Recently my teenage daughter was diagnosed with ADHD. (ADD actually but apparently they only use the term ADHD now) She wasn’t being tested specifically for learning disabilities but was put through multiple tests to determine potential causes of her severe depression. I had it verified by another psychiatrist with retesting and another interview and the diagnosis is an indisputable fact.
Although I knew she was disorganized, she always has done okay in school so I never suspected. Apparently she has a well above average IQ of 123 so she was able to compensate for her ADD and still do well.
I have ordered a couple of books from Amazon and she was given a work book for teens by her therapist but I was wondering if anyone here has any advice for how to help her live up to her potential with this disability. She begins high school this year and I’d like to start on the right track. Thanks in advance.
My son was diagnosed with ADHD when he was in kindergarten. We put him on medication (sorry, I know many don’t agree with this, but it worked wonders for my son and I’m not here to debate it, just to answer the OP’s question).
When he got to be around 8, he started to struggle in school, and again when he was about 12. It seemed that those times he hit a “wall” with his coping strategies and we had to help him develop new strategies to deal with studying, organizational skills, etc. Your daughter has learned over the years to compensate for her ADHD. My son would get very frustrated and depressed when he hit these walls, but after we had re-adjusted he seemed to do better. He’s 22 now, a senior in college, still on meds, and doing very well.
I would suggest that you talk to her about the things she struggles with, and then work on ways to handle them. That is, if she is disorganized with her assignments, get her in the habit of using a datebook to write everything down, or perhaps a reminder app in her phone. If she is bad with time management, work with her to set up a schedule to complete tasks in small, manageable chunks so she is not overwhelmed (or gets distracted).
But it’s important that she be part of figuring out the solutions to her needs so it is her plan (not yours, although you should guide her) and then you have to re-assess the plan from time to time to make sure things are still working/tweak it as necessary.
I will say that while it doesn’t go away, it does get easier as time goes on.
Also I’d like to add that it’s important to be open and honest with her teachers and school administration. I have found that for the most part, they are happy to help her succeed wherever they can if they know there is a problem (and you have an official diagnosis). If they know she has ADHD, they can work with her and make accomodations to help her. If you have not already, talk to the Child Study Team at the school to find out what assistance they can offer.
If they are in the United States, the school can write up an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and also a 504 if necessary, which is the thing for people with disabilities.
I think reminders on her smart phone and getting her in the habit of using it is a great idea and exactly the type of thing I was looking for when I started this thread.
I did talk to the guidance office at the new school and they did set up a 504 and IEP right away. She is also on medication for her ADHD as well as her depression.
Not necessarily if she’s doing well in school. Just having a disability won’t automatically qualify you for either. That’s why little bro had an IEP and I didn’t, despite us both having been diagnosed with ADHD very young; he did poorly enough in school that ADHD “interfered” with his schooling and I did well enough that it didn’t. She might qualify for a 504, but probably not an IEP if she’s able to process in school like the OP stated.
All that is necessary to get a 504 and IEP in Florida is to request one. Interfering with schooling is a relative term. Obviously my AB student should be an A student and it is her disability that has been hindering her. The school can’t say her grades are good enough. I am surprised that “well enough” excluded you. She will get unlimited time for standardized testing, including SAT, the option of handing in work late if warranted. The ability to do make up tests and a few more accommodations. I feel it is unfair that you weren’t given the opportunity to take advantage of accommodations with your disability.
OP, you might also Google some ADHD support groups in your area - maybe one for you (parent) and one for your daughter. It may help her to meet other teens who are/have been dealing with the same issues, and they can share tips with her. A group would benefit you, too, to learn from other parents who have been through it, how to help your daughter succeed.
I am begging you, please, strike the phrase “live up to her potential” from your vocabulary and never use it again.
I was diagnosed with ADHD-PI at the age of 34 and clinical depression at the age of 26. They are absolutely tied, and they are tied by what I heard over and over and over again growing up. “You just aren’t living up to your potential.” For me, it was in the context of “why aren’t you working harder?” and “if you’d only just try”. It is a destructive, poisonous phrase. I could never articulate why it was so hard for me to plan something out and stick to it, to remember the details of homework, to sit down and “focus” on what I was “supposed” to do. So, I absorbed the message that I was lazy, that I didn’t care, and that I was letting my parents and teachers down.
If your daughter has gone through anything like what I went through, she’s depressed for a reason. She thinks she’s worthless because she’s smart enough to make straight A’s in all her classes. She’s heard her teachers tell her indirectly and maybe directly that she’s lazy. She’s had people look at her work, her grades, and her intelligence, and tell her that she just must not care, since she isn’t “living up to her potential”.
