How assistive technology can help with your child’s ADHD

Assistive technology can be a bit of a buzzword in parenting and educational circles. It’s not always well-defined or well-understood. 

But assistive technology can be helpful for people with ADHD. Options range from virtual calendars and voice recording apps to things that don’t even seem like “technology” at all. 

We’d love to hear from you. You can email us at ParentingBehavior@understood.org.

Related resources

• 5 low-cost ways to create a sensory-friendly chair 

• 6 types of fidgets for kids with ADHD

• 7 apps to help teens with ADHD manage everyday challenges 

Timestamps

(0:48) What is assistive technology? 

(3:00) Specific examples 

(6:32) Artificial intelligence vs. assistive technology

Episode transcript

Andy: When we think about assistive technology, it can be a bit of a buzzword in parenting and educational circles, and it's something that's not always well-defined or well-understood. The key here is that assistive technology can be super helpful for folks with ADHD, and we're going to talk about that a bit here today. Some of this stuff might not even seem like tech at all.

This is "Parenting Behavior" with me, your host, Dr. Andy Kahn. I'm a licensed psychologist and parent, and I've been working with kids and families for over 20 years, helping them navigate behavioral challenges. Today's topic, assistive technology and ADHD.

(0:48) What is assistive technology?

What is assistive technology? Well, one way of thinking about it is that it's something that is allowing us to organize or structure our tasks. It can be something like a Google calendar with reminders. It can be a voice recorder where we can tape a lecture. In some cases, it can be, you know, really techie things like that we use that are apps or AI. And it can be, also be very low-tech, things like a fidget toy or a flexible seat cushion.

Let's continue talking about some specific examples. And I may go through these pretty quickly. But keep in mind, you're going to have a link to this in the show notes and we'll have more detail available to you. When we think about assistive technology, this isn't something that's going to cure or fix ADHD or a learning and thinking difference. It's something that we use, like another accommodation. Remember, accommodations are things that we do that help your child access activities. And this access allows them to do the same things as other kids.

We're not taking away demands. We're not reducing the demands. So, in that way, it's not cheating. It's giving them access, it's facilitating, so to speak. So, before I move on, I want to address some common misconceptions. First, some people worry that assistive technology can serve as sort of a crutch or something that is a cheat, that gives kids an unfair advantage. This is absolutely untrue. When we do accommodations for kids, it's about providing access.

If we think about it in terms of something like if someone has a wheelchair and we give them access to a curb cut in the street, are we cheating, giving them access to the street to move around or to get into a building? No. This is about accessing things that they do in the day-to-day.

In addition, some worry that AT or assistive technology will lead to kids becoming too reliant on these technologies. Well, I don't know about you, but when I use my phone to get around town or remember a phone number, I don't really think that I'm becoming so reliant that it's an unrealistic thing. Assistive technology is something that can help facilitate. And in doing so, kids are really going to benefit. It's a tool. It is not something that is taking away responsibility from them.

Finally, assistive technology, when used with great instruction, can be an excellent way to help kids with ADHD and learning differences succeed in the classroom and in daily life.

(3:00) Specific examples

Now I want to talk about some specific assistive technology tools, and I may go through them a little bit quickly, but keep in mind, you're going to have links to them in the show notes. So first, here's a great example we often use in schools: seating. Now, kids who have to sit in a chair all day long with learning and thinking differences, like me, we can find it extremely uncomfortable. Having the opportunity to have a wiggle seat or to be able to use a standing desk. These kinds of seating accommodations can be hugely helpful in maintaining attention.

Another example is using a voice recorder. Now, voice recorders can exist on pretty much any portable technology, whether it's a computer, some sort of tablet or even a smartphone. And using a recorder can be great for capturing lectures and going over notes later. So much of what we use it for can also be paired with other strategies like AI. AI can actually help you summarize notes and break notes down for you in a way that isn't cheating so much as it is helping kids organize, which their brains may not naturally do.

Keep in mind, if all kids can benefit from it, that assistive technology can be really widely used in a classroom, not just for kids with differences. Finally, audiobooks, something we've talked about here before. Audiobooks are a great way for kids with learning challenges to access information. The research shows that both decoding and comprehension can be improved through the use of audiobooks and no, they're not cheating.

