Introduction
Supporting the Child in Context
A child can understand a rule, explain what they should have done, and promise to do things differently. They may then make the same mistake again.
They may begin one task immediately and appear unable to start another. They may concentrate intensely on something they enjoy, but struggle to remain engaged with an ordinary classroom activity. They may lose track of time, forget an instruction, act before thinking, or experience an emotional reaction that seems entirely out of proportion to what has happened.
It is easy to interpret this inconsistency as a lack of effort, deliberate disobedience, or evidence that expectations at home are not clear enough. Very often, it is none of those things.
This guide is concerned primarily with the pattern of self-regulation difficulties commonly associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. This includes difficulties with impulsivity, attention, motivation, organisation, time, working memory, and emotional control. Not every child experiencing these difficulties will have, or require, an ADHD diagnosis. Schools do not need to wait for a diagnosis before responding to needs that are already apparent.
These difficulties can have a profound effect on learning, relationships, safety, and emotional wellbeing. They are also areas in which practical, evidence-informed support can make a substantial difference.
The starting point is not to ask:
Why won’t this child control themselves?
It is to ask:
What would make successful self-regulation more possible in this situation?
Understanding the difficulty
When Knowing What to Do Is Not Enough
ADHD is often described as a problem with attention. That description is incomplete. Attention is part of what we see, but the deeper difficulty involves self-regulation: the ability to direct our behaviour, thinking, and emotions towards a goal over time.
Self-regulation allows us to pause before acting, hold instructions in mind, resist distractions, estimate time, organise a sequence of actions, and continue working when the reward is still some distance away. These abilities are often described collectively as executive functions.
Widely published ADHD expert Russell Barkley offers a particularly useful way of understanding the difficulty. ADHD is not primarily a problem of knowing what to do. It is a problem of doing what you know, at the time and in the place where it is needed.
A child may understand perfectly well that they should remain seated, wait their turn, begin their work, or speak calmly. That knowledge may still be unable to guide their behaviour strongly enough when something more immediate captures their attention, promises a faster reward, or provokes a powerful emotional response.
The pull of the present
“ADHD is a motivation deficit disorder.”
Russell A. Barkley, PhD
All children are influenced by what is interesting, enjoyable, or immediately rewarding. As they develop, they become increasingly able to allow future goals to influence what they do now. They can resist the interesting thing on the other side of the room because they want to finish the assignment, avoid disrupting the lesson, or achieve something later.
For children with significant self-regulation difficulties, that balance is less reliable. Immediate attractions in the environment (an interesting conversation at another table, something on the shelf, a noise outside) exert a particularly strong pull, while distant rewards and consequences (good grades, college admissions, career success) may have too little influence on behaviour in the present.
This is why telling a child that an assignment matters for their future may have very little effect during a difficult lesson. The future consequence is real, but it is too distant. Effective support brings structure, feedback, and motivation closer to the moment in which the child needs them.
Support belongs where the difficulty occurs
A conversation in a quiet office may help a child understand what happened. It does not necessarily help them use that understanding several days later in a noisy classroom, during an argument with another child, or halfway through a long assignment.
Support must reach the point of performance, the place and time where the child is expected to pause, remember, organise, persist, or regulate an emotional response.
This means preparing the environment, making expectations visible, breaking work into manageable parts, providing frequent feedback, creating sufficiently immediate motivation, and ensuring that knowledgeable adults are available during predictable periods of difficulty.
These are not ways of excusing behaviour or removing boundaries. They are ways of giving the child a realistic opportunity to meet those boundaries successfully.
Emotional regulation is part of the picture
Emotional dysregulation is very common among children with this profile. Frustration, disappointment, or perceived rejection may produce reactions that are unusually rapid, intense, and difficult to contain.
These episodes can be frightening for the adults around the child. They can also be deeply frightening for the child. What looks like denial or indifference afterwards may conceal confusion, embarrassment, or shame.
Emotional regulation will therefore receive its own practical section later in this guide. It should not be treated as an unrelated behavioural problem, or overlooked because it is less prominent in traditional descriptions of ADHD.
