In this episode, Andrew Greenfield continues to look at the subject of ADHD, this time focusing on strategies to help the child, it's one for parents, guardians and even teachers to stay tuned to. I'm Anthony Pearl and you're listening to the Being Comfortably Uncomfortable podcast. Andrew, talking about ADHD and specifically about some of the coping mechanisms that need to be built up, tell me how you start that process and what that tends to look like. Yeah, so I mean more often than not, they would have had a psychometric assessment, whether it's myself or somebody else, so I'll take that information first, because that tells me, are they a visual learner, are they a verbal learner? Do they have poor, what are you working memory skills? Some don't, some do. Do they have a slow processing speed? So all of that information is helpful for me and that will tailor, I guess, as to how or what recommendations I would make. But it's also trying to figure out how it affects them. Does it affect them academically? And some, it doesn't necessarily affect them, they've either got their cognitive ability that helps and that can take over, and they don't necessarily have any particular learning difficulties at school. Some do. So it, some have anxiety issues associated because they have difficulty focusing, concentrate, and that can affect how anxious they are with their learning. So it really depends on exactly what the difficulties are. Does it affect them socially, where they have difficulty following a conversation with their friends? Because they're thinking about the very first thing I said while everyone's moved on. So, I often try to figure out how does that, how does it affect that particular child? And that's going to be, you might have 15 people that have ADHD, they might all be affected completely differently. It doesn't just mean no one thing. And I think that's why it's got to be looked at on an individual basis. And often it's not. Yeah, and I can, I can totally understand that. I think that's one of the troubles, isn't it, when you've got these kind of blanket terminologies that cover a range like you've explained? And I suppose that, that, that brings it's in, in of itself its own challenge. There'll be parents, carers, even teachers that are listening in today, and wondering what kind of strategies can I put in place to help, you know, the child that I have under my care that is, that has ADHD? Yeah, and there are a whole lot of different strategies and it's probably hard to mention them all as to exactly what can be done, but, you know, we've got to do simple things like again, tailor towards their cognitive ability and the learning issues, giving extra time for the child to respond sometimes, having a distraction free environment as much as we can, having a cluttered free environment as much as we can, trying to sit them next to well-focused peers, breaking down large tasks into individual tasks can be hugely helpful for some of these kids, giving some sort of flexibility where they don't have to do something a certain way only, and maybe having multiple ways because kids with ADHD will sometimes think a little bit differently, enough sometimes, and we think outside the box. So we've got to be a little bit flexible against the teachers and his parents to come up with a few different ways of doing this. It might be if you're learning a spelling list at home, no child with ADHD has got the patience or the focus to sit with a desk and do their spelling words. Well, go on a trampoline, jump up and down and discipline and the child can spell out the words while they're jumping to their parent or you can go in the driveway and write the spelling words in chalk if that's going to be a little bit motivating for you. So we've got to make tasks interesting and we've got to somehow get through that motivation difficulty for a child because they know they won't be able to sit there and focus on the tasks to them is not overly exciting. So we have to make it exciting, change, not just, I often try and talk about changing the approach to the task rather than changing the task itself. And it's really interesting what you talk about there because it's one thing that we can do that in a home. So yes, we can, as you say, we can get them jumping on the trampoline or, you know, writing in chalk or any number of other things, but how much more challenging is it for a teacher that has to cope with, you know, one or two children in a classroom setting that they know is struggling by ADHD because firstly, I suppose there's the communication from the parents to inform them in the first place and make them understand what's working and what's not on a regular basis. But then it's you've got that how do you make it work in that kind of an environment? Yeah, and that's why I've got a lot of patients for teachers because it's not an easy job when you've got 20, 30, even more kids within a classroom. Every one of those kids are going to have different learning styles, going to have different strengths, different weaknesses, and that can be incredibly challenging. So that's part of why we do the psychometric assessment. So a teacher will be aware of how that child performs and what the individual learning style is, and often that is embraced, hopefully more often than not. Once they have their information, they can tailor their learning towards their child's individual