ADHD and Reading Difficulties: Why Reading Can Be So Exhausting (And What Helps)

I remember sitting next to one of my clients, a bright, thoughtful teenager, as she stared at a page of English text. Her highlighter had done its job. Almost every second sentence was marked in careful neon yellow. There were notes in the margins. Arrows. Underlines. She had done everything she was told to do. And yet, when I asked her what the text was about, she looked at me and said quietly, “I don’t know. I read it. But it didn’t stay.”

I see this over and over again. With teenagers. With university students. With adults. And at home, with my own son. He reads a sentence, then looks up at me with tired eyes and says, “I forgot what it said.” Not because he isn’t intelligent or isn’t trying. But because ADHD brains often process text in a different way.

Reading is not just reading

One afternoon, my son was reading a short paragraph for school. It wasn’t particularly difficult. But halfway through, he stopped. I asked him what was happening in the story. He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “The words just… disappeared.”

What struck me in that moment was how much effort had gone into simply decoding the words. His eyes had done the work. But his working memory hadn’t been able to hold onto the meaning long enough to connect it.

For many people with ADHD, and especially those with dyslexia, reading is not a smooth, automatic process. It is a fragile chain of attention, decoding, memory, and interpretation. If one link falters, meaning slips away. It’s like trying to carry water in your hands. You’re holding it. But it keeps leaking out before you reach your destination.

Highlighting is often not enough

Many of my clients arrive with beautifully highlighted texts. At first glance, it looks like deep engagement. But when we talk about the content, it becomes clear that highlighting alone didn’t anchor understanding.

One client told me, “I highlight because I’m afraid I’ll miss something. But then everything looks important.” So we tried something different. Instead of highlighting immediately, I asked her to read just two sentences. Then I asked her to stop and tell me, in her own words, what they meant.

At first, she hesitated. She wasn’t used to interrupting the flow. But slowly, she began to engage with the text differently. She wasn’t scanning anymore. She was interacting. Reading stopped being something that happened to her. It became something she participated in.

Turn reading into a conversation

I often encourage my clients to treat reading like a conversation rather than a performance. I remember sitting beside my son one evening with a short story. After two sentences, I asked him, “What just happened?”

He looked at me, surprised. Reading had always been about finishing, not about pausing. He thought for a moment. Then he answered. The answer wasn’t perfect. But he was moving in the right direction. He was thinking with the text, not just moving past it.

When he began saying his thoughts out loud, something shifted. His understanding became more stable. His brain had more time to catch up.

Read in very small chunks

One of the biggest changes came when my son and I stopped trying to read entire pages at once. Instead, we read one or two sentences. Then we stopped. At first, this felt painfully slow. But something unexpected happened. My son stopped losing the thread. He stopped needing to go back and re-read entire sections. His brain wasn’t overwhelmed anymore. It had space to absorb meaning. What looked slower on the surface was actually more efficient underneath.

Use your finger or a pointer

I noticed one day that his eyes were darting across the page, jumping ahead, losing their place. So I suggested something simple. “Use your finger,” I said. He resisted at first. It felt too simple. Too childish. But when he tried it, his reading became steadier. His eyes stopped wandering. His attention anchored itself to the physical movement. Sometimes the most powerful supports are also the most ordinary.

Build a mental movie

One evening, we were reading a scene about a boy walking through a forest. I asked him, “What does the forest look like?” He paused. Then he said, “Dark. And quiet.” “Can you see it?” I asked. He nodded. Using images can make reading easier. The ADHD brain often understands pictures more easily than symbols. Turning text into a mental movie gives the brain something solid to hold onto.

Externalize your thinking

I’ve seen many students struggle when asked to answer comprehension questions. Not because they didn’t understand but because organizing their thoughts internally felt impossible. So we began writing just one simple sentence after each paragraph: “This paragraph is about…” At first, the sentences were rough. Incomplete. But they created structure. Later, when it was time to answer questions, the answers were already there, waiting in fragments that could be assembled. Thinking no longer had to happen all at once, inside the pressure of the moment.

Preview before reading

One client once told me that reading felt like being dropped into the middle of a city without a map. So before reading, we began previewing the text. We looked at the headings. The images. The shape of the page. Slowly the text wasn’t unfamiliar territory anymore. It had landmarks. Direction. The brain could orient itself before beginning the journey.

Let the brain move

I noticed something else, too. When my son sat perfectly still, reading was harder. But when he stood, or shifted his weight, or moved slightly, his attention improved. Movement didn’t disrupt his thinking. It supported it. The ADHD nervous system often regulates itself through motion. Stillness is not always the ideal state for learning. Sometimes the brain thinks more clearly when the body is allowed to move.

Confidence follows comprehension

Over time, I watched something change. Reading was still effortful for my clients and my son alike but it was no longer defeating. Both began to trust themselves more. My clients began to write fuller answers. They no longer assumed that difficulty meant incapability.

The problem had never been intelligence. It had been the mismatch between how they were taught to read and how their brains were designed to process. When we stop forcing neurodivergent brains into neurotypical reading strategies and instead offer structure, interaction, and support comprehension grows. And with comprehension comes something even more important: Confidence.

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