I asked for and received permission from his parents, the other children’s parents, and the school to videotape him during class, in lunch, in recess, and in gym class. I included the stipulation that the videotape was for my use only. The other children thought that I was videotaping them as well, so they did not complain. I only had to show Timmy a few minutes of the videotape before he got the idea of the annoying nature of his behavior. That tape was a great teaching tool for me over the year that I worked with him, but I will not get into those details here. After working with Timmy during that year, I knew that I had to find a way to help teachers and parents teach social skills to children with ADHD, so that these children’s socially inappropriate behavior would not result in their becoming isolated, bullied, and rejected. I knew that I had to do something to try to prevent other children with ADHD from experiencing their childhood years in a sad and lonely place like the world in which Timmy lived. If children with ADHD learn positive social skills, they will naturally feel better about themselves. If they succeed in learning these socially appropriate skills, they will be less likely to form negative opinions about themselves, as Timmy had already done at eight years old.
Do you remember that I discussed how Timmy’s teacher felt about him? Let me mention some of the reactions of the other children in the classroom, among others. Every day that I entered the classroom, another child would come running up to tell me what a horrible thing Timmy had
done to them. Then, they asked me, “Could you please keep Timmy away from us?”
I told these children that those kinds of comments were unacceptable and hurtful. However, even though I told them to stop saying those negative things about Timmy, they did not do so. Timmy heard every one of these hurtful comments, which made him tear up right in front of me. He quickly became angry at the child who said it, which caused him to strike out against that child, as well as all of the children in his class, even more. In an attempt to find out more about Timmy, I spoke to his mom.
According to her, children have been saying negative comments to Timmy ever since he was in preschool. She also told me that Timmy was always so hyperactive, that it seemed as if he was perpetually in motion. As I observed him in class, he would talk in an obsessive way about anything and everything. For instance, he would ask why the teacher was wearing her hair in a ponytail, perhaps thirty times. Additionally, his comments were almost never on the topic being discussed. In addition, when he realized that no one was listening to him, he began to move closer to the child or adult to whom he was speaking. He would also try to touch that child
or adult. If you are familiar with the “Close Talker” in the Seinfeld episodes, that was the style of Timmy’s interactions. The more the child became annoyed, the more annoying Timmy became.
Consequently, none of the children wanted to sit next to him or be anywhere near him. Imagine how an eight-year old boy would feel when no one, not his peers or his teachers, wanted to be around him. This sweet and discerning child was rejected by everyone. He was such a bright little boy. Why couldn’t he add his insightful comments to the conversations in class or at recess? Sadly, he never was given the chance to enter into those conversations, either during gym, art, or recess, because as I have said before, he was not permitted to attend any activity where the teacher thought that he might be disruptive. His teacher felt that he was misunderstanding much of the instructions that she gave the class, in terms of how to go about doing activities as well as instructions concerning how to do his class work.
However, in the year that I worked with Timmy, his teacher never attempted to clarify those instructions for him. In fact, it appeared that even though he was so many steps ahead of everyone intellectually (he had a diagnosis of giftedness), he could not attend to either his teachers or his peers for an extended period of time without “bouncing all over the room,” as his teacher told me. Because of Timmy’s socially inappropriate behavior, his teachers responded unkindly to him, while his peers verbally abused and rejected him. Timmy certainly needed to learn how to behave in a more socially appropriate way, and apparently, I was the one who was going to teach him.
See my next post for how I taught Timmy.
No comments:
Post a Comment