It’s Nearly Exam Time - How to Help Your ADHD Teen Cope, Even If Revision Hasn’t Gone To Plan

If you have an ADHD teen there’s a fairly high chance you’ll have seen one or more of the following over the last few weeks:

• Your teen starts the day with wildly optimistic study plans, manages a fraction of this, then feels discouraged and hopeless by evening. Rinse and repeat.

  
  

• They have slipped into apathy, getting up late (if at all), scrolling endlessly on their phone or rewatching comfort shows. You’re tearing your hair out trying to “make them care”.

  
  

• They’re emotionally all over the place, more defiant or angry than usual, with heightened sensitivity to any perceived criticism, or overwhelmed by small tasks like finding their pen.

  
  

• Or perhaps you know they’re hiding how much they’re struggling. They’re saying everything is “fine”, but collapsing in private.

With exams just around the corner, it might help to take a moment to pause, reset, and think about how to approach the final stretch. Here are some ideas for getting through the next few weeks as successfully as possible:

Accepting the reality

Executive dysfunction and time blindness are baked into the ADHD neurotype. It can be reassuring to recognise these patterns as natural expressions of a differently wired brain - not signs of laziness or lack of care. That shift can ease some of the shame and blame that often bubble up when the pressure is on. A softened perspective sets the tone for creative approaches to last minute studying. It can also shift the focus from the outcome of particular grades to the processes of learning and self-regulation - the “meta skills” that will serve your teen best in the long term.

Help teens build their own ADHD-friendly systems

When we let go of neuronormative expectations, we can get curious about what really works and what really matters. Here’s a silver lining if revision hasn’t gone well: your teen probably now has a good idea of what their biggest “roadblocks” are. Is it getting started? Staying on task? Organising and prioritising tasks? Or something else? It’s also worth looking for the success triggers: if you notice a “win”, even if it’s tiny, try checking in with them about exactly what helped in that situation.

It’s really worth asking these questions with genuine curiosity - this information is gold, and gives your teen a role in problem solving. When you both have more awareness about the exact sticking points and success triggers, you can capitalise on one of their ADHD strengths - creativity. If there’s space for openness and experimentation, teens often surprise us with their own ideas. In our household “getting started” is the biggest sticking point, and the best way we tackle this is by asking “What’s the smallest possible way of getting started with this?” I’m open to whatever my teen suggests, even if it seems ridiculously tiny. It amazes me how “looking at three flashcards” can snowball into a solid half hour revision session!

As well as the possibility that they might come up with some workable solutions, this approach can give teens a helpful sense of agency when they might otherwise be feeling quite cornered by the “system”. It invites them into taking more ownership of their learning process, and can be a helpful antidote to the battles and tensions that often arise when a parent feels responsible for yet powerless around their teen’s “success”.

What does ADHD-friendly studying look like?

If your teen’s been staring blankly at the same page for half an hour, or highlighting everything in neon yellow, it might be time to switch things up. ADHD brains benefit from strategies that are short, engaging, embodied, clearly-structured and rewarding. I give you the acronym “SNOG” - guaranteed to make your teen cringe, but it might just stick in their memory:

Short: Bite-sized chunks help avoid overwhelm. This can be managed with, for example, a “pomodoro” timer, working for 25 minute stints with short breaks.

Novel: Keep it fresh and engaging by mixing formats - flashcards, quizzes, mind-maps, sticky notes, coloured pens, video/audio resources, using weird/funny ways of remembering things(!). Novelty boosts dopamine, which ADHD brains thrive on.

On The Move: ADHDers often learn best when they’re not sitting still. Body movement, using gestures, walking around, and “fidgeting” can all support focus and memory. One upside of “home study” (which has its own challenges!) is the freedom to revise in ways that aren’t always possible at school.

Goal-based: Set a specific aim: “By the end of three pomodoros, I’ll be able to explain this topic to my cat in 3 sentences” or “I’ll get at least 60% of the flashcards correct”. Clear goals reduce overwhelm, and give a sense of progress. You can maximise the dopamine hit of reaching a goal with small randomised rewards: fill a jar with “treats” on folded slips of paper, such as “hot chocolate with marshmallows”, “a tiny new stationery item”, “no chores tonight” etc.

Banking the wins:

Once your teen is engaging with their study material in a more ADHD-friendly way, there are a couple more “hacks” to ensure maximum consolidation of learning. Firstly, retrieval - pulling the information out, rather than just pouring it in - is key to retaining the material. This is why quizzes, flashcards, and the “Feynman technique” (explaining a topic in their own words as if teaching someone else) make knowledge stick far more than passive “consumption”.

They can also tap into “the spacing effect”: our brains learn best when we’re just on the verge of forgetting. Rather than testing themselves over and over again in one session, it’s better to test once today, again tomorrow, then two days later and so on.

And finally - sleep! As well feeling fresher and more energised for learning the next day, remind your teen that sleep is essential for memory consolidation. In particular slow-wave sleep, which happens during the first half of the night, is particularly valuable for “banking” the day’s learning. This is not the time to pull an all-nighter!

A final pause for thought: what’s this bringing up for you?

Supporting a neurodivergent teen through exam season is no mean feat, and it’s completely understandable if you’re at your wits’ end. Holding a calm, curious and receptive space for a stressed or apathetic teenager can be an almost superhuman task!

If your teen is needing more help than expected, it’s possible that you feel some resentment and even a sense of parenting failure at having to “baby” them through the process. But ADHD brains often develop executive functioning skills later than their peers, so your 16 year old might need the kind of support you’d expect to give a 13 year old. There’s no shame in this - think of yourself as providing scaffolding to help them build their internal systems. They’ll get there for themself in the end!

It might also be stirring up difficult feelings - frantic, perfectionist, hopeless, powerless - from your own school or exam experiences. Given how strongly ADHD runs in families, it may be that you are also neurodivergent. Many ADHD parents never knew that they were neurodivergent, and watching a child struggle can be a powerful trigger for their own experiences. It might be worth gently asking yourself “what does this remind me of?”

However messy this time feels, there’s still space for some learning, some progress and some connection. Start small, stay soft, and remember that your steady presence is far more powerful than perfect revision plans.