Child with ADHD in the club

Every counselor knows the scene. The unit is in a circle, you explain the activity, and one of the Pathfinders is already on their feet, rummaging through a friend's backpack, talking over you, asking when snack time is. You repeat the instruction three times. On the fourth, you raise your voice. They look at you, hurt, as if the scolding came out of nowhere — and, from their point of view, it really did.

If this repeats every week with the same child, maybe you are not dealing with misbehavior. Maybe it is ADHD — Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. And here's the good news: almost everything that trips up this Pathfinder in the club can be fixed, and the fix is usually more in your hands than in theirs.

This guide is for counselors, instructors, and directors. It does not replace a doctor, a psychologist, or a formal diagnosis — it deals with what you do at the Saturday meeting, at camp, and when it's time to sign off on the class card. Content verified on 07/23/2026 against the official sources listed at the end.

🧭What is ADHD — and what is it not?

Start by clearing up the misunderstanding that ruins everything: ADHD is not a lack of limits at home, it is not laziness, and it is not a tantrum. It is a neurodevelopmental disorder, with a neurobiological basis, that affects three things at once — sustained attention, impulse control, and the regulation of energy and movement.

In club life, this shows up like this: the Pathfinder loses their gear every week, forgets what you just asked, starts a lashing and abandons it halfway, speaks before thinking, can't wait their turn, and sometimes blows up when corrected in front of the others. None of this is a choice. Their brain processes time, priority, and the brakes differently — and they feel firsthand that they are always "falling short," even while trying harder than their peers.

The disorder is common. The Ministry of Health estimates that between 5% and 8% of the world's population has ADHD, and the Brazilian Attention Deficit Association (ABDA) works with the same range. Translated to your club: in a unit of twelve to fifteen Pathfinders, it is statistically likely that at least one lives with the disorder, with or without a confirmed diagnosis.

And there is the other side, which scolding never lets you see: the same child who won't sit still usually has energy to spare, creativity, physical courage, and a spontaneous way of connecting with people. The Adventist Possibilities Ministry, the area of the Church that handles inclusion, sums up the principle in a phrase that serves as a compass: "everyone is talented, needed, and valuable." Your job is not to fix the Pathfinder. It is to build a club where the good in them can come through.

🧩Does the club have an official rule for ADHD?

It's worth separating what is a rule from what is good practice, because many people demand a rule that does not exist — and ignore the one that does.

The written rule. There is no specific ADHD-management protocol in the Pathfinder Club Administrative Manual or in the South American Division's class program. What does exist, and it is strong, lies outside the club's regulations: the Brazilian Inclusion Law (Law No. 13,146, of July 6, 2015), also called the Statute of the Person with Disabilities, which expressly prohibits any discrimination based on disability, including the attitudinal barrier — the one from the adult who treats the child as a "problem." An honest caveat: ADHD does not automatically fall under the law's list of disabilities, because the classification depends on an individual assessment of the impact and duration; but the duty to welcome and not discriminate does not depend on a legal label.

What varies — and who decides. Since there is no fixed protocol, management is a local decision, and it is shared: the club leadership defines the stance and the resources; the counselor and the instructor adapt the activity day to day; the family brings what works at home and at school; and, when available, the guidance of the health professional (doctor, psychologist, therapist) frames it all. No counselor needs — or should — invent a clinical plan alone. Their role is pedagogical and relational, not diagnostic.

The principle behind it. The Adventist Church treats inclusion as mission, not as a favor. The official Notícias Adventistas column on neurodivergence reminds us that environments designed for the "average" person naturally make life harder for those who function differently, and that "knowledge is the key to making the world more adapted." In other words: the barrier is almost never in the child. It is in the environment that no one adapted.

🗣️How do you give an instruction that a child with ADHD can follow?

This is the adjustment that pays off the most, and it costs nothing. A child with ADHD does not hold a long sequence of commands in their head — not out of ill will, but because of how their working memory operates. When you say "grab the rope, tie the clove hitch, set up the tent, and then come to the study," they retain, at best, the first part. The rest evaporates.

The correction is simple: one instruction at a time, short, concrete, and looking them in the eye.

• Get their attention before speaking. Say their name, wait for eye contact, and only then give the instruction. An instruction given to someone's back doesn't land.
• One task at a time. "Grab the rope." Done? "Now the clove hitch." Breaking up the sequence is not babying them — it's giving them the chance to finish each stage.
• Ask them to repeat it. "What did I just ask you?" It's not a trick; it's checking whether the instruction got through. Do it naturally, without an audience.
• Use the visual. A card, an agreed-upon gesture, the item in hand. Words vanish into the air; an image stays.

Notice that none of this lowers the bar. You still ask for the whole clove hitch. You just stopped demanding that they hold five orders at once — a demand no child with ADHD meets, and one that only serves to produce weekly failure.

📌Why does a visible routine change behavior?

Someone with ADHD has a difficult relationship with time: the future is hazy, "in a little while" does not exist, and the transition from one activity to another catches them off guard. Hence the resistance, the delay, the "coming" that never comes. It's not stubbornness — it's the brain being caught unprepared.

The solution is to make time visible. What's on the wall doesn't need to be repeated ten times, and it doesn't turn into scolding.

