The Benefits of an ADHD Coach
Millions of children and adults have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Treatment includes medication and therapy to make their lives better and more productive. ADHD coaching is a specific type of life coaching, designed to help those with ADHD improve their quality of life in tangible ways.
What is ADHD Coaching? Planning, organizing, and time management skills are needed to perform well in life. People with ADHD often have difficulty with these skills, and traditional therapy doesn’t focus on individual solutions to these issues. ADHD coaches develop a relationship with their clients and help them create practical strategies to build these skills throughout their lives.
Reaching goals related to school or employment, financial stability, and health require planning and practice. ADHD coaches help people identify their strengths and build on their successes. Together, the ADHD coach and their client form customized strategies to achieve goals. To help people identify goals and plan each step of achievement, ADHD coaches ask significant questions that guide people to identify their strengths. ADHD coaches use these insights to help people build personal strategies and to recognize how they can use their abilities to make improvements.
ADHD coaches don’t recommend generic solutions. They don’t hand out planners or chore lists. Instead, they encourage clients to become more organized by helping them find ways to adapt their capabilities to reach their goals. Clients begin to learn what works for them and realize they can build on smaller successes. As their confidence grows, clients incorporate these strategies in more ways, creating more successes.
Understanding practical time management skills to move beyond planning and organizing and into making sustainable life changes is a necessary skill for success. ADHD coaches work with clients to determine how their habits help or hurt them in different situations. By teaching clients to identify behaviors that work, ADHD coaches build self-esteem and determination. Clients learn how to reach goals with good habits that produce their desired results.
ADHD Coaching for Adults Throughout their lives, many adults with ADHD struggle with the lack of skills to reach their goals. As they age, new challenges stress their coping mechanisms. Adults with ADHD don’t always know how to adapt their strengths to new challenges or how to achieve complicated goals. ADHD coaches help adult clients to use their past strategies in new ways.
ADHD coaches work with adult clients to identify what goals are important at each stage of their lives. They look at the reasons adult clients want to achieve these goals and how these reasons shape their determination. Then they guide their clients through past successes and help them to refine and strengthen their strategies to meet their current goals.
Adults with ADHD benefit from coaching designed for their specific needs and goals. Traditional life coaching doesn’t address an ADHD diagnosis and doesn’t produce the same results for those who have ADHD. By recognizing this difference, ADHD coaches help adult clients adapt their abilities to reach goals during each stage in life.
ADHD Coaching for College Students College students with ADHD face new challenges when they leave the structured environment of daily classes and family support. They need additional strategies to navigate new surroundings, schedules, and people. Studies show that ADHD coaching helps them be more positive, confident, and more satisfied with their performance in school.
ADHD coaching for these college students builds on their existing planning, organization, and time management skills. ADHD coaches assist these college students in adapting their strengths to meet the challenges of changing schedules, contact with more people, and new freedoms and responsibilities. By improving their concentration, goal achievement skills, and emotional management, college students with ADHD have a greater opportunity for success. With ADHD coaching, these students have higher graduation rates than ADHD college students who don’t receive coaching.
ADHD Coaching for Children Children need to develop skills to be productive and to reach goals. For children with ADHD, learning these skills require individual approaches and additional support. ADHD coaches work with children to build their self-esteem by helping them identify behaviors and strategies that produce these skills.
When a child has difficulty focusing and learning, they may feel that they are not capable of satisfactory behavior. Failure to behave appropriately or reach milestones with their peers only reinforces their beliefs. ADHD coaches focus on a child’s strengths and help them realize that they can make improvements to achieve better results. When children experience success, their self-esteem increases, confirming their worth, and giving them a desire to repeat their success.
ADHD coaches encourage children to use their strengths to learn new, productive skills. ADHD coaches help children practice their skills by discussing school and family situations where children can see the benefit of using them. Working with an ADHD coach, children learn they are capable of reaching their goals and build their self-worth through positive feedback and reinforcement.
Lifelong Benefits Using an ADHD coach provides benefits beyond traditional therapy and medications. ADHD coaching increases self-awareness and self-esteem by providing positive skill building. The one-on-one approach allows ADHD coaches to focus on each client’s abilities and strengths. Clients gain a better understanding of the strategies that work for them. ADHD coaches help build these strategies into skills that provide success throughout life.