Ten-year-old Keenan reads the white sticker stuck to the bathroom mirror: ‘Brush my teeth’. He has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). His condition causes him to struggle with concentration, making it difficult for him to follow instructions and keep on task.
This is one of a number of strategies employed by his mother, Nicola Griffiths, to help Keenan manage his condition at home without her having to constantly stand behind him. She believes that much of the attention on managing ADHD is unfairly focused on school life and very little toward helping families at home.
‘Schools work to get children to learn in their environment, but at home it falls apart – it’s like yo-yo dieting and you keep having to start over again,’ she says. ‘But holistically home affects school and school affects home. If everyone is singing from same hymn sheet it works better.’
At school Keenan has an individual education plan (IEP) that is reviewed each term. He is also on the able and gifted register as he displays a high level of intelligence and fascination with details, a characteristic associated with Asperger syndrome, which he is also suspected to have. However, his disruptive behaviour has often got him into trouble and excluded from school several times.
Nicola is no stranger to the challenges involved: her older son, now 20, was also diagnosed with ADHD. She believes that the plans put in place at school should not stop there.
‘It would have given me something to work on as a foundation,’ she says reflecting back. ‘It would also show that they don’t just care about what happens at school, but with the whole of that child’s life. It is okay to assume if we are having problems at school there are probably problems at home, and also shows the school that you are supporting the partnership from a distance by managing behaviour at home.’
Dr Graeme Lamb runs a clinic for children with ADHD and their families in Newham, east London. He says that the biggest concern for parents about managing ADHD at home is in social situations – in helping the child to sustain attention and self-control during tasks or play activities such as homework, at mealtimes, playing with other children and during group leisure activities.
‘With homework, it is about not being able to concentrate so that can be difficult,’ Dr Lamb says. ‘Often the child has not concentrated on the instruction given at school either. With the hyperactivity and impulsive areas of the condition parents feel concern about the child’s social behaviour and how they relate to siblings and other children. Also, allowing them to play out can be difficult so they will often need more supervision.’
Nicola agrees. ‘Really, the whole situation becomes more about your own feelings than the child’s as you are wondering how you will manage,’ she confesses. ‘You almost set the scene for something to happen because of the state of mind you are in. You pre-empt it.’
But when it comes to education Nicola says that is least on her mind. Due to the focus on his social skills and whether he is fitting in it is almost as if education becomes secondary.
‘Without social skills education doesn’t mean anything,’ she says. ‘You can be educated but unless you have social skills no one will want to work with you. My son is gifted and talented but I feel as if we are putting in lots of information that will not be useful to him.’
She believes that the answer could lie in the home school partnership, with the SENCO or other designated professional working with parents to produce a plan that links targets at home and school more closely. And it should be assessed just like the IEP.
‘It reinforces the target for child and allows the child to feel successful at home and school,’ she explains. ‘I have gone to the school about this but I get feeling that they don’t really take onboard what parents have to offer. They may be the professionals but we, too, as parents have a type of professionalism by experience. I have lived it. You can be the greatest teacher in the school but you’ll make a greater one if you have an awareness of parenting skills.’
Dr Graeme Lamb offers these tips for helping parents to manage ADHD at home:
