Everyone who has interacted with children with ADHD are acutely aware of their symptoms, which includes distractibility, excessive verbiage, and hyperactivity, among other symptoms. These children’s symptoms are real. ADHD IS REAL! That being said, children with ADHD may be taught to diminish these symptoms, but they will always be there at some level.
ADHD is a life-long disorder and the accompanying symptoms are life-long as well. I am not saying that ADHD should be viewed as an excuse for children/teenagers who are diagnosed with it for not adhering to their many school requirements, such as completing their homework, handing in their homework, or remembering their teachers’ instructions.
However, it is critical that teachers become aware that children/teenagers with ADHD are not purposely ignoring their school responsibilities. Believe me, these students would much rather be adhering to the class requirements than having to tell the teacher that they have not completed their work. Imagine having to tell a teacher in high school that not only did you not hand in the homework, but that you forgot to do it, or for some other reason, you did not do the homework? Will teachers understand? Will they understand that because a child is looking out of the window when the lesson is being taught, when he is asked a question, he arguably will not know the answer?
One of the many problems that I have come across is that even though arguably some teachers are informed about the symptoms of ADHD, they do not understand ADHD nor do they understand why these children are exhibiting these symptoms. Due to their lack of understanding of ADHD, they make critical comments to the child/teenager with ADHD.
Here is a scenario that I have recently heard: A child with ADHD was in middle school and had a Special Education teacher shadow him. She talked to him about his homework and she helped him to try to stay organized and on track, etc. That being said, he had quite a bit of leeway in middle school regarding handing in his homework, which one might construe as a strategy that was not optimal. However, that being said, it was what really occurred.
In addition to his ADHD, he had great difficulty writing in a clear and legible way. I am sure that he has a written language disability that was either misdiagnosed or ignored by the school. None of his teachers seemed to understand that his handwriting was an actual disability, and would often say that when he wrote slowly, his handwriting was legible. His handwriting was legible when he wrote one sentence or his name. After that, the quality of his handwriting quickly diminished. Additionally, it seemed as if his teachers were completely unaware that he had an IEP that delineated his accommodations. When the teacher called his Mom, she complained that he was not taking notes in class. His Mom pointed out that his IEP mandated that all of his teachers were required to give him a copy of the class notes each day! How could his teacher not know about his accommodations?
Despite the great difficulty that he experienced when he did his written class work, which was largely due to how laborious writing was for him, the Special Education teacher in middle school decided that he was too dependent upon help. Therefore, she decided that when he entered high school, he would only be assisted by a teacher in the learning center who worked with many children in addition to him. She was more of a facilitator who watched him do his homework in her room, along with checking with the other teachers concerning whether or not he was doing his work. She did not specifically work with him.
He was given some leeway the first week of high school in terms of handing his homework in late to his teachers. By the second week, however, he was expected to hand in all of his homework on time, but did not do so. I believe that he was so used to being permitted to hand in his homework late in middle school, so that was what he continued to do. The learning center teacher wrote an email to his Mom explaining that his teachers told her that he was not handing in his homework on time. She not only seemed extremely surprised that he had not handed in his homework on time, or at all, but in addition, she had not talked to him about this problem!
The only thing that she did was to ask his Mom if she could make sure that he checked the school website every day for the due dates of his homework, as well as the upcoming tests and projects!!!! I am sure that you are saying, “What? Are you kidding?” I would agree with you!
Additionally, he was unfocused in some classes some of the time. For example, during Biology, while the head teacher was teaching, he was looking out of the window. By the time he focused again, he did not realize that the teacher had told the students that they were required to do a worksheet in class on the experiment that they had recently completed. When he realized a few minutes later that he had to do the worksheet, he completed it.
However, because he had not listened to a large part of the lecture, when the assistant teacher asked him a question, he did not immediately know the answer. He had written down the answers to the questions on the worksheet, but could not remember the answer right away, and worse than that, he could not read his answers. At that point, the assistant teacher said to him, “Are you sure that you want to stay in this class?” He became very upset, because he felt that she was implying to him that he could not do the work for that class.
He said, “I like this class. I like the subject, and I am just making friends with the kids at my table.” He also said, “Another kid at my table changed to an art class, but I already have an art class. I do not want to change classes.” He also said, “I do not like the assistant teachers at all. All they do is say bad things to me. One of the assistant teachers said to me ‘Why can’t you pay attention. Stop fidgeting in your seat. Can you read this assignment? Did she think that I was retarded? She said this to me on front of the other kids.”
My question to you is “Shouldn’t adults know better than to make a statement to a teenager that he might construe as meaning that he could not do the work in a particular class? The fact that he was momentarily distracted does not mean that he was not interested in the class, nor does it mean that he could not do the work associated with the class.
What do you think? I have one comment…aghhhhhh
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