, one thing you can do is to break up your project into smaller, more manageable tasks.
Psychologically, a target date can serve as an impetus for action. Knowing that there is a definite end point can at once be motivating and reassuring.
2. Track Your Progress
So, now you have a goal to aim at. What now?
Well, if it was a “SMART” goal, then it is measurable. And you need to keep track of how you’re doing in relation that goal. In other words, you actually need to make the required “measurements.”
Make Records of Your Progress
Right off the bat, this means that you ought to keep good records. “Good,” here, means that your records need to be adequate, honest, and up to date.
Adequate – Your progress-tracking documents don’t necessarily have to be exhaustive. Sometimes it is tempting to put excessive effort into creating tracking spreadsheets (or other tools) at the expense of actually doing the work that will advance you towards your goal. On the other hand, the records that you keep have to be able to do the job you need them to do; namely, letting you know where you are in relation to your goal.
Honest – The records cannot do the requisite work if you lie about your progress. One quote, attributed to the famed Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, exhorts hearers: “Don’t lie to yourself! The person who lies to himself comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth.” You might have setbacks on your way to your goal. That’s normal – and predictable. Just be honest with your progress (or lack thereof), make the appropriate adjustments, and continue toward the goal.
Up to Date – Finally, the documentation that you make for yourself has to be updated regularly. This will help keep you on task.
But, for many people, keeping track of your own progress may not be enough. Perhaps a person is too tempted to fudge the records. Or maybe you just keep pushing deadlines back. Without a system of accountability, you may find yourself stalled on the road toward goal achievement. This is especially true of children and teenagers who, with or without attention issues, tend to be undisciplined.
What to do?
Get Accountability Buddies
Surround you child with people who can help keep his or her progress – and progress tracking – structured. And impress on your youngster the importance of being honest with these people.
Accountability buddies must have frequent access to your record-tracking documentation as well as a familiarity with your student’s situation.
Encourage students to meet with their accountability partners often. In this electronic age, these meetings don’t need to be conducted in person – though, face-to-face meetings have much to recommend them. Effective virtual meetings can be held by telephone, FaceTime, or Skype or through emails or text messages.
3. Use Psychology to Your Advantage
Incentivize Yourself
Structure your student’s goal-achievement plan so that he or she can get little rewards for small victories and larger rewards for major victories. For instance, maybe an important intermediate deadline is kept. It might be appropriate to hold a movie night or have a pizza dinner.[3] Or perhaps you could treat the student to a sports outing or other event in line with his or her interests.
Relatedly, you could provide special incentives when tasks are completed earlier than scheduled.[4]
Harness the Insights of Behavioral Psychology
Viewed through the lens of behaviorism, a branch of psychology, “incentives” might be thought of as examples of “positive reinforcement.” This sort of technique involves introducing rewards for engaging in wanted behaviors.
A corollary to positive reinforcement is its companion, negative reinforcement. Whereas positive reinforcement adds something in response to a desired action, negative reinforcement subtracts something. So, maybe if the student and his accountability buddy do well tracking their own goals for a semester, you remove some unwanted oversight from a teacher or principle. To put it slightly differently, you begin making the student the report to a teacher on his progress but give more freedom once it has been earned.
There is a related concept of punishment as well. A punishment would be the introduction of a something as a result of an undesirable behavior – or, in our case, an unmet deadline or goal.
So, if the student misses a deadline, then you might require more oversight or restrict free-time activities.[5]
So-called “aversion therapy” is a related concept that some people find helpful. The idea of aversion therapy is to condition a person to associate unwanted behaviors with “bad” (i.e., painful[6] or unpleasant) consequences.
Be ‘Self-Affirming’
Sure, it strikes many people as corny. And it was lampooned by then-comedian Al Franken (as fictional character Stuart Smalley) on a recurring Saturday Night Live bit.
Even so, “daily affirmations” or “self-affirmations” have become staples of self-help literature. And many people have professed to have found emotional support in them. So, it is probably wise not to dismiss them outright.
At their core, “affirmations” are just positive-sounding things that a person tells him- or herself for encouragement. The theory is that by can change your beliefs – about your own abilities and limitations – by repeating statements that describe your competence and prowess.
For instance, an ADHD-afflicted individual might tell him- or herself: “I can concentrate”; “I am able to get an ‘A’ on this test”; “I can pay attention”; and so on.
Do these work? I don’t know. But are you more concerned with answering that question or with helping your child get ahead in life? It’s a serious question.
By my lights, taking a few minutes each day to repeat some simple, yet personalized, affirmations, has little to no downside and has a high potential return for a little effort.