Moving into action
What Can We Do?
Understanding self-regulation difficulties is important, but that understanding needs to lead to practical support. The question now becomes: what can adults do differently, in the situations where the child is struggling, to make successful participation more likely?
There is an extensive body of research, guidance, and practical advice about supporting children with ADHD and related self-regulation difficulties. There is no way that one guide could include every recommended intervention, and not every strategy will be appropriate for every child, activity, or setting.
The sections that follow bring together some of the most important and commonly recommended approaches. They provide a practical starting point rather than an exhaustive list. Use what is relevant, pay attention to whether it is making a meaningful difference, and adapt the level of support to the individual child and the circumstances in which the difficulty occurs.
Practical support 1
Prepare the Environment
Every classroom places demands on a child’s ability to regulate their attention. There are other students moving and talking, materials within reach, activity outside the window, information displayed around the room, and increasingly, devices offering immediate access to far more interesting experiences.
It is rarely possible, or desirable, to remove every distraction. The aim is to reduce unnecessary competition for the child’s attention, position them where support can be provided easily, and avoid expecting them to resist distractions that could reasonably have been managed in advance.
Small environmental changes can make a significant difference. They do not remove the child’s responsibility to participate. They make successful participation more achievable.
Strategies you may find helpful
Position the child for access and support
Choose a position where the child can see the teacher, board, demonstration, or other source of instruction without having to turn around or look past several other students. The teacher should also be able to see the child easily, notice when their attention has shifted, and provide a quiet prompt before they become completely disengaged.
This does not always mean placing the child at the front of the room. The most useful position will depend on the classroom, the activity, and the child. The aim is to create easy access to instruction and support without making the child feel isolated or constantly watched.
Reduce unnecessary visual distractions
Where possible, avoid placing the child beside a window, doorway, busy display, or screen showing information unrelated to the current lesson. Consider what will remain within their direct line of sight while they are expected to listen or work.
The classroom does not need to become empty or visually sterile. The purpose is simply to avoid placing the most distracting features of the room directly between the child and the activity they are expected to complete.
Manage materials and devices
Keep the immediate workspace reasonably clear. Put away objects, books, stationery, toys, and personal items that are not needed for the current task. Bags and other interesting materials may need to be closed and placed out of reach.
Be particularly cautious when work is completed on a computer or tablet. A device can support organisation, written directions, timers, and planning, but it can also provide constant access to games, messages, videos, and other applications. Use appropriate restrictions, supervision, and monitoring rather than assuming that the child will consistently resist those distractions independently.
Consider who is nearby
The people around a child can support regulation, or make it considerably more difficult. Think carefully about who the child sits beside, works with, and encounters during less structured activities.
Some peers provide calm models, gentle reminders, and natural encouragement. Others may invite conversation, competition, conflict, or emotional reactions. Adjusting where children sit or who they work with should be done thoughtfully, without blaming either child or using separation as a punishment.
At home
The same principles apply at home. Create a reasonably calm workspace that an adult can observe without having to hover over the child. Keep only the materials needed for the current task within reach, reduce access to unrelated devices, and consider what the child can see and hear while they are expected to work.
The goal is not to create a perfect, distraction free environment. It is to remove the distractions that adults can reasonably control, so that the child can use their limited self-regulation for the work itself.
Practical support 2
Make Tasks Visible and Manageable
A classroom task can place several demands on executive functioning at the same time. The child may need to remember an instruction, decide where to begin, organise several steps, estimate how much time is available, monitor their own progress, and recognise when the work is finished.
A child may have all the academic skills needed to complete the task, but still struggle to manage this process independently. The solution is not necessarily to make the work easier. It is to make the organisation of the work more visible, externalising as much of the thinking as possible and making the task concrete, so that the child does not have to carry the instructions, sequence, timing, and progress of the work entirely in their mind.
Before work begins, the child should know what they are expected to complete, what the important steps are, how they can monitor their progress, and what finished will look like.