• Meeting schedule in plain sight. A simple board with the order of the day — opening, drill, honor, snack, study, closing. The child looks and finds their bearings on their own.
• Announce the transition ahead of time. "Five minutes left to put everything away." The early warning prevents half the meltdowns, which almost always come from the shock of being interrupted in the middle of something.
• A predictable Saturday routine. The more the structure looks the same from one week to the next, the less energy the child spends reorienting — and the more they have left to take part.
• A fixed place for gear. Forgetting is a symptom, not carelessness. A unit box, a checklist on the door, a buddy to check the backpack. A system solves what memory can't hold.

A visible routine helps everyone, by the way — the other Pathfinders benefit too. It's the kind of adaptation that doesn't separate the child from the group; on the contrary, it organizes the whole group.

Read alsoPathfinder with autism (ASD)→

⚡How do you channel the energy instead of fighting it?

Telling a child with ADHD to "sit still" for forty minutes is like asking them to hold their breath: you can hold it for a while, then it bursts. The energy is going to come out. The only real choice you have is where it goes — into the activity, or against it.

The club, luckily, is an environment full of good outlets. Make use of them:

• Give them a role that moves. The one who hands out gear, raises the flag, helps set up the tent, leads the warm-up. Movement with a purpose swaps aimless fidgeting for a leading part.
• Favor the field over the chair. Knots and lashings, pioneering, hiking, games — a child with ADHD tends to shine exactly where the body gets involved. Pull the content into a hands-on format whenever you can.
• Break up the sitting blocks. If the study requires sitting, alternate it with something active every few minutes. A message to deliver, a standing activity. The brain comes back more available after the body has burned off energy.
• Offer an agreed-upon release valve. A signal for "I need to move" that lets the child take a walk and come back, without turning into chaos or punishment.

The classic mistake is to read the energy as defiance and respond to it with more restriction — which tightens the spring until it snaps. Their energy is raw material. A good counselor doesn't switch it off: they redirect it.

🤝How do you agree on limits the child can actually meet?

Including is not giving up on limits. A child with ADHD needs limits as much as any other — maybe more. What changes is when and how the limit is set.

The limit that works is agreed on beforehand, in calm, and not improvised in the middle of the chaos. Scolding in the heat of the moment, with the child already dysregulated, teaches nothing: it only humiliates and feeds the next meltdown.

• Agree on a few rules, clear and concrete. "In the circle, we raise our hand to speak." Better three agreements the child remembers than twenty no one keeps.
• Make the consequence predictable. They need to know, beforehand, what happens if they cross the agreement — and the consequence must be proportionate and carried out calmly, always the same.
• Correct in private. A reprimand in front of the unit destroys the bond and does not correct the behavior. Take them aside, speak quietly, be brief.
• Praise the success on the spot. The ADHD brain responds far more to immediate, positive reinforcement than to punishment. Catching the child doing right — and saying so — is worth more than ten corrections.
• Align with the family. Ask the parents what works at home and at school. Repeating the same strategy in both places multiplies the result.

And beware the moral reading: the child who "acts up" almost always already feels like the worst in the unit, because they've been scolded since daycare. Your club can be, for them, the first place where someone sees the success before the mistake.

🪜How do you adapt requirements and honors without lowering the bar?

Here lies a legitimate doubt for the instructor: if I adapt, am I not handing out the class for free? No. Adapting how a requirement is met is different from not meeting it. The goal of the requirement stays the same — what changes is the path to it.

The keyword is stages. A requirement that for most is a single task may, for a child with ADHD, need to become three smaller ones, each with a visible beginning and end.

• Slice the requirement. Instead of "memorize the Pledge and the Law," work on one line per week, with an accomplishment marked at each piece. The whole is scary; the stage is not.
• Accept different ways of showing that they learned. If writing trips them up, let them demonstrate in practice, speak, build. The requirement asks for the learning, not a single format of proof.
• Use a buddy. A steady companion at their side, or a closer instructor, keeps the child on task without you having to hover.
• Celebrate every completed stage. Visible progress is fuel. The class card, crossed off step by step, becomes an ally — and not one more list of debts.

A note of honesty: the DSA's class program does not publish an ADHD adaptation protocol, so the instructor's good judgment, aligned with leadership and family, is what calibrates it. The guiding star is that of the Possibilities Ministry — seeing the person by their ability, not by their limitation. Lowering the bar would be ableism in reverse: underestimating the child. Giving the same target by an adapted path is real inclusion.

💚What is the counselor's limit — and what not to do?

You are a counselor, not a therapist, and that boundary protects both sides. There are things that make all the difference, and there are things that, done with good intentions, get in the way.

What to do: observe with care and note down what triggers and what calms; talk to the family early, and as a partner, not as someone filing a complaint; keep the child within the group, never isolated as punishment; and ask for help from leadership and from your church or Field's Possibilities Ministry when you feel it has gone beyond your training.

What not to do:

• Don't diagnose. "That boy has ADHD" said by a layperson becomes an unfair label or a false lead. The one who diagnoses is the health professional. You describe behaviors, you don't close a diagnosis.
• Don't expose. No commenting on the child's condition in front of the unit or the other parents. A minor's health information is sensitive and protected.
• Don't promise a cure or a guaranteed transformation. ADHD doesn't "go away" with club discipline. The club helps, and a great deal — but it adds to the support of the family and of healthcare, it doesn't replace it.
• Don't treat it as laziness. The phrase "you just have to want it" is the cruelest a child with ADHD hears, because they do want it, and they can't do it the way they're being asked.

In the end, the best resource you have is in no manual: it's the bond. The child who knows the counselor likes them — even on the hard days — tries hard for the counselor. And that is how, one Saturday at a time, a Pathfinder who "couldn't sit still" discovers that they, too, have a place in the flag line.