A reading app for kids with ADHD, built around short attention spans

Why reading can feel harder for children with ADHD

Reading is not only recognising words. It asks a child to sustain attention across a line, hold the start of a sentence in working memory while reading the end, keep their place on the page, and stay with the text long enough for the meaning to form. These are exactly the skills that ADHD makes harder. The result is a familiar pattern: a child who can decode well enough, but who skips lines, rereads the same sentence, loses the thread after a paragraph, and gives up after a few minutes.

Most reading tools make this worse rather than better. Bright, busy interfaces, long sessions, timers, streaks and several tasks on one screen all compete for the attention the child needs for the text.

What HyFo does differently

• Sessions of three exercises, five to ten minutes. Short enough to finish before attention fades. Two short sessions a day beat one long one.
• One task on screen. No menus, no pop-ups, no ads, no animations fighting the text. Just the exercise, a clear instruction and a Start button.
• Six exercise types, from letters to short texts. Letter matching, reading a word, finding words in a grid, syllable blending, completing a sentence, and a checked-reading exercise with comprehension questions. See the full list on our reading exercises page.
• Step-by-step difficulty. The next exercise is slightly harder than the last, never a jump. Going back to easier tasks is normal and never penalised.
• Gentle feedback after mistakes. A wrong answer gets a calm "try again", not a buzzer. Micro-rewards (XP and levels) are visible but quiet; there are no timers and no streaks to lose.
• A clear end. Every session ends with a visible "done for today", which matters for children who find open-ended tasks hard to start.
• Parent dashboard. Reading speed in words per minute, accuracy, level and what to review next, so you can see progress without sitting through every session. Details on the for parents page.

Reading speed that only counts when the text was understood

Many apps reward speed. For a child with ADHD that teaches racing. HyFo measures words per minute only in the checked-reading exercise, and only records the number after the child answers comprehension questions about the text. Fast guessing isn't counted as progress; reading with understanding is.

Who this is for

HyFo is designed for children aged 4+ who:

• lose focus while reading or get tired after a few minutes
• read the words but struggle to say what the text was about
• skip lines, lose their place or reread without noticing
• get frustrated by mistakes and avoid reading
• respond better to short, structured tasks than to long sessions
• have an ADHD diagnosis, or don't; the approach works for any child with a short attention span

For the first version, your child should already know the alphabet and be able to read syllable by syllable: HyFo doesn't teach letters from scratch. If your child can already read short texts, the checked-reading exercise builds fluency and comprehension together.

What HyFo is not

HyFo is an educational tool for reading practice. It does not diagnose or treat ADHD, and it does not replace school, tutoring, speech-language therapy or medical support. If you're not sure whether your child's difficulty is attention, decoding or both, our articles on ADHD and reading difficulties and struggling readers vs late bloomers can help you decide what to ask the teacher.

Practical tips while you wait for your beta invite

• Keep home reading to five to ten minutes, and stop while it's going well
• Use books your child can read with about 95% accuracy
• Put a finger or a card under the current line
• Preview the page together, then ask "what happened?" right after
• Let your child move: lying on the floor or holding a fidget is fine

More in our guide to what to do when a child loses focus while reading.