Another classic strategy is speech-to-text software for kids who lack fine motor skill or struggle with writing tasks, this can be just a game changer, and it certainly was for me. One of the classic accommodations with assistive technology is the calculator. We all thought back in the day that calculators were going to destroy and make the math classes unmanageable for all the cheating we were going to see.

I remember when I was in school and the kids had the watches with the calculator and I was like, "Oh my gosh, they're going to cheat through everything they do." Well, in actuality, calculators are a great math tool for when we're teaching new instruction and operations and kids are routinely using them in class. So, it's a great assistive technology.

Another common assistive technology tool that's sort of low-tech is the fidget toy. Now, there's a lot to be known about fidgets. And I'll put a link in the show notes about specific fidgets and their use. What I'll say very briefly, if fidgets, are used in a very focused manner — and again, it'll vary from kid to kid — they can be helpful for some kids in managing attention and managing their energy in their space.

In addition, for some people with ADHD, noise-blocking or noise-canceling headphones can be super helpful and they can be used in a variety of ways. For some people they can put on the noise canceling feature with nothing else and block out external noise to stay sort of focused on what's going on in their heads.

For other folks, they may use white noise or brown noise or even have background music. So, there's a lot of different ways to use this technology and it may vary from kid to kid, but it can be a great assistive technology tool.

For older kids and teens with ADHD, assistive technologies can be a huge help for them. There's tons of apps out there, and these technologies can be accessed through school laptops if you have devices at home. And ideally for kids who might have access to their own smartphones. One of the things that I love to think about with these apps is that it can cover anything from notetaking to organizational skills to social skills.

So, keep in mind, we've got great resources for you for recommendations in our links. So, take a look at those. Recent developments have been really cool. We've seen things from smart pens to smart notebooks and all kinds of cool tech that can help kids do things that weren't even possible for them just a couple of years ago.

(6:32) Artificial intelligence vs. assistive technology

One thing I want to discuss now is the difference between AI, artificial intelligence, and assistive technology. They're such cool tools being created right now. The challenge for so many of us is that as they're introduced to education, they provide opportunities for cheating and creating the illusion that a child is learning something. So, let me explain.

There are great uses for AI, like Grammarly, where we have someone doing a typing task where they're creating a document and Grammarly can help you look at where there are errors with grammar or spelling. And it can help shape some of what kids are doing if their teachers are allowing them to.

Things like ChatGPT can take a couple of sentences and create lengthy documents for you. Now, this obviously creates lots of opportunities for cheating and is not something that we're encouraging you to do with your kids. We can use ChatGPT and these other structured formats to do things like summarizing information we've already created or organizing information into step-by-step instructions.

AI can be really helpful for a lot of us. But keep in mind, assistive technologies are great for accommodating what we're already trying to do with our kids. AI can be a little bit more complicated. We don't use it as a replacement for learning, for creating content. We use it for organizing and structuring what they're already doing.

I want to talk about one last thing: UDL and accommodations. UDL stands for Universal Design for Learning. And this is something that we talk about in terms of how can we take accommodations that we provide in a classroom and provide them to as many kids as possible. Why is this? Because sometimes an assistive technology tool is something that could help everybody, not just kids with learning and thinking differences.

For kids who are using tools that might get attention of the kids who don't have them, it can lead to embarrassment or them feeling singled out. So, some kids may refuse to actually accept these assistive technology tools. The other thing to keep in mind here is that sometimes when kids are being asked to use tools, we may talk to the teacher and say, "Hey, can we integrate these across the classroom? Can we find a way to make this less of something that gets all the other kids' attention?

Primarily because we want to teach our kids to advocate for what they need and make use of them in as many appropriate environments as possible. If you're a kid who can self-advocate and say, "Hey, this tool helps me," and use it in different settings and use it on their own, what we do is we establish a really nice independent learner.

Thanks for listening to this episode of "Parenting Behavior with Dr. Andy Kahn." We'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on the show. You can email us at parentingbehavior@understood.org. I'll put that email in the show notes to where you can also find more resources and links to anything we mentioned.

"Parenting Behavior with Dr. Andy Kahn is brought to you by Understood.org. It's produced and edited by Cody Nelson. Editorial guidance by Rae Jacobson. Music and mixing by Justin D. Wright. Ilana Millner is our supervising producer. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director.

For Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to support us as we go through with our important mission, please consider donating. Go to Understood.org/give.