A Story of a "Real" Child with ADHD: Timmy (false name) Part 3

I was hired to be what was called an itinerant teacher. My job description stated that I was to supervise eight-year-old Timmy in his classroom for six hours a day for four days a week for a period of one year. I believe the actual reason that I was hired was that they wanted me to isolate Timmy from the other children as well as from the teacher. The principal thought that if I was in charge of Timmy, Timmy’s behavior, which was the only perception they had of Timmy, would not annoy anyone. Over that year, I got to know Timmy well. He told me how terrible he felt when other children rejected him, and that he so desperately wanted to have a friend. Without going into exactly what interventions I used to remediate his inappropriate behavior, I can tell you that from that first day forward, I observed the other children rejecting Timmy and saw how it affected his self-esteem. Little by little, this cute little boy became very insecure and felt very unwanted.

He would walk with his head down so no one could say anything negative to his face. How do I know that? He told me so. Additionally, I observed him exhibiting that type of body language, which certainly validated what he had told me. More often than not, I would see tears streaming down his little face when I tried to get him to maintain eye contact. I needed to have him maintain eye contact, of course, so that I could be sure that he was paying attention when I was teaching him social skills.

There is hope for children like Timmy in terms of learning social skills. Even though it took a year for me to help Timmy learn how to self-regulate his behavior, by the end of the year he was attending gym class, with me in tow. It was a good thing since my rusty skills as a soccer coach came in handy that year! The other children were learning how to play soccer, so I taught Timmy to play as well. I ran right next to him and helped to model soccer skills for him. On the last day of school, Timmy’s class was playing soccer. I convinced the gym teacher to permit him to play on one of the teams. The score was tied at 2-2. I signaled to one of the other boys to pass the ball to Timmy, who was waiting right in front of the goal. The other little boy dribbled the ball to Timmy. Timmy dribbled the ball a few more feet, and with a good “foot” kicked the ball into the goal for the point to win the game. I still become emotional upon thinking about the end of this rather tumultuous story. After Timmy kicked the ball into the goal, his “team” jumped on top of him, chanting his name: “Timmy, Timmy, Timmy!” As I watched each and every one of those
children slap Timmy a high-five, I was just stunned to see how far Timmy had come.

I saw that Timmy felt so proud of himself. I could also see that all of the hard work that we had done together over that past year was worth it. I am not telling you that that was the end of Timmy’s socially inappropriate behavior. I will tell you, though, that from that point onward Timmy knew that he was capable of self-regulating his socially inappropriate behavior.
He began to have some ownership over his socially appropriate behavior as well.
Now that I have given you a real-life example of how poor social skills can affect a child with ADHD and the people around him, does Timmy sound like anyone that you know?