What Can I Do For My ADHD Affected Child When At Secondary School

As a child gets older and spreads its wings, he/she is expected to be responsible for the behavior, decisions, and activities. So, is the case with the shift from the primary to secondary school. In the secondary section, the child is expected to possess more learning and developmental skills, concentrate in the class, be disciplined, and behave wisely. On the same lines, the problems of an ADHD child are similar even in the secondary school. So, the problems of ADHD decelerate the increasing expectations of maturity, growth, and development. Not only this, but the advent of the secondary school brings additional problematic situations for the ADHD child that can make it complicated for him/her to cope with its prevailing difficulties. These situations include increased number of subjects and teachers and more courses and exams.

Despite of increase in the problems of your child, you have a way to help your child to cope up with ADHD.

Government’s Say

To ensure your child’s growth, the Government specifies Key Stages for your child’s education. The stages for the secondary school are Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14) and Key Stage 4 (ages 14-16). When each key stage is completed, your child needs to give national test such as GCSE and GNVQ. TO make your child achieve the targets, you can apply for help and support from School Action and School Action Plus.

You, School, and SENCO – A Great Help!

You might want to speak and discuss with your child about how to tackle the problems he/she is suffering. But sometimes, imposing ideas in this manner can be taken negatively by your child. Treating ADHD also needs the help and support of your child’s school. Here, the first thing you should do is to ensure that your child’s school knows about the specific learning problems of your child. Then, tackle difficulties with the school’s cooperation.

You can also take the help of a GP, specialist, or Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) if the above solutions do not work or you feel that this is not enough due to lack of effective results. So, in that case, these people are specially trained to support you and your child. SENCO is a qualified professional who:

• Provides advice to you and the teacher
• Specifies objectives for the child
• Supports parents

Please make a note of this that your child might not all be happy with the provided targets and suggestions that can change every situation of discussion into battlefield. Therefore, decide what among the given suggestions can my child at the maximum and how to make your child agree on them.

To get the most out of your child, the ideal catch verbs for your child at school are:

• Routine and Regularity
• Praise

Enforcing regularity and routine help your child in meeting the basic daily activities such as having breakfast on time, reaching school on time, and doing homework on time. Not only this, a fixed time for TV, play, and sleep will stimulate the discipline in your child and the habit of doing things on time. In short, make your child follow a fixed schedule daily.
Always praise your child even on little good behavior shown by him/her. That is necessary because it develops the self-confidence and triggers a ray of hope in your child. For example, if your child has done the homework in less amount of time, tell him, “I am glad to see that you have completed your homework fast”. Some examples of praiseful sentences are:

• You writing have improved past one month. Great!
• You have done this drawing really well!
• I am happy that you have finished your breakfast on your own without taking much time.
• I am happy that you greeted your aunt with a smile.
• Hurray! You have won this game without my help.

In short, praise your child frequently, but not too much.

Here are the problems at secondary school due to ADHD that you can tackle.

Difficulty in Concentration

Low concentration level is a major problem for children with ADHD that negatively affects the grasping power, memory, and the learning ability. An ideal solution for this can be to make your child sit on the seat available ahead of the class facing either the wall or teacher. This helps in being less distractive.

It is possible that your child will resent for sitting in the front. This is the natural tendency even of the normal students, ADHD students will tend to have it comparatively more because of fear. In this case, try to motivate him/her to sit in front of the class or at least near the front of the class for a trial period. In the mean time, observe whether now he/she is in less trouble and whether there is some sign of improvement in your child with regards to performance. If no and your child still is unwilling to sit ahead, its better not to force. But, make sure that he is at least near to the front side of the class.

Sometimes, your child decides his/her place in the classroom for each session. Further, the school might have seating arrangements. In this case, you should talk to the teacher and decide about the seat of your child to make him/her feel a part of the class.

As a part of the concentration problem, it might be difficult for you child to focus when the class begins. To deal with these situations, educate him/her about the routine to calm down. One way of doing this is to count from 25 to 1.

In a secondary school, your child will not have problem of talking excessively, but will tend to fight and squirm. In this case, you can make him/her fiddle with a squeezy stress ball.