I would even argue that ADHD is not a learning disability but one facet of neuro-diversity. Yes, some aspects of it make succeeding in a modern school more difficult, but there are advantages to it as well - hyperfocus, creativity, energy, and infectious enthusiasm. Talk to her about those things, and make this a chance for her to better understand herself and how she fits in the world.
Okay, all that being said, ADHD is definitely a difficult fit in today’s school system. The characteristics of ADHD - impulsivity, difficulty focusing for long periods of time, distractibility, need for novelty, memory issues - can easy sabotage her performance.
Along with having ADHD-PI, I’m a credentialed teacher with five years in the classroom, and I’ve worked with a lot of ADHD kids. Here’s what I stressed to the students and the parents:
understand what ADHD is and how it works. In people with ADHD, the prefrontal cortex is less active, meaning it’s more difficult for the person to filter out distracting stimuli, it’s more difficult to squash impulses, it’s more difficult to plan into the future and then stick with that plan. There are many good books on the subject, but what you’re looking for is a kind of scaffolding to support and stimulate her executive functions.
people with ADHD often self-stimulate (not like that) to get their prefrontal cortex working. You’ll see it as things like tapping pencils maniacally, drumming fingers, kicking or swinging their legs, humming, twitching, or other nervous tics. What I’ve taught my students is to jiggle their knee. It’s quiet, and so long as their leg isn’t touching anything, no one else should notice. If you try to stop them from revving their kinetic engine, it’ll just come out in another, more annoying way.
as with everything brain related, you want to avoid fluctuations in blood sugar and over-tiredness. This means a good breakfast with low glycemic foods. Get rid of the sodas, juices, and other sugary drinks. Make sure she has a stable sleep schedule.
physical activity is vital. There’s evidence now that girls with ADHD are more likely to be overweight in their adulthood (I can vouch for this), and part of it’s because when bored, food is very satisfying. Not only does physical activity burn calories, aerobic activity ensures a better blood supply to the brain, allowing the prefrontal cortex to work better. It gets rid of the wiggles and makes it easier to focus. The challenge is finding stuff that will keep her interested. People with ADHD seek out novelty. We get bored easily. Look for social activities if possible. Make it an every day event, and if she’s cool with it, get involved.
Yes. Just, yes. I was only diagnosed with ADD in college. Like your daughter, I was intelligent enough until then to compensate for my lack of focus. I probably would have done better in high school had I been diagnosed earlier, but the real damage done by delaying my diagnosis was emotional. I always felt like I was working hard, but I still never got as much done as everyone else, so I figured I must actually be lazy. Eventually the phrase “just keep trying” became one of the most hurtful things someone could say to me. To me it meant that people thought I wasn’t trying much at all, or I was lazy, or I didn’t care. This all certainly played a large role in my own depression.
I commend you for doing what you can to help your daughter. Like others have said, she will have to learn coping mechanisms. For me, lists are really helpful. Even if I don’t finish everything on my to-do list, I at least can keep track of all the things that have to get done eventually. Another strategy that helps me a lot is breaking down everything I do into really small steps. Otherwise I try to do everything at once and get overwhelmed. The other thing that has helped me a lot is taking note of any successes, even small. It’s easy to dismiss an accomplishment if it’s something that most people wouldn’t consider an accomplishment (like submitting a paper on time, or not being late for a whole week, etc). However, if you work hard at something and get better at it, you deserve to take pride, even if it’s something other people don’t have to work on.
Obviously I don’t know your daughter and what her particular difficulties are, but from my own experience I know that it’s really easy to fall into the trap of blaming yourself for not doing better. You may not be able to stop her from blaming herself or feeling lousy or whatever else she ends up going through. What you can do is make it clear that you don’t blame her, and that you see how hard she is working, and allow her to take a break once in a while. Also, as much as possible, let her work at her own pace. Everyone is different, and she has to figure out for herself what little tricks and coping mechanisms will work for her, and that takes time.
Also, to address your original question more specifically, here are some other tools and tricks I’ve tried that may help your daughter:
Always doing homework in the same spot, and leaving everything you need (textbooks, paper, calculator, etc) in that place so you don’t have to go gathering things up every night.
Not working in a completely silent room. White noise seems to help me. Maybe Phouka can elaborate more on why that might be.
As I mentioned above, breaking every task down as small as possible. This strategy also helps you identify more specifically what kinds of tasks are particularly difficult. The better you understand how your brain works, the more you can do to help yourself.
Studying near other people in the same class (not necessarily studying WITH them, but near enough to confer about questions either of you may have)
This one may seem silly, but when something funny happened in a class, I always used to write it down in the margins of my notebook. It made studying more fun because I would randomly come across these little quotes or anecdotes. It also helped me remember the material that was relevant to the funny event, or even just on the same page as it in my notebook.
If I think of anything else I’ve actually tried, I will pop back in the thread. I wish the best of luck to you and your daughter!