Strategies you may find helpful
Define what finished looks like
Make the expected outcome concrete. Identify what the child needs to produce, complete, or demonstrate, rather than relying on broad instructions such as “Work on your assignment” or “Do as much as you can.”
The definition of finished may include a particular number of questions, one section of a longer task, a completed diagram, or a paragraph containing specific elements. The expectation should be clear enough that the child can recognise for themselves when they have reached it.
Say it, show it, and check it
Provide important directions in more than one form. Write the main steps on the board, place them on the child’s desk, or make them available on an appropriate device. Where possible, provide visible directions to the whole class rather than singling out one child.
Do not assume that a child has understood because they say yes. Ask them to explain what they are going to do, show you where they will begin, or write down the steps as they repeat them. This should feel like a helpful check, not a test designed to catch them out.
Teachers can also use approved dictation and transcription tools to turn spoken directions into written instructions quickly; record what you're saying to the class, and then ask for an instant written summary. This can make important information available without creating an unreasonable additional workload.
Break the task into meaningful steps
Divide larger tasks into stages that the child can complete and recognise. A step might be one group of questions, one part of a practical activity, or one component within a longer process. The child may be able to help identify these steps, particularly as they become older and more experienced.
Whenever possible, divide work according to what needs to be accomplished rather than how long the child must remain seated. Five minutes at a desk does not necessarily represent five minutes of engagement. A completed and clearly defined amount of work provides a more useful indication of progress.
Externalise time and planning
Children who struggle with time awareness should not be expected to manage time entirely in their heads. Provide access to a visible clock, timer, calendar, checklist, or progress display, and actively teach the child how to use it.
For assignments extending over several days or weeks, identify the major milestones first. Break down the next milestone in greater detail, schedule regular check ins, and update the plan as the work develops. Calendars, reminders, digital planning systems, and approved AI tools can help make future responsibilities more immediate and visible.
Structure the work before lowering the goal
Self-regulation difficulties do not imply reduced intelligence or academic ability. The learning goal, quality, and complexity of the work should not be lowered simply because a child needs additional help with organisation, time, motivation, or persistence.
Some children may have developed genuine gaps in their learning after years of inconsistent engagement. Those gaps require direct teaching and targeted support, just as they would for any other student. The important distinction is between a child who cannot yet perform the academic skill, and a child who has the skill but cannot organise and sustain their performance independently.
Reducing unnecessary repetition may sometimes be appropriate, particularly when large amounts of homework displace sleep, movement, or recovery. This is different from assuming that the child is incapable of challenging work.
At home
Many of the general recommendations here are equally applicable around homework production and other structured tasks. Make homework expectations concrete, visible, and limited. Agree on what needs to be completed, write down the steps, and focus on one manageable part at a time. Avoid repeatedly giving the full instruction verbally when the child could be taught to return to a written plan.
The aim is not to fill the evening with additional work. It is to help the child complete what is genuinely necessary, while protecting time for movement, rest, family life, and sleep.
Practical support 3
Bring Motivation and Feedback Closer
Self-regulation difficulties, such as ADHD, are driven by problems with motivation, not simply problems with attention. A child with ADHD may be perfectly capable of paying attention to a video game, construction toy, favourite book, or another highly preferred activity for an extended period. When the activity is immediately interesting and rewarding, there may be no apparent difficulty with attention at all.
The difficulty becomes more visible when the activity is not inherently motivating. Attention may reduce rapidly, effort becomes harder to sustain, and everything else happening in the environment begins to compete with the task. This is why the same child may remain absorbed in one activity for an hour, but struggle to engage with another for more than a few minutes.
A child may understand that completing an assignment will contribute to a good grade, or that behaving appropriately will prevent a problem later in the day. Those outcomes may still be too distant to influence what they do in the present moment.
This does not mean that the child does not care. It means that immediate experiences, including boredom, effort, frustration, movement, social attention, and access to something more interesting, may exert a stronger influence than a reward or consequence that will occur much later.
The amount of planning required will depend greatly on how motivating the child finds the activity itself. When a child is interested, absorbed, and enjoying what they are doing, the activity provides its own reinforcement. Additional rewards or elaborate motivational systems may not be necessary.
