Teaching Music to People with ADHD?

Music teachers - have you ever taught students with ADHD? I'm especially interested in private lessons or small group settings information.

What were the challenges presented?

How did you adapt your teaching style?

Did you adjust your expectations?

How old were the students, and did any pursue music long term? Did any become professional musicians?

What kind of practice habits and learning habits worked best?

Thank you very much!

I used to teach recorder to a young boy with an extremely short attention span - he never had ADHD diagnosed (his parents didn't believe in these "disorders") - but -well, he was definitely a challenge. Five minutes into the lesson, and he'd be squealing and jumping around the place like a crazy monkey. He started coming to lessons when he was 8 years old, along with his 12 year old brother (who had been learning for a couple of years and was already a fabulous player.)

The younger boy was highly intelligent, amazingly creative - already writing his own tunes using his own "notation" - and (unlike his diligent big brother) clearly didn't like the slow, plodding process of working steadily through a recorder tutor book.

So to alleviate the boredom factor, we started to incorporate his other passions into his lessons - art, poetry, short story writing, drama. The first five minutes would be spent focusing on the rudiments of music - he quickly grasped those - he even picked up treble recorder a year later! Then we'd have a glass of fruit juice, and then we'd get down to the rest of the lesson - the "fun" part, as he'd call it. I'd get him to write his own tunes, "draw" his music, and set his own short stories to his own music (we created "mini operas" which we performed with his brother and my daughter, who was also learning recorder at that time.) We even played music upside down, back to front, and (literally) mirror image...I had as much fun as he did! And he came to me for "lessons" (more like "art happenings"!!!) right up until he was 16!

And in this unconventional manner, he learned as much as any other student - evidence of this was when he went on to audition for a special music school, and was accepted. He excelled at school - though he never settled into the conventional music scene - even as a teenager, he was far more interested in creating his own unique brand of classical/folk/industrial/minimalist music, and playing it on unusual instruments like krummhorns, Irish whistles, huge bass recorders, ocarinas, keyboards and African/Indian drums.

Now he's a young adult, with a much greater attention span - and he's studying Science at University and doing brilliantly. He's still passionate about music - still as creative as ever. I'm still good friends with him and his family, and each time I go to visit, he plays his latest compositions for me!

Cheers,
Hafwen.

Yes I have. I work with the student on short term mistakes first. I keep everything down to less than 5 min. at a time. The challenges are they can't sit and totally fix a problem in one go. You have to break it down and work at it that way. They want to introduce their own agendas as they think of it. Make them save it all for the last five minutes of the lesson. The students are all in their teens. Practicing for as long as they can get the parents involved here. Timing each session and adding it up then Both teachers and parents must reward the student when they get to the amount of time required to practice that day or week. Gradually stretch that amount of time out until you get what the student needs. The teaching style was adapted to a choppy one. Let the student be the guide as much as possible but you keep them on track except for the last 5 minutes. These kids are happy and quite capable of working and trying for the ring. However they need to be guided and they need to be kept focused at all times. Each student had their own learning habits and I had to adapt to them in this. Taking it slow and easy, Keep smiling break everything down completely and they will work it out.

I have one student with ADHD. It helps that she is a very talented musician (she'll come into the lesson knowing how to play things, or understanding a bunch of new musical concepts, and I'll be thinking "I didn't teach you that. Where did you learn it?").

The biggest challenge is her lack of attention span and her refusal (inability, I think) to focus on any piece that doesn't interest her. I get around these problems by
1. Doing a little bit of work on one piece, then moving on to another, and that way getting a lot done in a lesson, but in small chunks that she can handle.
2. Using the pieces that DO interest her as a means of teaching her about music.

The only expectations I adjusted were to do with how long I expect her to be able to focus for. Things like whether or not she should play until the end of one piece before working on another (she'll get to the end of all her pieces in the end; it'll just be a roundabout path).

She is 12, and I don't know if she'll pursue it long-term (she's in her first year of playing).

neither of my attention deficit kids were hyper-active ... one I had to jump around and change up pieces frequently; the other was so proud to work on a real cello piece he focused on one movement of one piece for a year when he was mentally there we worked on corrections when his mind drifted we would run the piece; the jumping one we found he liked making music with his parents so we made arrangements that included the family .... the key for the ones I have had is finding that one thing that will make them want to focus