Learning to Read with ADHD

I have a rather vivid memory of sitting on my parents' bed with my mother in our old, ugly red house with a book about a large bunny family.  I don't recall what the book was, as I have read many bunny books in my time.  In any case, we were laying on the bed, I was either in preschool or kindergarten (we moved after that), and my mother was trying to teach me to read.  "McAlister, just try," I remember her begging.  I was adamant that I absolutely couldn't do it.  I think she had been "teaching" me for quite some time at this point, and I was beyond frustrated, distracted, and unmotivated..  "You know the words," I thought, "Why can't you just read them to me!"  The memory ends with her storming off and me being left in the bed with a book I wanted to read but didn't know how.

That, unfortunately, pretty solidly sums up my elementary experience with reading.  It's always been a slow struggle, and I therefore never enjoyed the forced task.  I loved reading the Magic Tree House series, but that was about as far as my love for reading extended (Fun fact--I saw Mary Pope Osborne get her Honorary Doctorate of Letters this weekend at the UNC Commencement.  It was life-changing and awesome and I will never be the same).  Looking back, I belive this stemmed from my ADHD.  Reading was often done in class in a "self-selected reading" time, and there was rarely silence.  This left me only successfully reading about two pages in a thirty-minute period.  By the time I finished a book, I had no idea how it began!  I hated chapter books that had chapters longer than I could finish in a single sitting (Junie B. Jones: Excellent.  Judy Blume: Not so much.) because I never knew what was going on.

Educators, take note: I think this is a really important thing for teachers to be aware of!  Absolutely do not assign in-class reading if you cannot maintain silence within your classroom!  Even a single student talking is absolutely detrimental to some students' concentration.  Check out the simulation below to get a bit more of an understanding of what it's like reading in a non-controlled environment for a student with ADHD.