More active planning is needed when the work is difficult, repetitive, effortful, or offers little immediate interest. These are the situations in which attention is more likely to reduce, distractions become more powerful, and external feedback and reinforcement become particularly important.
Effective support brings motivation and feedback closer. In practice, this means providing reinforcement and feedback much more frequently and regularly than would usually be necessary for other students in the classroom. The child needs to know what they are working towards, receive acknowledgement as they complete each meaningful step, and reach the agreed outcome without an extended delay. Whatever system is used, it must operate often enough to influence behaviour in the moment. The distance between effort and outcome needs to remain short enough for the outcome to guide the child’s behaviour.
Strategies you may find helpful
Know what motivates the child
Do not assume that common classroom rewards will be meaningful to every child. Stickers, house points, praise, free time, and preferred activities will only influence behaviour if the child genuinely values them.
Begin by asking the child what they enjoy and what they would be interested in working towards. Speak to parents, teachers, and other people who know the child well. Observe what the child chooses during free time, sample different possibilities, and offer a manageable menu of options. Preferences can change according to the activity, setting, and day, so continue paying attention to what is actually working.
The clearest test of a potential reward is whether it produces a meaningful improvement in engagement. If the child appears indifferent, the reward is not functioning as motivation, regardless of how appealing adults expect it to be.
Establish the expectation and motivation before beginning
Before the task starts, make sure the child knows what they need to complete and what will happen when they complete it. The expectation and the motivation should both be concrete.
The outcome might be a break, movement, a preferred activity, positive attention, a sticker, a token, or access to something the child values. What matters is that it is genuinely motivating for that child, and that the amount of work required to reach it is reasonable.
Keep feedback and reinforcement close
Do not wait until the end of a long lesson or assignment to acknowledge progress. Provide feedback as the child completes each meaningful step, particularly when the work requires sustained effort.
A simple pattern can be highly effective. The child completes the step, the adult provides feedback, the agreed reinforcement is delivered, and the child moves to the next step. The level of adult involvement will depend on the child, the task, and the support available, but the underlying sequence remains the same.
Use tokens and other rewards thoughtfully
Tokens can create a bridge between completing a small amount of work and reaching a larger reward. They should remain visible, be delivered frequently enough to maintain engagement, and lead to something the child genuinely wants.
The number of tokens required should be achievable within a reasonable period. If the child appears indifferent to the system, or their engagement does not improve, the system needs to change. Tokens are only one option. Praise, feedback, movement, preferred activities, and small tangible rewards may work just as well, or better.
Once a token or reward has been earned, it should not be removed because of a later mistake. Earned means earned. Taking it away weakens the child’s trust in the system and turns a positive support into another form of punishment.
At home
All of the principles in this section apply at home. Keep the system as simple as possible and use naturally occurring motivators wherever you can. Access to television, screen time, a preferred activity, or something else the child would ordinarily choose can reasonably be made available after a clearly defined homework task or responsibility has been completed.
Do not make activities that support regulation, particularly physical exercise and movement, dependent on completing academic work. Preventing a child from going outside, playing sport, or moving until their homework is finished may remove exactly the support they need to complete the work successfully.
Know what is motivating your child today, and think carefully about when you are asking them to work. A child may be far more able to engage after they have eaten, moved, rested, or had some time to recover from school. The same strategy may be effective at one point in the evening and unsuccessful at another.
Immediate motivation matters, but so does the bigger picture. The aim is to complete what is genuinely necessary without allowing homework to displace movement, recovery, family life, or sleep.
Practical support 4
Build Regulation into the Day
A child’s capacity for self-regulation is not constant throughout the day. Sometimes difficulties are linked to a particular situation, such as a long lesson, a noisy transition, an unstructured break, or an activity that the child finds frustrating. At other times, the difficulty reflects an accumulation of effort. The child may have spent hours sitting still, resisting distractions, following instructions, managing disappointment, moving between activities, and trying to meet expectations.