‘Visualize’
Creative visualization is a technique used by a wide range of people for the purposes of enhancing athletic performance, concentration, focus, healing, and much else besides.
I was always impressed with numerous pieces of anecdotal evidence regarding visualization that I found in a volume of Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown. On one page, the text reads: “Daredevil motorcyclist Evel Knievel …always envisioned a perfect jump before roaring up the takeoff ramp.”[7]
Or, here is another example: “In need of a burst of energy before she heads onto the ice, a professional skater visualizes herself swallowing a star. It explodes inside of her, infusing her with power from the tips or her fingers to her toes.”[8]
Some of the most intriguing cases of visualization pertain to alleged medical-related healings. “A little boy with a malignant brain tumor visualizes video-game rocket ships flying around inside his head and zapping his cancer cells. …[R]esearch in psychoneuroimmunology …suggests that visualizing health-promoting images may actually increase the number of white blood cells and other disease-battling body substances.”[9]
While the jury is still out on whether these claimed, dramatic results are genuine or replicable, it is a fact that numerous successful people (from athletes to public speakers) point to visualization as a powerful tool in their psycho-emotional arsenal. In my book, this means that the testimonial evidence is strong enough to warrant a closer look – even if the scientific evidence is at best forthcoming.
Try Some ‘NLP’
“NLP” stands for neuro-linguistic programming. Some people swear by it while others swear at it.
This is not the place to settle arguments about its merits or demerits. But it does seem to me that NLP has a few suggestions that might have great utility in helping people achieve their goals.
We’ve already talking about “reframing” – which, although it is not unique to NLP, does show up in it. But there are also other, more NLP-specific concepts that are worth mentioning. I’ll note one.
Anchoring – Anchoring is a somewhat difficult idea to express to a person who is new to NLP. In its most abstract and basic sense, an “anchor” is an association. Here’s an illustration that many people can relate to.
My husband died in 2016. There are certain songs that just bring all those emotions back. I can be in a more or less “neutral” emotion state, hear one such song, and then just experience a torrent of sadness.
Or, on a more positive note, there are some songs that just get me “pumped up.” If I hear one of these songs, I can go from calm to excited in a short period of time.[10]
This sort of thing can be analyzed this way: I have an association between the songs and various emotional states – whether positive or negative.
Now, not all NLP anchors are auditory. But some are. Although I am giving short shrift to the concept – which is much more involved than I am making it out to be – I just want to express the general idea that you can avoid negative anchors and use positive anchors to get your student in a mindset to focus, study, write, or whatever task is at hand.
You need to get the student to feel energized when it’s time to work. NLP anchoring promises to deliver this kind of on-demand emotion. Play a song, or otherwise “tap into” a positive emotional state, and you can get your child to feel positively toward his or her assignments. At least, that’s the idea.
Concluding Words
Yes, goal achievement requires focus and action. And yes, a child with an attention deficit may be a little short on the former. But There are some things (some more speculative than others) that can be done to improve goal-achievement success rates.
Finally, after a goal has been achieved pat yourself – and your child – on the back. But also…keep moving forward. Always have another goal in mind – hopefully, one that advances from the previous accomplishment.
Notes:
[1] I should point out that in various online treatments of these “SMART” guidelines, relevance was covered under “R” about 60.7% of the time (at least, in the 56 cases that I surveyed). The remaining 39.3% of the time “R” was said to represent the concept of “realism.” In the present context, a “realistic” goal would be one that is achievable both in principle and in particular for a given student. This is the way that I explained the idea of attainability. Construed as the word “realistic,” however, it isn’t clear to me that the “R” stands for anything much different than the “A.” So, I have chosen to write about relevance instead – which seems to me to be a different notion.
[2] See British naval historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s Parkinson’s Law: And Other Studies in Administration, Cutchogue, N.Y.: Buccaneer Books, 1957.
[3] Of course, if certain electronic diversions or particular foods exacerbate your child’s attention problems, then these might not be the best choices for rewards. You’ll have to be the judge.
[4] This might also have to be handled with care. You don’t want to incentivize slapdash or shoddy work.
[5] Again, you want to do all of these things very carefully. You want to encourage rather than stifle or frustrate. ADHD is already plenty frustrating – for the student and the adults in his or her life.
[6] This need not be physical pain. For my grandson, having arrive at school early for tutoring is sometimes emotionally painful.
[7] Mind Over Matter, Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1988, p. 124.
[8] Ibid., [p. 133].
[9] Ibid., [p. 136].
[10] In just a few seconds or minutes.