I was born in the 1950s before ADHD or ADD were around as a diagnosis. However I’m pretty sure that I’d have been diagnosed with it had it been. In fact I was seeing a psychologist when I was 10 YO. I also have a high IQ. The psychologist said that I was bored in school and needed to be challenged. This was difficult for the teachers to accept as I was a C and B student - or worse.
There have been some studies showing that endurance exercise, such as running, cycling, swimming, walking, etc., may help those with ADHD. You can google it. I’ve been an avid cyclist since I was 10 YO. I do over 4,000 miles a year plus a few half marathons. I’ve talked to some of my riding buddies and they also think that they could have something like ADHD and that endurance exercise helps them cope. I read something in Bicycling Magazine last year about a young guy diagnosed with ADHD who started riding a lot of miles and is now off his meds with his doctor’s approval.
While correlation doesn’t prove causation, I find it interesting that ADHD and ADD has shown up about the same time that kids started getting less and less exercise.
Maybe the OP should get her child into exercise. Take her out for walks or bike rides. Get her to join the HS track team.
She’s active in ice skating and basketball and walks away the weekends with her friends. Fortunately, exercise isn’t the issue but I do think that it makes sense that these two things could be related in some.
Thank you! This is some terrific advice and I have printed your response. I think the entire thing would be good for my daughter to read. The work book she was given has questions that address the concerns in some of the posts here. “Do you feel this is your fault?” “Did your diagnosis explain some things that had confused you in the past” etc etc. I think her therapist is the most important part of her “team” as she seems to want to do more than throw drugs at the problem.
You might want to look into that more, given the FL DOE says in regards to eligibility (pg 21 here)
which sounds a lot like NH’s standards. This article is a nice summary of how IDEA applies to ADHD too, and explains a bit how it’s not one of the conditions automatically granted IEPs. This one as well.
However, I hope it is as easy as asking for you because it seems pretty unfair that kids who are doing pretty well are often denied IEPs for that reason. One of the psychiatrists I work for complains that kids she’s seen have gotten turned down despite having serious mental health issues too “you can be schizophrenic and threatening to kill your family, but as long as you get As in school…”.
As for me, given I was ranked in the top 10% of my class throughout high school, it would have been difficult to argue I wasn’t progressing “satisfactorily” and I didn’t have any of the secondary factors that can get an IEP approved. I’m not sure it would have made much of a difference, though maybe it would have been nice not to have been labeled “bright but not trying hard enough”…
This unlimited time on the SAT thing doesn’t ring true; they may be bullshitting you there. College board decides on the accommodations for the SAT, NOT the local school, and you can’t even apply for those accommodations until after the school intervention plan has been in place for four months. Even then, they usually allow 50 or 100% extra time. I’ve never seen unlimited, and I’ve seen some pretty severe cases.
Second: I’ve been teaching high school for over a decade and I will tell you that allowing a kid to turn in assignments late fucks them up. Let’s say a kid is supposed to read a chapter of a book and answer questions before class. They don’t complete it. They sit in class the next day feeling left out and stupid as everyone else around them discusses what they read, and they don’t get much out of it. Then, they go home to do the assignment, and it’s not useful because they already missed out on the discussion: what was a meaningful task is now stupid shitty busywork that makes them feel like they are wasting their time. So they don’t do it, or they half-ass it, because it’s dumb and pointless. And then they are sitting there feeling dumb and useless and hopeless themselves, and so they don’t do the next assignment, the one that is due tomorrow, telling themselves “Hell, I can turn it in late” because they lack the reflective capacity to see this pattern.
It is MUCH MUCH MUCH better to set up accommodations that allow a student to keep up with the class–shorter assignments, for example.
It is absolutely as easy as asking which I found out from a close relative that is a principal of a public high school. Now that may be a county by county or state by state rule; I am not sure. When we received the diagnosis and I didn’t know what to do, she is the one to recommend setting up the 504 and IEP. I went to the new school and they did it right away. They did request the testing paperwork to help set up the plan’s specifics. My daughter graduated fourth in her middle school class and received the top academic award in English and Science but that didn’t seem to make one bit of difference to the guidance counselor and the head of the learning disability programs. As far as “living up to her potential” those are her words not mine. She wanted to be first in the class and was very frustrated that she had these difficulties. Her diagnosis is a relief to her. She wants to soar and I want to be as supportive and helpful as I can to help her achieve that. The above tips give us both a place to start to help her along. Personally, I was always very pleased with her grades even if she wasn’t.
It seems you’re right there. It looks like they can get up to twice the normal time over two days if needed and approved. I found the list of accommodations here.
Still, it seems elfkin477 should have been given at least extra time if nothing else due to her disability regardless of her GPA as she still would be at a disadvantage to the other students taking the test.