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Being able to understand how to help your ADHD teen successfully transition from high school to college is a key factor in helping them enjoy a fulfilling and successful adult life. The transition alone can be a challenging thing to hurdle but if you add ADHD to the mix, it gives parents and teens a different set of challenges that require a totally different kind of approach.

Getting to know the challenges

Parents deal with ADHD and teenagers know that school can pose quite a challenge because of the predisposition to distraction. Ideally, through early intervention, teens with ADHD should already have learned studying skills during their younger years.

It takes time for teens with ADHD to gain independence on doing their schoolwork and doing them consistently well. However, going to college presents additional challenges aside from learning how to keep track of assigned coursework, keeping track of deadlines, finishing one project before moving on to the next, effective note taking, and others. In college, one also has to learn how to budget one's time and money, manage one's personal needs like doing the laundry, cooking, buying groceries, and others. Generally, the challenge is helping your teen learn how to navigate through real life on his own.

This is even challenging because in college, where the routine is not as predictable and there's nobody who can monitor if you're sticking to your structure or spiraling to further distraction. For teens in college with ADHD, things can get pretty sticky in a short period of time because this is the phase in their life when they get to choose how they spend their time.

Helping ADHD Teenagers - simplicity is the key.

Budgeting - Teens who don't have to deal with ADHD find it hard to make a concerted effort on structuring a budget. It's even more difficult for teens with ADHD because budgeting requires one to plan ahead and stick to that plan.

Whether or not a teen learns how to successfully manage his finances during college will make a great impact on how he will manage his finances when he's already out of college and working a full-time job.

Here are a few tips to help your teen with falling into the good habit of creating and sticking to a budget:

• Know where to start - It usually starts with knowing how much you actually can spend.
• Write it down - For ADHD teens, it's important that there are visual reminders that are easily accessible in order to curb compulsive spending. For example, it helps to keep a list of IOUs in your wallet to remind you of how much money you already owe, a reminder of why you need to control your spending. It would also help to write down a weekly or monthly budget and keep a copy in your wallet.
• Make a grocery list - It's never a good idea to buy groceries without a grocery list. If your teen has never had to do his own groceries before, now is a great time to teach him how to make one and stick to it. Without a grocery list, chances are ADHD teens will end up buying things they don't really need and forgetting those that they do.
• Plan ahead and have a Plan B - It helps to help your teen develop the habit of planning the menu for the week (if he cooks) or planning how much to spend on meals every day. Using the "envelope budgeting" technique could help too. Separating meal money into several labeled envelopes is a visual way of showing your teen how money should be allotted. It also discourages bringing all his money with him when he goes out of the house.

Schedule Planning and ADHD - Some teens find that pinning up a large calendar on their wall and writing down deadlines, study groups, and other appointments help them manage their hectic college schedule and social calendar. Carrying a notebook for all the new tasks of the day can also help and establishing a routine of filling out the calendar will ensure that no task slips by unnoticed.

It may also help to go with your child and scout the area where he will live and find out where he could go to get his laundry done. Then you can help your child manage his schedule and when he'll actually go there with his laundry. Walking your child through these things initially will pay off in the end when all the coursework comes in and he needs help remembering little things like his laundry.

Helping your child get organized while away from home shouldn't be so different from helping him organize his stuff when he is home with you. There should be a proper place or container for all the things that he has.

Facing the prospect of entering college years can be a little daunting, but at the same time, it's an exciting phase of your teen's life. ADHD need not become the main deterrent to your child's personal and academic success especially during these years.