That effort can build across the day. As the child becomes mentally tired and stressed, the self-regulation available for the next task may reduce. A demand that they could manage earlier may become much harder later, not because the child has stopped caring, but because they have already used considerable effort managing everything that came before it.
Sustained self-regulation requires effort, and the capacity to maintain that effort can reduce over time. Activities requiring inhibition, attention, emotional control, and organisation may become increasingly difficult without opportunities for recovery. Movement, brief changes of activity, positive feedback, meaningful rewards, and rest can help the child regain the capacity to continue.
The frequency with which a child needs these opportunities will depend on the demands of the situation and how motivated they are to continue. A highly preferred activity may sustain regulation for a long time because the activity itself is rewarding. A repetitive, difficult, or low interest task may require much more frequent breaks, feedback, and encouragement.
Difficult moments are therefore often predictable. They may occur because of a particular setting or trigger, because effort has accumulated over time, or because both are happening together. Effective support recognises these patterns and creates opportunities for movement, recovery, and renewed motivation before the child reaches the point at which they can no longer manage successfully.
Movement, recovery, adult availability, and light structure should not be viewed only as rewards provided after successful behaviour. They are practical supports that can help make successful behaviour possible.
Strategies you may find helpful
Provide brief, natural opportunities to reset
A break does not need to become a major event. The child might stand and stretch, complete a useful errand, walk one circuit of the corridor, get water, visit the toilet, or push their chair back and move briefly beside the desk.
Some children may benefit from a short change of activity rather than physical movement. A simple puzzle, brief game, or other clearly bounded activity can provide a cognitive reset before returning to the work. Whatever form the break takes, it should have a clear endpoint and an established route back to the task.
Russell Barkley describes a useful rule of thumb known as the “10 and 3 rule”: ten minutes of work followed by a three minute break. This is not a fixed prescription, and the timing should depend on the child, the task, and the amount of effort involved. It does, however, give some indication of how frequently brief opportunities to reset may need to be built into a classroom lesson.
Keep breaks as natural, unobtrusive, and non-disruptive as possible. The aim is to support regulation without unnecessarily drawing attention to the child.
Protect regular physical activity
Children with self-regulation difficulties need regular opportunities for sustained physical activity, not only occasional movement within lessons. Sport, active play, walking, swimming, cycling, and other enjoyable forms of exercise can support attention, executive functioning, sleep, and general wellbeing.
Physical activity should not always be treated as something the child must earn after completing academic work. It is part of the support that allows many children to function successfully. Before adding more homework or additional classes, consider whether what the child really needs is more movement.
Get them active. Get them outside. Get them moving.
Anticipate high risk moments
Identify the situations in which difficulties are most likely to occur, and make sure that appropriate support is available. A familiar adult may need to remain nearby during a transition, free play period, busy group activity, or other situation in which impulsivity or conflict regularly increases.
The adult does not need to hover over the child. They need to understand the plan, recognise early signs of difficulty, and be close enough to offer a quiet prompt, provide guidance, or intervene before the situation escalates.
Add structure where it is needed
When unstructured time repeatedly leads to boredom, impulsivity, excitement seeking, or conflict, give the child something purposeful to do. They might help a teacher organise resources, complete a useful responsibility, or join a planned game or activity with other children.
If particular behaviours need attention, choose one or two clear targets at a time. Describe what the child should do, such as “Ask before taking” or “Use a calm voice,” rather than providing a long list of behaviours to avoid. Remind the child before the activity begins, provide feedback while it is happening, and reinforce success quickly.
Check the foundations
Before interpreting increased impulsivity, disengagement, or emotional reactivity as deliberate behaviour, consider whether the child is tired, hungry, thirsty, stressed, unwell, or in pain. These factors can significantly affect the level of self-regulation available in the moment.
Encourage regular, balanced meals and snacks, which may include a source of protein. The aim is to prevent hunger and support general wellbeing, not to prescribe a special ADHD diet.
Where medication is being used, school staff may notice patterns related to timing, appetite, sleep, or changes in behaviour across the day. These observations can be recorded and shared with the family through appropriate channels. Decisions about medication or dosage remain with the family and the prescribing clinician.
