BACK TO SCHOOL

I am pleased to report that we seem to have started off the new term quite well all things considered. Noah still doesn’t get as much sleep as he needs due to us trialling a new sleep-inducing medication (Melatonin). He is not a ‘morning’ person at the best of times so he really has coped well on reduced sleep and the commencement of a new term.

I should also mention that transitions, going from one type of activity or period to another, are not easy for ADHD children. So you can imagine how changing from ‘Christmas-Holiday-get-up-as-late-as-possible-and-overdose-on-new-computer-games-and-chocolate mode’ to the rather more realistic but somewhat taxing ‘get-up-at-7am-and-be-structured-all-day’ type of thing is somewhat of a challenge to my darling Noah! And actually it was me who did the overdosing on chocolate bit.

The best thing that happened when Noah returned to school was being invited to Paris for a long weekend! The worst…he declined the offer! No, seriously the worst thing that happened was that Noah received his first detention in the Senior School – for a twelve-year-old with ADHD this is no mean achievement I can tell you. What you should be aware of is that the most mind-numbingly boring thing for an ADHD child is to be unstimulated (we refer it to the ‘U’ word). When this dreadful situation occurs, rather than go with the flow, our wonderful ADHD (high stimulus-seeking type) children create a, shall we say, more stimulating environment!

With many years experience under his belt our son is undoubtedly a truly dedicated expert at this; he has a considerable repertoire of tactics stored away in his wonderful ADHD brain – purely designed to excite, thrill and challenge both himself and his peers. The fact that these escapades may earn him a detention or lines from his teacher are of little consequence to Noah at the time. Preferring not to think about consequences, he regularly fails to predict or learn from them so they are hardly at the forefront of his mind when deciding which way to liven things up in a Geography lesson based on water tables or some other such trivia.

Unfortunately for him on this occasion, Noah - as impulsive and stimulus-seeking as ever – chose to wind up the one and only child in the class whose parents (unbeknown to him) had been into school only the previous day over an unrelated issue! Noah is not a vindictive child or a bully, he just doesn’t think – in this way he is so like many other ADHD children. I have to add at this point, due to his high level of intellectual ability, Noah is currently educated in the independent sector – the smaller class sizes and highly structured approach suits him well and he undoubtedly would not achieve so well (given his difficulties) in the state system. His school, though initially unsure about how it would support his difficulties, have been to its credit both flexible and fair in its approach and this occasion was no different.

Anyway, I digress. Noah chose to deftly swipe this boy’s pencil case whilst he was otherwise occupied and throw it across the hushed room to his ‘partner in crime’ (highly useful on these occasions) Robbie, who (by some form of telepathy I firmly believe) is always at the ready and keen to cooperate on such missions! The teacher, totally focused on the board at the time, and completely unaware of what had gone on, whirled around to a class full of boys sniggering at this poor child’s attempts to locate his pencil case.

Noah ‘volunteered’ to help find the missing object and somehow mobilised the rest of the class in a frantic attempt to locate the lost property. The lesson ended just the way he had planned – in total uproar! How wonderful – what a skill I secretly think - I’m sure this will have benefits in later life though at the moment they elude me. The teacher eventually uncovered his prank –both he and Rob received a well-deserved lunch-time detention (highly respected by his peers). I quote the wording on the slip: ‘Detention for causing a fracas in the classroom and undermining my authority!!!’

On occasions such as these I usually try to make the time to undertake a ‘post-mortem’ with Noah in an attempt to identify what went wrong and why. I also have to be extremely diplomatic (as you can imagine, being told that your lesson was unstimulating for an extremely bright and able 12 year-old does not go down very well). In reply to my usual line of questioning – ‘how could you prevent this from happening in a Geography lesson again?’ - I was offered a typically ADHD response: ‘Well, maybe I should have done it in Art instead!’

Until next time,

Jan

Jan Assheton RGN RSCN is an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Coach and Learning Mentor and the mother of a child with ADHD.