Is Montessori Good for Children with ADHD?

If you're looking into whether a child with ADHD would thrive in a Montessori classroom, chances are you are a parent looking for answers for your own child. You may have some idea of Montessori, but not a lot. Or maybe you have been a fan of Montessori forever and are now wondering if your child would fit into this environment.

If you had a chance to see Montessori, think back to the first time you saw it. If you were in a structured setting, you were possibly amazed. You never imagined a classroom where children are working independently and carefully in a peaceful classroom with seemingly little or no intervention from the teacher. Our traditional image of a preschool classroom is one where if the teacher were not constantly in front of and entertaining the children for the entire day, chaos would immediate ensue. Seeing a Montessori classroom destroys that myth entirely. While this is wonderful to see, many parents begin to have doubts:

• Will my child be able to function at this level?
• What if my child does not want to choose a work?/li>
• How will my child handle all this free choice? Will they disrupt others?/li>
• Isn't there too much stimulation in the classroom? Isn't it better for ADHD to have a classroom where everyone else is just sitting?/li>

While ultimately there are no clear answers to these questions on how things will go, since every child is different, there are reasons why generally speaking a Montessori environment is much more suited to a child with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

While it seems like a child with ADHD may be a better fit in an environment where everyone is seated and, therefore, there are fewer distractions. While I understand the thought process behind this, it rarely is the reality.

In this classroom in our heads, there are no distractions whatsoever. How could there be? The teacher is watching over everyone and the children are happily doing their paperwork. What we get in that type of school are many distractions:

• A child drops a pencil and jumps out of the desk seat to retrieve it.
• A child needs to get up to sharpen their pencil.
• A child farts and asks to go to the bathroom...that will get EVERYONE'S attention.

When looking into suggestions of what to do for a child with ADHD in the classroom I came across several suggestions. They include allowing time for children to stretch, move around the room, even jump or run in place. They suggest allowing the child with ADHD to sit in his chair differently. One suggestion I found was to have a child deliver a "secret note" to another teacher who understands the child needs to move. I even saw a suggestion to allow the child to sit on the floor near you with something to do with their hands (like a squeeze ball) to help them concentrate better.

(Continue Reading Below)To learn more about positive discipline in the Montessori Environment, take a look at Jane Nelson's and Chip DeLorenzo's book "Positive Discipline in the Montessori Classroom.

Buy Positive Discipline in the Montessori Classroom on amazon.com (affiliate link)

Throughout the entire classroom, children are moving and creating work together. They begin a work by taking and unrolling a rug, then carrying the material to their rug. They may instead elect to sit at a table and, when they are done, push their chair in and return the work to the shelf. Sometimes I work with a child and notice their brain is just overloading on what they are doing. So my suggestion is just to stand up, walk around the classroom for a minute, and come back and see if they are ready. I often set objects I am working with on the other side of the room and ask the child to go retrieve them. This looks like just an exercise in memory and mental focus, which it partially is, but it is also a chance for the child to move while doing the activity. Movement happens all the time in a Montessori classroom and it is that type of movement that creates a better overall environment for the child with ADHD. The movement in Montessori is not a distraction from the norm; it is the norm. And the child's need to move is now normalized in the classroom, rather than penalized.

In Montessori, work is done on the floor all the time. So much so that we actually kind of get made fun of it by people outside the Montessori world. I often even have children lying on the floor doing a work at a rug. Can you imagine that happening in a more traditional classroom where the teacher wants the child in their desk or chair?

Rather than simply being regulated to a chair or desk, the Montessori child has much more room to spread out and get themselves comfortable, move as they need to (within reason), and take care of that need their body has for movement.

Other Benefits include:

• A Long Work Cycle: Traditionally, Montessori classrooms offer a much longer work cycle for children to do their work. Many non-Montessori Programs go from one subject to the next in certain time blocks, but a Montessori classroom offers a long work cycle, which helps a child with ADHD learn to regulate their time more naturally over the three years in the classroom.
• Hands-On and Self-Corrrecting Materials: Rather than having a ball to play with so your child can pay more attention to the teacher, the materials in Montessori are largely self-correcting and are extremely hands on. So they are not using the ball to play with while trying to also focus on the material; the material they are working with is actually the teacher. While their hands are busy moving, the materials they are manipulating are what they are actually learning from.
• There is Little to no Need to Pay Attention to the Teacher: The teacher's role is to stay more in the background and step in as needed to guide the children. It is not to be the focal point. This gives the child one less thing to have to focus on so they can focus on their materials.

I just went through reasons why the Montessori Environment is a fantastic environment for a child with ADD or ADHD. However, this blog focuses purely on the environment. The most important aspect is how well you get along with the teacher and how much trust you put into them. I'm a big fan of Montessori, but I think what matters most is a caring and patient teacher that understands children. Montessori has many of those, but it's not the only school type that does. I hope I gave you things to consider with Montessori and ADHD. You can read a full-length article about this topic on my Media Page.

Matt Bronsil is the author of these posts. He can be contacted at MattBronsilMontessori@gmail.com. To subscribe to the email list, sign up on our contact page and you will receive an email when the list is updated.

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