What Schools Get Wrong About ADHD

Every week there's a new behavior slip , he's out of his seat , he forgets his homework or he talks non-stop in the classroom . Then the teacher comes to you and says hey , we got a problem with Mason and I think he might have ODD because he just does not seem to care about the classroom rules .

But here's the thing that that teacher wasn't seeing Mason actually does care . Mason actually does care and he is trying really hard . But his problem isn't motivation , it's regulation . And in Mason's case , like so many other students on our campuses , what looks like defiance is really dysregulation . By mid-year Mason's grades are dropping .

He's getting pulled from his specials classes . He's spending lunch in the office almost every week and something has to change . And when mom comes up to the campus to have a meeting , she says with her eyes full of tears he used to love school , but now he cries when it's time to go .

Now Mason is a compilation of a lot of students that I've had over the years , but I'll bet as you're listening , the story reminds you of one of your own students . These kinds of situations hit hard because it's not just an issue of misunderstanding kids . Kids like Mason get trained in school to believe that they are the problem , and that's not okay with me .

So today I'm really focusing on how we conceptualize and understand ADHD in our schools , Because if you've ever wondered why there's a student that knows better but still struggles to follow the expectation , or if you've ever felt stuck between what the classroom is expecting and what you know that student is capable of , this episode is going to be for you .

Hey , welcome back to the School for School Counselors podcast . I'm Steph Johnson , a full-time school counselor , just like you , on a mission to make school counseling feel more sustainable and more enjoyable . I want your career to be rewarding .

I want you to feel capable and confident every day you walk through those doors and not only work hard but enjoy the journey along the way .

So let's just lay down the gauntlet at the get-go here and start with the most important thought first and I normally don't do it this way , but I need to make sure this is crystal clear ADHD is not a behavior disorder . Adhd is a disorder of executive functioning , and that is a super important distinction .

Executive function is like the brain's air traffic control system it helps us pay attention to the right things at the right time . It helps us tune out the distractions that might divert our attention . It helps us manage our impulses , start , maintain and finish tasks , regulate our emotions , organize our materials and even shift from one task to the next one .

In kids with ADHD , that system doesn't develop at the same pace or in the same ways as neurotypical kids . So when you have a student that's blurting out answers every 30 seconds or leaving their seats 10 times in a class , or forgetting their folder for the third time that week , it's not because they're trying to push anybody's buttons .

It's because the mental system that helps them regulate when and how to do those things is impaired . When and how to do those things is impaired . It's like trying to drive your car with GPS , but the GPS keeps cutting in and out .

You know the destination you're headed toward , but you're constantly missing the turns , and then you get disoriented , you get frustrated and you might even give up on the trip altogether .

That's what ADHD feels like for students in school and unfortunately , even though it's pretty prevalent , it's also still very widely misunderstood on our campuses , even when the adults on those campuses are the most well-meaning , empathetic people in the world .

When we mistake dysregulation for defiance , we tend to respond with discipline instead of support , and then we end up chasing compliance instead of teaching capacity . That's a very important distinction . According to the Centers for Disease Control , about one in 10 children in the US have been diagnosed with ADHD

. I've seen numbers as high as 14% , and if you work on a campus that's a Title I campus or a campus with limited access to pediatric care , the actual number is probably higher . And when we're talking about girls , they are historically underdiagnosed .

What that means to you as a school counselor is that many of the kids that you've been asked to see for things like anxiety or behavior or apathy may actually be walking around with undiagnosed ADHD , and the longer we miss that , the more shame they begin to internalize , because they begin to decide that that they're the problem and y'all .

That's why our work matters . In the DSM-5 , which is the Diagnosis Manual for Mental Health Concerns , adhd is categorized into three presentations . One is the type of presentation that we normally see and can identify pretty quickly , and those are students who are predominantly hyperactive or impulsive .

These are the kids that are constantly moving and fidgeting and squirming around . They're leaving their seat when they're supposed to be seated . They talk excessively . Sometimes they get so excited they start blurting out answers and they have difficulty waiting their turn . They're often interrupting others . That's what we generally conceptualize when we think about ADHD .

But there are other presentations too . One of them is predominantly inattentive . One of them is predominantly inattentive . These kiddos often fail to give close attention to the details . They have difficulty sustaining attention in tasks . They kind of wander off a little bit . They don't seem to listen .

When we're speaking to them directly , it's almost like they're in another place . When we're speaking to them directly , it's almost like they're in another place . They're easily distracted and often forgetful in their daily activities .

This is a type that we often see in these undiagnosed girls , because they are compliant , complacent and they're able to do just enough to get by . So they never really sound out the alarm bells for teachers .

And then the third classification of ADHD in the DSM-5 is a combined presentation , that's when students meet the criteria for both kinds the hyperactive , impulsive and inattentive and they meet those criteria for six months .

Now there are other constraints to the diagnosis of ADHD as well , and we're not going to get into those because as school counselors , we don't diagnose students and we shouldn't be attempting to do that . But it's important to note that this kind of diagnostic criteria helps standardized identification .

People often want a label to the situations they're seeing , right , but we also know , especially in our line of work , that students' symptoms can also be heavily influenced by context , environment and co-occurring conditions . That's why our observations and collaborative abilities as school counselors are so important to our schools .

Studies suggest that children with ADHD may experience up to a 30 percent delay in the development of the prefrontal cortex and if you remember from all your counseling courses , that's the part of the brain that is responsible for these executive functions that we've been talking about .

That means a 10 year old might be functioning more like a 7 or 8-year-old when it

comes to organization , impulse control and time management . Let's put that in perspective for a minute . 10 years old is the start of the fifth grade . 7 years old is the start of the second grade .