At home
The period immediately after school may not be the best time to begin demanding work. A child may be hungry, mentally tired, physically restless, or carrying the stress of managing themselves throughout the school day. Food, movement, rest, and a predictable period of recovery may need to come first.
Plan homework and other responsibilities for the time when the child is most likely to succeed. Protect regular physical activity, and add structure to the parts of the evening that repeatedly lead to conflict or disorganisation.
Practical support 5
Support Emotional Regulation
Emotional dysregulation is a very common part of self-regulation difficulties. A child may experience frustration, disappointment, correction, or perceived rejection with an intensity that seems entirely out of proportion to what has happened. Their reaction may develop rapidly and result in a frightening loss of control.
These episodes are distressing for the people around the child, but they can be even more frightening for the child themselves. They may not understand how the situation became so intense, why they behaved as they did, or how they will face the people involved afterwards.
What appears to be indifference or denial after an outburst may be driven by shame. The child may avoid the conversation, minimise what happened, insist that they do not care, or become angry when the subject is raised. Even talking about the incident may trigger another strong emotional response.
The simplest rule is: Do not try to solve the problem while the problem is happening. During the escalation, the priority is to remain as calm as possible, reduce the intensity of the situation, and make sure that everyone is safe. When the child is ready, the focus can move towards understanding what happened, addressing the consequences, and repairing any harm.
Repair is not about accusation, proving that the adult was right, or forcing the child to admit that they were wrong. The child may still need to experience a reasonable consequence, apologise, restore something that was damaged, or rebuild trust with another person. At the same time, adults should recognise that genuine self-regulation difficulties contributed to what happened and work with the child to minimise the longer-term impact of the incident.
A serious mistake does not mean that everybody now hates the child. It does not mean that they are a bad person, or that they should be excluded from future opportunities to learn, play, and belong. The message is that something harmful happened, it needs to be addressed, and there is a way back from it. We repair, we forgive, and we move on.
Criticism and shame are unlikely to improve emotional regulation. If the child leaves the incident believing that they are bad, unwanted, or incapable of doing better, we may add to the stress that contributed to the outburst and make future incidents more likely. Effective support maintains boundaries while protecting the child’s relationships, dignity, and belief that they can recover from a mistake.
Strategies you may find helpful
Recognise escalation early
Learn the child’s early signs of distress. These might include changes in their voice, increased movement, repeated complaints, refusal, withdrawal, fixation on a perceived injustice, or growing difficulty responding to ordinary directions.
Responding early may prevent a difficult moment from becoming a crisis. Reduce unnecessary demands, offer a manageable choice, provide space, or guide the child towards an agreed way of stepping away. The aim is to act while the child can still use the support being offered.
Remain calm and use less language
During a significant escalation, remain as calm as possible. Speak slowly, use brief and familiar language, and avoid adding more information to the situation. This is not the time to argue about facts, explain consequences, insist that the child sees another person’s perspective, or demand a detailed account of what happened.
Adults should hold a genuine expectation that the episode will pass. The calmer the adults remain, and the less they add to the conflict, the easier it is for the intensity to reduce. Continue communicating that support is available when they are ready without repeatedly pressuring the child to speak or respond.
Protect safety and follow an agreed plan
The safety of the child, other students, and adults must remain the priority. If outbursts are severe or recurring, the school should have an individualised plan describing early warning signs, helpful responses, unsafe responses, who should be contacted, and what should happen if the situation escalates.
The plan may require more than one adult to be available, other students to be moved, or the child to be supported towards a quieter and safer space. Any movement should be handled as calmly as possible and should not be presented as humiliation or public punishment.
Staff should know their roles in advance. A safety plan is most useful when adults can follow it without having to make complex decisions in the middle of a crisis.
Return later to restore and repair
Do not force a conversation immediately after the child appears calm. Recovery may take hours, and in some situations it may be appropriate to wait until the following day. Choose a time when the child feels safe, the adults are calm, and there is enough privacy to avoid further embarrassment. Giving the child some options as to when and where they would like to discuss what happened can give them a sense of control over an otherwise disorienting experience.
