Your kid is struggling in a class. Maybe their grades are slipping. Maybe a big test is coming up — the SAT, the ACT, a final exam — and they’re not where they need to be. So you do what every parent does: you hire a tutor.
You find someone through a friend, or a friend of a friend, or some college kid who’s good at the subject. And they are good at the subject. They know the material. They can explain it clearly. They show up, they go through the problems, your kid nods along. And when the test comes back — nothing changed. Or maybe it improved a little. But the underlying struggle is still there.
Here’s the problem: knowing the content and knowing how to teach it to a student with ADHD are two completely different skills. And most tutors — even good ones — only have the first.
The Problem With “Regular” Tutoring
A regular tutor could be anyone. A college student. A retired teacher. Someone who’s just really good at math and does this on the side. And for a neurotypical student, that might be enough. Explain the concept, practice some problems, move on.
But for a student with ADHD, the content isn’t usually the core issue. The issue is everything around the content — the focus, the organization, the follow-through, the ability to retain what they learned in the session and actually apply it later on their own.
A regular tutor shows up and says, “What do you need help with tonight?” Then they spend an hour re-explaining what the teacher already explained, the student nods along because they recognize the material, and they part ways. No plan for what happens between sessions. No understanding of how the student actually processes information. No awareness of when the student’s attention drifts or why they keep getting stuck on the same types of problems.
I have a friend who runs a very successful tutoring business. Great at what he does. But he’ll tell you himself — working with students with ADHD is a different game. It’s not that he can’t teach them the content. It’s that their struggles with focus, frustration tolerance, and perseverance through hard problems constantly interfere. And he doesn’t have the training to navigate that.
That’s the gap. The content knowledge is there. The understanding of the ADHD brain is not.
What ADHD-Informed Tutoring Actually Looks Like
At Exceptional Path, every tutor is trained by me to understand how the ADHD brain works — and to build that understanding into every part of the tutoring process. This isn’t regular tutoring with an ADHD label slapped on it. The entire approach is different from the first conversation to the last session.
It starts before the first session. Before the tutor ever meets with the student, I’ve already built a learning profile. This comes from the student’s IEP or 504 plan if they have one, any neuropsych evaluations, my own interview with the student and parent, and an assessment of their strengths and struggles. The tutor doesn’t walk in blind. They walk in knowing how this specific student learns, where they get stuck, and what approaches are most likely to work.
Most regular tutoring sessions? This conversation never happens.
There’s a plan from day one to the last session. The tutor doesn’t just show up each week and wing it. There’s a session-by-session plan with specific topics, targeted practice questions, and clear goals mapped out from start to finish. Every session builds on the last. There’s a pre-test to establish a baseline, and the tutor identifies not just what the student gets wrong — but why they get it wrong. Is it a content gap? A strategy gap? A focus gap? Those require completely different interventions.
The tutor meets with the student and the parent first. They talk about objectives and goals. They break down sub-scores from previous tests — ACTs, SATs, classroom exams — and explain what those scores actually mean. What are the high-value areas where improvement is most realistic? Where should we spend our time for the biggest return? This is the “playing the game of school” approach applied to tutoring — strategic, not scattershot.
Between sessions, the student has a clear plan. The tutor provides specific practice problems, study materials, and assignments targeted to the growth areas identified in the session. The student knows exactly what to do before the next session — and the parent can see whether they’re doing it. There’s accountability built into the process, not just hope that the kid will study on their own.
Why Online Tutoring Works Better for ADHD Students
This might surprise you, but all of our tutoring is online — and it’s actually more effective for students with ADHD than in-person sessions.
Here’s why. So much of a student’s work is already on the computer. They can’t avoid screens — their assignments are on Canvas, their textbook is digital, their calculator is on the laptop. Online tutoring meets them where the work already happens.
More importantly, the tools we use keep things visual and interactive. The student shares their screen, talks us through their thinking, and works through problems in real time while the tutor watches. This keeps them engaged because they’re doing the work, not passively watching someone else do it.
And here’s what an ADHD-informed tutor can see on a video call that a regular tutor wouldn’t know to look for: the eyes drifting. A new tab opening. The slight zone-out that happens when the material gets hard or boring. These are body language signals that tell the tutor the student is starting to disconnect — and that’s the cue to shift. Change the approach. Ask them to repeat something back. Have them walk through the next step out loud. Bring them back in before they’re gone.
A regular tutor wouldn’t notice. Or if they did, they’d just barrel through and ask, “Does that make sense?” The kid says yes because that’s easier than admitting they stopped paying attention five minutes ago. And they both move on — one thinking they taught something, the other having learned nothing.
The Executive Function Skills Built Into Every Session
Here’s what separates ADHD-informed tutoring from content tutoring: every session is building executive function skills whether the student realizes it or not.
Planning and organizing. The student doesn’t randomly pick topics to study. There’s a plan that maps out exactly what to cover, in what order, and over how many sessions. The student sees the plan. They know where they are and where they’re going.
Time management and prioritization. The tutor targets growth areas — not everything, not randomly, but the specific topics that will yield the most improvement in the least time. The student learns to think strategically about where to spend their effort. On a test, that translates to answering the accessible questions first and coming back to the hard ones — instead of getting stuck on question 3 and running out of time.
Active recall and real study techniques. Between sessions, the student isn’t “looking over notes.” They’re doing targeted practice problems, working through specific question types, and engaging with the material in ways that force them to pull information out of their brain — not just recognize it. The tutor provides study guides built around active recall because that’s what actually works.
Breaking through procrastination. When there’s a specific plan in place and a session coming up in a few days, the student has external accountability to get the work done. The ambiguity that usually fuels procrastination — “I don’t know where to start” — is removed because the tutor already told them exactly where to start.
Chunking big goals into manageable steps. A student preparing for the ACT doesn’t need to “get better at math.” They need to memorize five geometry formulas this week, practice 20 word problems by Thursday, and review their errors from the last practice test before the next session. That’s the difference between a goal and a plan.
Does Tutoring Help ADHD Students?
It depends entirely on the tutor.
A regular tutor who knows the content but doesn’t understand ADHD can help a little — maybe enough to bump a grade up by one letter, maybe enough to get through the next test. But the underlying skills don’t develop. The student becomes dependent on the tutor instead of independent. And the moment the tutoring stops, the problems come back.
An ADHD-informed tutor doesn’t just teach the content. They teach the content in a way that accounts for how the ADHD brain processes, focuses, and retains information. They build executive function skills into every session. They communicate with teachers to understand what the class actually requires. They create a plan that the student can follow between sessions. And they track progress in a way that’s visible to the student and the parent — so everyone knows exactly where things stand.
That’s the difference between a tutor who helps your kid pass Friday’s test and a tutor who helps your kid build the skills to pass every test that comes after.
If your child has ADHD and tutoring hasn’t worked — it’s probably not because tutoring doesn’t work. It’s because the tutor didn’t understand your kid’s brain.
Book a free call to talk about what your student needs and how our ADHD-informed tutoring approach works.
Chris Fugelsang is the founder of Exceptional Path — a former special education teacher with over 20 years of experience and a Master’s in Special Education. Every tutor at Exceptional Path is personally trained by Chris to understand and work with the ADHD brain.