Attentional Avoidance
of frustrating situations – ADHD

Children also learn a second strategy to deal with these unpleasant academic situations. They use attentional avoidance of the unpleasant situation and feelings. Just the thought of doing math, reading, spelling etc. makes them angry, frustrated, bored or depressed; feelings they would just as soon avoid.  Although they dislike the feelings they experience during class or homework, they cannot physically escape.  However, just because you can force a child’s body to be in the presence of homework does not mean their attention will be there as well.

Case Study – 7 year old attentional avoidance

Even at 7 years old, Phillip had leaned this lesson well. He said he hated homework and postponed it as long as possible, sometimes forever. When finally forced by parents to do his homework, not much happened. He could sit in front of his books for hours and look out the window, play with a piece of paper, or make shapes with his fingers. Unlike Jerrod, there was not a sense of struggle, except when directly pressured by his parents. His mother would sit down with him for hours working together with him on assignments. In fact she would take dictation for him. 

Since she believed that he could not actually write out his ideas, when he had to write a story, a book report, or a science project, she would sit at the computer typing what he told her. Of course, she would then edit and reorganize his work so that it sounded much better. Often, they would be up late at night finishing a long-term project that she had not heard about until the night before it was due.  Mom seemed to be working very hard, while Phillip was looked around the room, taunting his little brother or playing.

When I met Phillip, it was apparent that he did not want to be in my office. He rocked in his chair, interrupted his parents and my conversation, moved from chair to chair and squirmed. After some CAER work on more general issues, I focused in on his academic issues.

I had him read a book. He was not inclined to try to sound out words, but would rather guess words, then look to me to see if he was right, which he seldom was. I had to keep redirecting him back to the reading task. As I pressured him to keep reading, he squirmed more and more. His feet and legs were very bouncy. I asked him what his legs and feet felt like. He said it felt like he wanted to run. At that point I put him in the CAER machine and had him think about the “want to run” feeling and all the places he could remember it.

Case study of  Phillip continued

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