ability. But it can be difficult because it's about the interaction with other kids as well. And some kids will learn best on their own individually, in groups, everyone's going to have a different way of learning. So, but we often try and put a whole lot of different particular practical strategies in place for the teacher breaking down tasks and instead trying to break down the whole task into individual components, trying to make sure that they're focusing on one particular thing at a time and not having 15 other things going on at the same time, trying to give them praise once they finish one particular task and then so they can then move on to the next task. So there are some things that can be done, but it is certainly a lot more of a challenge for teachers, especially when I've got kids with so many different varying abilities. We bring it back to the name of the program, and I can imagine for a child in that environment where everybody else is doing the task that has been set, and if you've not been given an alternative approach, that's going to feel incredibly intimidating and challenging. Yeah, absolutely. So within a classroom environment, you're going to have a child feeling uncomfortable, well, kind of feeling uncomfortable, we have to somehow get them to be a bit more comfortably uncomfortable in that situation. And it's okay to not know what you're doing 100% of the time. It's okay to say, well, I wasn't focusing concentrating, can you say that again? It's okay that you're not keeping up with the person next to you just because they've got a different learning style to you. It's important for that child to then, because that unfortunate then affects their self-esteem, it becomes then a learned helplessness where they learn to stop trying because of what's the point, if I keep trying and nothing gets better or nothing changes, everyone's always going to be better than me or faster than me, then they just learn to give up. So we don't want that. So we're going to teach these kids to be able to be comfortable with being a bit uncomfortable some other time. I imagine the challenge is very different in a primary school environment where you have generally speaking one teacher and that one teacher can develop strategies and situations to high school where traditionally speaking, you're moving from classroom to classroom and teacher to teacher, several times a day. And the onus is, whilst there's a degree of communication with all the individual teachers, it's much more limiting and their ability to cope because they've got dozens and dozens of students on any one day is a lot smaller. So having the student more enabled to bring into line different strategies is going to be super critical in high school. Yeah, absolutely. And you can imagine a child that's disorganized and going through high school while they're responsible for themselves, they're responsible to take their belongings from one classroom to the other via their locker. And you have to know where you are, where you have to be, what materials you need. It is quite consuming for a daunting for any child, a little older than a child that has significant attention focused learning issues. So that's, but often a lot of schools are really great in terms of the support for that child and once they do know some of the difficulties, whether it be a learning difficulty or a cognitive issue or an actual diagnosis or the not, the schools can be quite helpful and put certain strategies and things in place that actually help the child organize themselves and make sure that if you're not organized, well, eventually your class isn't measuring your ability, it's measuring your ability to be organized. That's it. We want every child to be on a level playing field and to be able to perform to the best of their ability. And if you haven't got the right tools and if you're funding around with, you know, worrying about what you did in the last class and well, you're not going to be in the moment and be able to achieve to the best of your ability in that class. So we need to make sure that every child has that opportunity. And that's why communication is the key, communication of a child that has difficulties to make sure that the parents are communicating that with their schools. That's really important. And all have us child psychologists being advocate and we can be the liaison between the family and the school. And I suppose the key here is is making sure that the strategies work, self-awareness for the child, the strategies and communication, as you talked about, so that ultimately the child can go on and do what it wants to do next, whether it's getting a job, whether it's going to TAFE, whether it's going to university, that all those options are not hindered by the diagnosis of ADHD. Yeah. And a lot of these diagnoses, whether you've got learning difficulties or ADHD, for example. And I'm talking about those two particular areas because that's why I do see a lot of every single day. Even once you go to TAFE or university, you can have certain provisions in place within those environments as well. And plenty people do, even as adults or mature age students. So it's important to embrace who you are and what worth learning style is rather than be embarrassed by it because you don't know what the person next to you is struggling with. Yeah. And I think that brings it a really important