12 Boredom-Blasting Tips for Parents

The writer touches on the ways the creative side of ADHD can outwit the repetition that children love. My story: As a newly separated single parent with ADD, I was overwhelmed by household chores. I made a deal with my children. We would tape bedtime stories every other night. Then on the alternating nights, after bedtime prayer, they could play the tape back to go to sleep. I read several levels of stories: cartoon characters, Bible stories for children, a Sherlock Holmes mystery with children as lead characters, small excerpts of biographies. The three kids asked questions, gave each other answers. Every other night they listened once more to our interplay and learned vocabulary. I used the younger stories like commercials are placed on TV, even imitated  the style of advertisers. The older children knew that every so often a commercial for the youngest was coming up. Each child had an inexpensive cassette player in his or her room. Over time the collection grew to some 80 tapes. I still have them, can hear their jokes and notice how their voices changed over the years. By the end of two years my eldest, who had suffered from a learning disability, began to read more fluently and much faster than I could read to him. The younger two had absorbed an advanced vocabulary, savored their evening learning time together. For two years I was able to keep the power of television at bay. Total serendipity borne out of necessity. Also an example of what the writer is saying. L Vera, Cincinnati