Excessively Interruptive

Too much interruption with the teacher fades away when your child gets older. However, this problem can prevail if your child is taking medication in the school. For taking medicines in the school, you need to talk to the SENCO and decide upon who can take the responsibility in the school. You also need to talk to the teacher to take care while sending your child for taking medicines.

Actually, becoming interruptive is the hint (verification clue) that the child has taken his medicines. However, this should be noted minutely without drawing the attention of the child. The teacher’s job is now to handle this situation of facing sudden comments gently. Listed below are certain guidelines you can work upon to deal with this problem.

• Make your child learn about some tips that he should follow when he/she has forgotten the instructions, such as asking another child softly and putting his/her hand up and wait to speak before the answers him/her.
• Enact a play on this at home.
• The teacher should remind all the students in the class about the rules of interruption. Avoid pin pointing the child during this. Talk to the child personally and make him understand about the same.

Inattentive

The child tends to not listening to the teacher, might seem rude, and is unable to follow the instructions due to inattentiveness. Listed below are certain guidelines you can work upon to deal with this problem.

• Have an eye contact while talking.
• Ask questions to grab the attention.
• Provide short instructions by dividing them into small chunks.
• Ask your child to repeat what you just told him/her to do.
• Speak again if the child is fidgeting.
• Write instructions on a blackboard or whiteboard along with the items required and other visual aids.
• Ask your child to make a list of all the tasks to be done.
• Teach your child to assign priority to the items in a list.
• Train your child to use a diary to write instructions and deadline and to take other notes.

Aggressive

If your child has low self-confidence or is misunderstood, he/she is more likely to be aggressive. These causes remain in the mind of the child and it is your duty to make your child reveal them to you. Any improvement in such a behavior is likely to be gradual and not in a day.

• Avoid long debates, criticisms, and rude statements. However, speak in simple words whatever is not done.
• Obtain your child’s consent on rules and regulations that you set for him/her.
• Ask your child to calm down and give some time after getting aggressive. This will help the child in finding a solution.
• Punish the child without fail for bad behavior, but the punishment rules should be the same for each type of bad behavior and should not be too harsh.
• Teach your child to be responsible for his/her behavior and its following results.

Homework Problems

Homework issues include not doing the homework at all, forgetting about it, or doing it partly. Listed below are certain guidelines you can work upon to deal with this problem.

• Use the school’s homework diary to know the deadline and ask the child about its status or progress.
• Divide the task assigned to smaller chunks along with their deadlines especially when it is to be completed over a period. This will help your child to meet the deadline easily. An ideal way to do this is to make a list of sub-tasks and their deadlines and stick it on the wall of your child’s room.
• Fix a homework routine, such as sleep for a while, do a small chunk of homework, break, and do the next chunk.
• Provide your child a calm place with fresh air and no distracters, such as TV or music players to do the homework.
• Motivate your child and show interest in the homework. However, this should be under control as your child can take this as an undue interference.

Learning Inabilities

Your child’ school, SENCO, and private tutor are the best advisors in this matter. In addition, a Government Web site, known as the Parent Centre (http://www.parentcentre.gov.uk), provides good stuff and advice to aid your child in learning about the subjects of the national curriculum. Listed below are certain guidelines you can work upon to deal with this problem.

• Writing
  In case your child has writing problems such as bad writing, you can talk to the school regarding the provision of other alternatives. One of such alternatives is a computer.
• Memory
  If your child cannot remember or learn, teach him/her certain ideas such as making rhymes and using mnemonics. For example, in mathematics, to solve a compound equation that has all operations to be performed right from addition to division, teach him the BODMAS rule. (Brackets first followed by Division, Multiplication, Addition, and Subtraction)
• Completion of Tasks
  If your child is unable to complete a task, explain him/her what needs to be done in a summarized manner.

Peer Problems

Peer difficulties include acting silly, overreacting, fighting, or fear of teasing and bullying. Listed below are certain guidelines to deal with this problem.

• Perform a role-play with your child to teach him/her on how to deal with peers.
• On complaints, motivate your child to improve his/her behavior by making him/her realize about the feelings of other person.
• Tell him/her to count 10 before responding in a difficult situation or simply walk away and speak to the class teacher.

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