Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

What Can Teachers Do?

Geoff Kewley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136900723
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder a 'made-up' term?

Is it simply an excuse for bad behaviour?

How do children with ADHD really experience school?

This practical teacher's guide dispels all the myths and gets down to the facts about ADHD. It explores the nitty-gritty of what you need to know in order to help the children in your class to cope with this complex condition.

This fully revised second edition gives an overview of the disorder based on the broad internationally recognised approach to ADHD, which takes account of its biological as well as environmental elements. It includes:

• real-life classroom scenarios and case studies of specific children;
• practical management strategies for both teachers and parents;
• an exploration of prevailing attitudes to ADHD;
• advice on initial diagnosis and ongoing assessment.

Packed full of no-nonsense advice and tips, this book will help you adopt the educational strategies and behaviour management approaches that are best suited to each individual child. It also explores the use of alternative treatments, such as psychological and psychiatric strategies, medication, counselling, coaching and changes to diet.

Children who have ADHD can often experience school failure, expulsion and emotional, behavioural and social problems. By demystifying the disorder and its coexisting conditions, this book will help you to understand and manage ADHD, enabling you to offer the children you teach a more positive future.

1
What is ADHD?

Although it is a medical condition of brain dysfunction, ADHD significantly affects educational performance. It is estimated to occur in 3% to 5% of school children, and is a very common condition in the classroom. At least one child in every 20, i.e. one to two children in each classroom, may have ADHD. The condition can cause difficulties in the classroom in a wide range of ways and in some cases can be difficult to differentiate from normal behaviour. It therefore behoves teachers to have a very good understanding of the condition.

In the past decade there has been increased recognition that ADHD is an internationally recognised condition. The difficulties must be pervasive and persistent and must significantly interfere with the child’s everyday life.

Girls tend more frequently to be inattentive and to daydream, and they tend to fade away in class without their problems necessarily being acknowledged. In the past, teachers have sometimes had difficulty in accepting that such children are not just lazy and could concentrate if they tried harder, or could try to have better self-control. Such concepts are subtle but are very important to understand in the context of ADHD. To many teachers, excessive difficulty with the child calling out, not concentrating or being active may just appear to be an extreme personality issue; however, if it is persistent the possibility of ADHD should be considered.

For more about the management of ADHD, see Chapter 4.

Many children with ADHD have complications and these include:

Excessive oppositionality: i.e. these children always blame someone else – it is never their fault, they are defiant, they lack the ability to respect the moral authority of the teachers, they are emotionally volatile, they argue, and they refuse requests. Of course all teenagers can be oppositional some of the time; however, the early onset of Oppositional Defiant Disorder in association with ADHD, as well as the normal oppositionality of puberty, can cause a great many difficulties.

Disruptive behaviour disorders: i.e. not only excessive oppositionality and mood volatility, and antisocial behaviour, this may involve getting into frequent fights, arguments, verbal confrontations and problems with rule-governed behaviour.

Anxiety or depression: children may feel that their life is not worth living, that they wish they were dead, and in particular may become extremely demoralised. They may also worry about getting the work wrong, about socialising, and about a wide range of things. These can lead to self-harm if not effectively managed.

Specific learning difficulties: this is a much broader concept than the simplicity of the term ‘dyslexia”. Specific learning difficulties can involve reading, spelling, maths, and, whilst they may be associated and cause concentration difficulties, when the concentration difficulties coexist with specific learning problems the child is doubly disadvantaged.

Obsessions: such as storing and saving things, wanting to have things just so, have routines and excessively set ways of doing things. Obsessions sometimes occur in combination with both vocal and motor tics. They may also be part of a child’s autistic spectrum difficulties such as Asperger’s Syndrome, with or without coexisting ADHD.

Developmental coordination difficulties (dyspraxia): problems with spatial awareness, motor planning, poor pencil grip and problems with gross motor difficulties such as ball catching or bike riding may coexist with ADHD.

Auditory processing difficulties: for some children the problem is not so much of concentration difficulties but of difficulty in processing what they hear. Things go in one ear and out of the other. Auditory processing problems can coexist with ADHD.

Speech and language problems: sometimes this is because of auditory processing problems or difficulties in retaining what one has heard or wanted to say. Some children with ADHD speak extremely rapidly and indistinctly. Others have difficulty in getting to the point and can be quite loquacious or have problems with taking things too literally.

These complications frequently mask or camouflage the underlying ADHD core symptoms, which can make accurate diagnosis, assessment and recognition of a child’s problems quite difficult. However, if concentration or self-control difficulties persist, the diagnosis of ADHD should be considered, irrespective of the child’s socioeconomic status.

ADHD often runs in families – it appears that genetics and biology tend to create a vulnerability that can be compounded by difficulties in the child’s environment. The child’s parents should not necessarily be blamed for the difficulties but rather it should be appreciated that many children have innate difficulties which cause problems, and that parenting such a child is often very difficult and stressful, with these children putting very significant pressure on their families.

The copious myths and misinformation about conditions such as ADHD, and the medications often used to treat it, that are sometimes used as part of their management, have made it very difficult for teachers and parents to gain factual information on the condition and the best way of helping an individual child.

Therefore, in one way or another, ADHD is an eminently treatable condition. It is very important for teachers to recognise the condition early on in a child’s schooling, so that strategies that have been shown to be helpful, such as behavioural management and medication, can be put in place.

Children with ADHD generally behave about a third younger than their chronological age. This means that a 16-year-old will need to be treated in much the same way as a 12-year-old in many ways. Whilst many children with ADHD, especially the very bright ones, have strengths and weaknesses within that profile, their lack of maturity, their impulsiveness, their educational underachievement and their social skills difficulties do mean that it is helpful to think of them as a younger child and thus to have more realistic expectations of them.

ADHD is a biologically based disability that results in educational and behavioural as well as other difficulties. It is treatable but not curable. Educational strategies and teachers’ interventions can have a very positive and powerful effect on the refractory nature of ADHD; however, the refractory nature of the condition does mean that very often these children will have ongoing difficulties in their academic and social lives despite all the help they are able to get.

Remember that very frequently ADHD is only one part of an individual child’s complex difficulties. He or she may also have associated specific learning difficulties, social skills difficulties, family problems, organisational problems, depression, oppositional behaviour or some features of autistic spectrum difficulty.

By having a good understanding of ADHD, teachers are in a much better position to effectively teach and care for the child with a condition....

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Profiles of ‘typical’ children with ADHD
• 1 What is ADHD?
• 2 Coexisting conditions
• 3 Assessment of children with ADHD
• 4 Managing children with ADHD
• 5 Case studies
• 6 What teachers can do
• 7 Other tips that teachers might find helpful
• 8 The long-term outlook
• 9 Concluding comments
• Appendix 1: Further reading
• Appendix 2: Useful addresses
• Index