point as well because we've talked a lot about the carers and things, how much, or how important is it for a student to make their immediate peers, their friends aware of their own struggles. And because that's not going to be a comfortable conversation for a child, particularly the younger they are, to actually have the learn their peers to actually cope with it. Yeah. And I think this is something that I do, you know, very conscious of and I make a talk every day to teachers that don't really know what ADHD is a lot of the time. They just think that they show shape that with being, whatever they see on television and current affair, for example, they think that a child that's incredibly hyperactive and positive and that's got a massive oppositional defined difficulties and behavioral difficulties, that's what a typical ADHD child is. Well, that's not the majority of kids that I see with ADHD can pay attention, they can sit and focus for two hours. It's not that obvious. So it's important to understand what it means for that one particular child. And it can be daunting for a child to open up about what they have or they don't have, but at the same time, you don't keep it to yourself. You don't have to necessarily tell the world if you don't want to. So everyone's going to be different in terms of whether they want to, that diagnosis to be discussed or to be able to be public knowledge, that's entirely up to the child and their family. But they said it's about educating everyone about what this terminology means because there is a lot of myths out, there are a lot of myths out there, there's a lot of misunderstanding about what it all means as well. So I do spend, you know, a lot of time talking to teachers about what ADHD is and what it is it as well. It's really important for people that aren't the professionals to not necessarily throw those terms around because that can be quite damaging and daunting to a parent that hears that from someone who doesn't really, is not the appropriate person to make that diagnosis but that happens every single day. And that you can imagine if you're a parent hearing that, that can be incredibly upsetting and daunting and everything else. So that's why it's important to make sure you're always going to the most appropriate person that's qualified to be able to do an assessment and/or make a diagnosis. And it's either a child and educational psychologist, a nutrition psychiatrist, they're the people that are appropriately qualified to be able to give you that advice. I think that's something that I wish more would hear because certainly I think anyone listening who's a parent would probably have heard of a story if it's not about their child, it's about a child that they know that has been old potentially they have something, you know, it's usually ADHD or autism and often that can be quite alarming for a parent and particularly from someone who's not skilled to diagnose that. I just wanted to wrap up this discussion and ask you some advice for parents. Your child's been diagnosed with ADHD or some kind of learning difficulty. How much of a mindset shift does there need to be from you as a parent in order to say I need to maybe change my approach? Sure, absolutely and I think that's an important question to be able to ask. I guess their approach to everything needs to change to some degree. I guess you're talking more from a parenting perspective as to some of the frustrations that can have so not the school and I but even within the home environment. I don't want ADHD or even a learning difficulty being excused for anything that's important to make sure that we're not making, oh that's okay because they've got ADHD and often the kids themselves will say, well I didn't put my plate away because I've got ADHD or I didn't empty the dishwasher because I've got ADHD or I didn't clean my room because of my learning difficulty. So we can't use it as an excuse because having these conditions doesn't stop you from being able to do any of those things. So we can, but it's important just to be able to parents to be a little bit more patient, a little bit more understanding, a little bit more of everything. It's important for them to just be, to make sure that they don't stop the expectations of the child but they may be a little bit more flexible with what they expect and I think that's the key. Having a bit more flexible about when time frames and what some of the challenges are for your child, but a bit more aware of that and again you can talk in detail about how or where you should be or what you should let your child get away with or what depending on I guess how severe the diagnosis is or whether they're accompanying learning issues or whether the other factors like anxiety or whatever, so that you can talk to with your child psychologist about or go to a child psychologist if you'd ever been and talk through as to well, I'm a bit confused as to what I should let them get away with or you know, these are some of the challenges I'm having parenting wise, what's appropriate, what's not. So we're out there to be out to help. Thanks for your company and please see the show notes for how to get in contact with Andrew Greenfield and don't forget to subscribe for future episodes. And remember it's important to learn how to be comfortably uncomfortable some of the time. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
