Strategies for Parents

• Establish a routine.
• Teach your child to use a calendar and a diary.
• Develop time management strategies.
• Teach your child to use an alarm to help them remember when it’s time to start a task.
• Write down the steps to complete tasks, review it with your child, and make it available for your child when they complete the tasks.
• Encourage your child to initiate tasks on their own.
• Teach your child to break down tasks into a series of steps before they begin.
• Help your child gather the things needed to complete a task before they begin the first step.

Strategies for Teachers

• Keep instructions short.
• Break long instructions into shorter segments. Present the segments one at a time for each step in the activity instead of all together at the beginning.
• Highlight the most important instructions in tests.
• Provide your student with more time to complete tests and other evaluations.
• Read test questions aloud or allow your student to read the questions to you.
• Teach your student exam strategies (e.g. leaving tougher questions for the end of the exam, highlighting important information, using process of elimination for multiple choice questions.)

Adapted from “Cognitive Deficits in Children with Epilepsy” (Mary L. Smith, Anne Gallagher, and Maryse Lassonde); Learning through Storms: Epilepsy and Learning (Canadian Epilepsy Alliance).

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