If we take a student with second grade organizational skills or impulse control skills and put them in a fifth grade environment , they're gonna have some significant challenges right and when we're asking them to sit still , take notes , complete multi-step tasks and even manage their materials independently .

If we do that without scaffolding , we are setting them up to fail , and I would bet that's a lot of what you're seeing with a lot of your so-called behavior problems on your campus right now .

So let's talk about how students perform in school versus what they know they're supposed to be doing , because that's one of the biggest misconceptions that you're going to find on a school campus that ADHD is about not knowing what to do . And the reality is that's just not true . It's not about not understanding the expectation .

True , it's not about not understanding the expectation . It's about legitimately not being able to perform to that expectation . Dr Russell Barkley says ADHD is not a disorder of not knowing what to do . It's a disorder of not doing what you know . Think about that for a minute . What you know .

Think about that for a minute Because that reframes almost every ADHD conversation that's happening in schools right now . We have to understand that ADHD is a performance disorder , not a knowledge problem and not a behavior problem , and once we understand that that it is a performance disorder . We stop asking things like why are they doing this ?

I already told them what to do . And we start thinking what's getting in the way of them doing that right now ? And what's usually missing is working memory inhibition or emotional regulation . It's not about motivation , friend . It's about timing and pressure and capacity ,

and it's a lot like the stories we often tell our students in our school counseling offices when we're explaining how the brain works and about how fight , flight and freeze work .

We've probably all shown our students the hand model of the brain , all shown our students the hand model of the brain , and we've probably all asked if I walked out in the hallway right now and saw a tiger or a bear getting ready to come after me , what would I do ?

Right , I know , I know you've had these conversations with your students , but turn it around on yourself . If I asked you to do a math problem while you're being chased by a bear , you might know how to do that math problem , but your brain isn't built to access that skill in a moment of high stress , and that's what ADHD feels like .

If that classroom gets too fast or too loud or too unstructured , students cannot access the skills they need and really that kind of speaks to where things fall apart in schools .

Because as adults we tend to assume that once we've taught the skill to the student , once we've explained the rule , handed out the worksheet , reviewed the poster even talked about coping skills or provided a worksheet about organization that students should now be able to demonstrate that behavior on demand .

But when executive functioning is involved , that's not how learning works . Putting a kid in a counseling small group and talking about setting goals is not the same as remembering how to set those goals in the middle of sixth period , especially when that class is going bonkers .

It's the same with our behavior charts , our sticker charts , our token economies or our calm down corners . We're giving zero instruction regarding those and we're expecting kids to catch on , but without coaching or guided practice . These tools don't teach regulation Really , they just track dysregulation .

And if we're getting real about this , they can also cause a lot of harm . Because if I'm a student with ADHD and I keep getting the same organization worksheet or I'm being admonished about , why didn't you go to the calm down corner ? Why didn't you use your coping skills ? What I start internalizing is I'm the problem .

I already know what to do , but I keep messing it up . Something is wrong with me and over time that turns into shame and y'all . We cannot shame kids into better executive functioning , we just can't do it . But we can scaffold them into it and lucky for us .

This is where school counselors can really shine , because if ADHD students don't need the what to do as much as they need the how to do it , we can walk in and model how to use a checklist in the real environment . We can push into that classroom to support . We can assist the student in practicing emotional regulation before the blow-up happens .

Or we can implement and support visual prompts or specific language or consistency in approach long enough that they can build the habit in all their classrooms . Let me see if I can explain what I mean . Say we have a student who could explain the entire process for turning in their homework . This may or may not be my own child .

She knows exactly where to turn this paper into . She can tell me exactly when she's supposed to go , where it's supposed to be turned in and how she's supposed to make it happen . She even had a reminder note taped to her folder , but every day , day after day , that paper stayed in her backpack because she just could not plan it out to make it happen .

So we had to practice , we had to act

out how that was going to go down .

I had to really work on the praise part of the equation instead of the pressure , and we had to loop the teacher in so everybody was having the same conversation and after a couple weeks of doing that , not only has she turned in that one paper , but she was turning in all of her work , not because she finally cared more about it , but because she got a

bridge from knowing to doing , but because she got a bridge from knowing to doing . And that is what school counselors are best at . We should not be the perpetual behavior managers on campus . We're not the SEL worksheet team , but we are connectors and we can connect between understanding and application .

And we can connect between understanding and application and we can connect between student need and the capacity of the adult in the room . So if you've ever had a student that seemed like they should know better , stop and ask do they actually have the skills to do better or are they stuck in that gap between knowledge and execution ?

And if it's a gap , then your job is not to remind and nag . It's to support and model and coach . In our School for School Counselors Mastermind , that's exactly what we're working on right now .

We're working on building Tier 2 interventions that go beyond behavior plans , collaborating with teachers in a way that does not alienate them and creating systems that support skill building , not just the tracking of the symptoms . Building , not just the tracking of the symptoms .

We just held our ADHD supports and solutions masterclass and that replay is already in our mastermind classroom . So if that's what you're needing , come join us , because I don't want you to have to figure this out alone . For your sake

and for your students , this is too important to let it go . Hey , I'm so glad that you joined me in this episode . In the next one , I'm going to be talking about ADHD through a completely different lens and it might actually change the way you approach behavior .

We're going to be talking about how this one thing hijacks behavior and how to help students that live in a perpetual fight-flight-freeze loop . You are not going to want to miss it and spoiler it's related to ADHD .

If you enjoyed this episode , make sure you hit subscribe in your podcast player so you can get the next episode , lickety split , and until then , I hope you have the best week . Take care .