How much Patience can we Expect from the High School Educators who Teach Adolescents with ADHD?

Teenagers with ADHD are arguably not easy for parents to manage. They are distractible, forgetful and oftentimes hyperfocused on things such as video games and computer games that interfere with what they should be doing, for instance, homework. Additionally, they are characterized by other more typical teenage behaviors such as stubbornness that we see adolescents exhibit who do NOT have ADHD.

I have seen parents become impatient with their teenagers who have ADHD, which is understandable in consideration of how complicated it can be to manage their behavior. In addition to managing children with ADHD’s behavior, teachers have to manage these children’s academics, as well. Patience may wane when one has to manage both behavior and academics.

Let us talk about teenagers with ADHD in high school and the educators who teach them. I have attended meetings to discuss the needs of the adolescents with whom I work, and the teachers whom I have met are hard-working people who try very hard to meet the needs of the teenagers with ADHD whom they teach.

These teachers are experts in their particular fields, such as History, Science, Math and English, along with Visual Arts. However, they are not special educators. That being said, they are asked to teach children with special needs who are mandated to be included in regular classrooms, teenagers who are very bright, but have ADHD, written language disabilities, general anxiety disorder, etc. These teachers may be patient to a point, but is it possible that we are expecting too much when we ask them to continue to be patient when the teenager is not handing in his homework, is distracted in class, and refuses to take out his materials that are required in order to complete the day’s class work?

The answer to my question is that we are NOT expecting too much from these teachers. I believe that people choose teaching as a career path for other reasons than just because they love a subject area and want to educate children on that particular subject. Individuals choose teaching because they have a calling. They realize that both children and adolescents have needs that must be satisfied, and they want to be the ones to service either of those groups.

That being said, teaching middle or high school is challenging and teaching middle school and/or high school students with ADHD may be very frustrating, due to the persistent nature of those children’s symptoms. Medication does help these children to focus but it does not erase all of their inappropriate behaviors, i.e., not listening, interrupting, calling out in class, not following directions and instructions, forgetting to do their homework, forgetting to hand in their homework, among many other symptoms.

One of the ways that teachers can retain their level of patience is to become knowledgeable concerning methods and interventions that will help these adolescents to become self-regulated and therefore, accountable. Teachers may remain patient if they see that the adolescent with whom they work is trying to be responsible for his own work. These adolescents must be guided by their teachers in order to become as structured as possible, in terms of completing their own checklists in order to monitor the following:

Ø  Morning routines

Ø  End of day routines

Ø  At home routines

Ø  Homework routines

Ø  Attention

Ø  Long-term projects

Ø  Studying for quizzes and tests

Ø  Organizing their backpacks

Ø  Self-control

 Let me know what you think….