This is a Global Player Original Podcast. Hi, it's Katie. And Sam, and welcome to this Bite Size episode of You're Wrong About ADHD. This was a really emotional episode to begin with because we took Sam, Sam and I went through his old school reports and looked at how obvious it was to us now that he had ADHD and having absorbed that information, we then spoke to Dr Joanne Ridden about what you might be able to do as a parent if you're going into a school to advocate for your child, and it is a brilliant conversation.
Let's get into it. Joanne, lovely to have you. We've been telling our stories about our experience at school with ADHD. What's the current state of provision for ADHD in UK schools?
Are we in a good place when it comes to understanding your own university? That's a really good question. I think on a journey in that we've definitely raised awareness of ADHD, you know, staff, much more know what that means and so on, and aware that they've got children with ADHD in their schools, for example. But we are on a journey in terms of acknowledging that our ADHD is need, perhaps additional support or more inclusive support, but that really varies between schools currently and educational settings in terms of how successfully that's delivered currently.
What kind of extra support does a child with ADHD actually need? I guess we're going to think about this as well, the whole school system. So in the ideal, we'll be thinking about a whole school approach where their new university is raised generally, and therefore it's more normalized, you know, that all of our brains work in different ways, and that we have different chances, different difficulties, where we see ADHD represented in assemblies, in school, like resources, like the books they're doing in class and so on. Then you've got a whole school and whole class approaches that really benefit our ADHD students and disadvantaged, no one.
So having things like fidget tools available to all to normalize those, and then you've got the more sort of targeted stuff specifically for our ADHD students. So that might be things like additional support around managing emotions and how you can kind of manage to regulate yourself and have support from others to do that when perhaps you have quite high impulsivity. So maybe needing some additional programs outside of the classroom around emotional literacy. Also for lots of ADHD is something called executive functioning is a common difficulty.
So the idea of when you have a task, you need to plan what to do, sequence the steps, ensure you see it through to the end, and that can be quite tricky, particularly for younger children with ADHD. How would you help them with that executive functioning? That's good question. So first we're making sure that instructions are written down so the child can re-reaffert to them, that their numbered sequence is really clear, that you spell out the kind of more implicit things.
So for example, the task might be to complete mass text but page 55. But actually there's lots of tiny tasks within that. It's opening your exercise book to the next clean page, finding that page on your textbook, writing the title date and learning objective, and then going through those questions and checking with you understand them and so on. So it's about making those smaller steps explicit and spreading them out.
And that could be through writing clear instructions. It could be through an adult, almost coaching that young person like, you know, do you understand the instruction? What's the next thing you need to do? What equipment do you need available for this task and so on?
Or doing that through things like having a sheet that kind of helps you structure in a more specific manner? When you've been working with families and individuals, have you met people who've come up against a big wall, who've gone to school and said, look, my child needs help and actually the support is not there, the understanding is not there? Definitely. I mean, I think particularly when you've got, there's two things where it's hard.
One way perhaps you've got a child who is displaying like really big emotions at school, they're very dysregulated. And you sometimes have that assumption that they're just being naughty, that although attention seeking, where it's actually not accurate. And those situations, it's quite helpful to have someone like myself as an external person that's neutral to situation, who can kind of listen to that number of staff, but also help to change their mindset. Because I think once you understand what's happening for that young person and what their strengths and difficulties are, then because not obvious what to do next.
But sometimes we're misceiving where their strengths and difficulties are and people are over assuming that they're being naughty. Or the other common one where less supportive is where you have a particular girls, but with some boys as well, where they're massively masked in those difficulties and they're trying to fit in and almost, you know, internalizing all those feelings. So on the outside, it appears like they're doing well, but how they feel internally is a very different experience. And it can be about helping staff to understand that concept of masking and that listening to the parents and how they're doing at home to help us learn about how we can better support that young person at school.
And what should parents be saying? I mean, if they're parents listening to this saying they think perhaps the child needs to be supported or looked at, what's the best way to approach it with the school, I suppose? So obviously, it's like depends well whether child's at secondary or primary. But first of all, to understand that in the UK, our education system is meant to be and the support we put in place for children with additional needs is meant to be needs-based versus diagnosis-led.
So doesn't matter if a child has that diagnosis or not, if you feel they've got needs around this area and it's impacting that child's progress and the school should be put in place support. So it's being a class teacher, but if you still find it quite hard, speaking to the Senko and being really transparent about how things are at home. So I think sometimes people worry, particularly, and I say to them of an age-age of a child, that sometimes things be quite chaotic in our homes, and quite difficult, and we can worry how the school would view that. But the reality is normally schools have experience of other families in the same situation, as they're being as honest and transparent as you can be about how things could be at home or how a child's feeling about school and trying to have that kind of shared work relationship.
But it's about working in collaboration and really maintaining that relationship with the school as well, which can be tricky. Some great tips there from Dr Joanne, really empowering a parent to have the confidence to go in and ask for change. If you enjoyed listening to this bite-sized episode and want more, you can find the full episode linked in the show notes, or many more episodes like this one on the podcast feed. And if you want to keep up to date with everything we're doing, do check us out on Instagram and TikTok.
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