What is Inattention Like?
Children who are inattentive have a hard time keeping their minds on any one thing and may get bored with a task after only a few minutes. If they are doing something they really enjoy, they have no trouble paying attention. But focusing deliberate, conscious attention to organizing and completing a task or learning something new is difficult. Homework is particularly hard for these children. They will forget to write down an assignment, or leave it at school. They will forget to bring a book home, or bring the wrong one. The homework, if finally finished, is full of errors and erasures. Homework is often accompanied by frustration for both parent and child. The DSM-IV-TR gives these signs of inattention: • Often becoming easily distracted by irrelevant sights and sounds • Often failing to pay attention to details and making careless mistakes • Rarely following instructions carefully and completely losing or forgetting things like toys, or pencils, books, and tools needed for a task •
