How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

1. Poor reading comprehension.

2. Disqualified completion. Disqualified completion means the inability to differentiate poor completion rates (actually completing the material) from a loss of interest resulting in poor completion thereby believing the material is completely read when either it was never read or is entirely lost from memory.

The behaviors are interesting to observe because the child with ADHD appears to read with ease even if there is nothing to show for it, as in no memory of the material. I have raised children with dyslexia who struggle to read anything but know exactly what they have read, an opposite behavior.

Notes and hints do not appear to be a solution for the ADHD related behaviors. What we are trying to work on is persistence such that an uninteresting focus becomes excruciatingly exhausting very quickly. We try to remove talking, excuses, bullshitting, and unrelated movements from the event of focus to practice increasing focus duration.

Eventually we want to get to a spot where the child can self identify when focus is lost so that they can stop the focused activity at hand, take a quick break, and then resume the activity. We aren’t there yet. The biggest challenge is eliminating excuses and justifications that prioritize the distractions over the activity of focus. In a person without ADHD these sorts of qualifiers would come across as deceit or lies, but for a person with ADHD these behaviors appear to be a self regulator for emotional continuity that occurs arrhythmic to the focus by which emotions are generated.

I don't feel guilty about not finishing books because most of the times if I force myself to finish a book that I don't find interesting enough, I don't remember the information in the book anyway.

Over time I have learned to trust my brain, and figured that it will remember the important parts I read. If the book bores me then probably there is nothing interesting in it for me.

Most of my life I read books without taking notes, and I would go through them thinking that I understand everything, but in the end I would miss deeper connections and wouldn't connect them to the information I already possess.

Now, I read non-fiction books with taking notes and taking notes makes me stop and think about what I am reading and enables me to make deeper connections with what I already know and improves retaining. Also shifting from reading to note taking and going back helps my ADD brain. I read a couple books at a time, and when I get bored of one, I shift to another one that interests me. I choose my books around one topic, and this topical similarity makes my ADHD a boon because this way I can make those books talk to each other and improve my understanding of the subject. I used to take all my notes longhand before, but now I type really fast and writing longhand feels antiquated now. I also love to be able to search my notes and use my notes as a second-brain.

I read both from kindle and paper-books. The change from kindle to paper also helps my brain. The variety increases my concentration.

When I am reading fiction, I try to visualize everything I read because if I stop visualizing, it turns into eye training, I think other things, or just read and don't remember anything. If I figure out I am eye training instead of reading, I stop reading the book and come back later.

I hope this helps.