Approach the conversation with curiosity rather than accusation. Help the child understand what happened, recognise the impact on other people, and identify what might help next time. Where harm has occurred, support them to apologise, repair a relationship, replace or restore something that was damaged, and move forward.
Repair should not become a prolonged exercise in shame. The child needs to understand that they made a mistake, that the mistake had consequences, and that there is a way back from it.
Understanding does not remove boundaries
Empathy does not mean that harmful behaviour is ignored. Aggression, abusive speech, damage, or other unsafe behaviour may require a reasonable consequence, particularly where another person has been affected.
Consequences should be delivered after the situation has settled, calmly, consistently, and without humiliation. They can help maintain safety, protect other people, and communicate that behaviour has an impact. They should not be treated as the primary strategy for preventing the next outburst.
Prevention comes from understanding the pattern, recognising high risk situations, teaching alternative responses, providing support early, and ensuring that the child has practical ways to step away before they lose control.
At home
The same principles apply at home. Reduce language during escalation, avoid trying to settle the argument while the child is overwhelmed, and make sure that everyone is safe. Where possible, family members should agree in advance who will respond, what tends to help, and when another adult should step in.
Return to the incident when the child is ready. Maintain boundaries, support repair, and allow the child to move on once the situation has been addressed. Repeatedly revisiting the mistake after repair has occurred is unlikely to improve regulation and may increase shame.
Final thoughts
It Doesn’t Stop Here
There is much more that could be said about supporting children with self-regulation difficulties. One of the challenges when developing guidance on a subject this broad is deciding what to include and what to leave out. This guide brings together some of the main principles that schools and families should consider, but it is by no means a complete account of every difficulty a child may experience or every form of support they may need.
Broad strategies, such as making tasks visible, bringing motivation closer, reducing distractions, providing movement, and responding calmly to emotional escalation, can make a significant difference. They will not, however, explain every behaviour. When a particular difficulty persists, adults may need to look more closely at the individual circumstances, including what happens before and after the behaviour, what the child may be trying to achieve or avoid, and whether a particular skill, relationship, or source of support is missing. Co-occurring developmental, learning, emotional, or behavioural needs may also require a more focused and individualised approach.
Many of the strategies described in this guide may need to remain in place over a long period. Children can develop greater independence, learn to monitor themselves, and become more involved in planning their own support, but this progress is likely to be gradual. When a child is succeeding because effective support is in place, that success should not automatically be taken as evidence that the support is no longer needed.
Further reading
Research Informing This Guide
- Faraone, S. V., Banaschewski, T., Coghill, D., and colleagues. The World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement: 208 Evidence-based Conclusions about the Disorder. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 128, 789–818 (2021).
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: diagnosis and management (NG87).
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ADHD in the Classroom (2026).
- Daley, D., van der Oord, S., Ferrin, M., and colleagues. Behavioral interventions in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials across multiple outcome domains. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 53(8), 835–847 (2014).
- Gaastra, G. F., Groen, Y., Tucha, L., and Tucha, O. The effects of classroom interventions on off-task and disruptive classroom behavior in children with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A meta-analytic review. PLOS ONE, 11(2), e0148841 (2016).
- Yegencik, B., Bell, B. T., and Deniz, E. School-based randomized controlled trials for ADHD and accompanying impairments: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1611145 (2025).
- Graziano, P. A., and Garcia, A. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and children’s emotion dysregulation: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 46, 106–123 (2016).
- Sun, F., Fang, Y., Chan, C. K. M., and colleagues. Structured physical exercise interventions and children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Child: Care, Health and Development, 50(1), e13150 (2024).
Useful resources for further learning
Continue learning about the child, the situations in which they struggle, and the research that informs effective support. Russell Barkley’s website provides extensive scientific and practical information about ADHD, while ADDitude offers articles, expert webinars, practical resources, and free newsletters for families, educators, and professionals. Follow reliable sources, join useful mailing lists, and keep returning to the evidence. There is always more to understand, and better understanding gives us more opportunities to help.