well, I can feel your pain. I just scanned your comment and from what I read it sounds like what I have been going through. My child have been dealing wih the same thing since entering school. I have had so many meeting and referrals until I just said enough is enough. I am thinking to myself is this school or college. They are in the learning stage and every thing they do I do not need to hear about it. Teachers please take care of it yourself unless it is life threatening our interferring with their learning or the class. What happened to our old school teachers??? Even before he was diagnosed with ADHD I got tired of hearing negative comments everyday. I just keep speaking up for my child and communicating with his teacher as well as the principal and asst. principal if necessary. There are times you just have to file a complaint even if nothing will be really done about it. Just do whatever you have to do to help your childs education. I feel a lot of our educators are ADHD themselves and never learned how to cope with it themselves as a child. Maybe the school system needs to offer training. How can they help my child when they need help themselves. Until then stay at your childs school and keep speaking up for them.

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i agree, so many things they need to just ignore, i do not need to hear all the negative things he cannot control. so rarely hear the positive things he does. i have to be his advocate, no onelse will. he tries to do the right things and those go unnoticed. i appreciate the support and hope things get better for you as well.

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I only hear something when it's negative..... Danny wasn't listening in class... he was doodling. He's not participating...."he had fights with other children today". So, I am not THERE and it is THEIR job to handle it. I'm not going to punish him "again" at home for something that happened at school and I was neither there to see what happened, nor do I have control over the situation. What do they think? If we just "talk" to him that it will improve? He has ADHD for goodness sakes! They don't understand him or his actions and they don't understand how good it does him, when he does something well and someone tells him this. Yesterday his behavior was so great that I said "Hey, Danny, you did GREAT today!!!" and gave him two thumbs up. He was SO happy about that. It's incredible what a little bit of positive support can do. But the teachers just don't have the patience, don't understand the condition, don't care for that matter. It's so sad really. Sometimes I think his family is the only one that understands him at all. I will also just keep working hard to point him in the right direction and keep the staff on their toes!

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I actually do not have a problem with teachers helping my child understand that speaking out during class or during library time is disruptive, because it is, and they have to learn self control. What I have a problem with is that they act like they are totally confused as to WHY my child is talking loud, or not staying focused....duh!!!! She has ADHD. Another thing I do not undestand is why they have not come up with a consistent plan to address my child when she is loud or disruptive or not focusing to help her learn how to stay focused or not to be disruptive without making her feel like she is stupid or a bad person. When I go to a parent teacher conference I do not want to hear how my child is not paying attention, or how concerned you are about how up and down she is with her emotions, I want to hear about the plan they have put together to help her!!!!

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I have a 10 year old boy and we have dealt with teachers, principles and even counselors of alll people that are not prepared or orientated to handle ADHD kids, let alon my kid. This and last year has been a God send as his new school and new counselor are great, the counselor happens to have a grandkid with ADHD and is the one who gave me this site.

Give them the resources. I requested a meeting with the teacher and counselor, together we spoke of real ADHD issues, behaviors and management. I give teachers this web site and tell them, you wil have ADHD and OCD kids in the future, and I suggest at your leisure you check this site out.

Also, if you haven't talk to your schools counsleor about 501 program. It is not special ed but the school systems do have this that allows special exceptions for kids with needs. For instance, mine has until Friday to turn in all homework, the teacher may read certain parts of a test to him to ensure understanding, and a peer assigned to him to make sure he writes his assignments in his journal.

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FYI-this website can actually help! Yes I have, and yes, i will continue, to email my daughter's teachers with links to forums and articles that deal directly with whatever "dire emergency" (such as my daughter losing her pencils!) they are complaining about now. It also helps when those emails are cc'd to the guidance counselor, or whoever the go-to person is that's knowledgeable and on your kids' side. (Always always always find someone in that school that "gets it" and will be taken seriously by the teachers! There is always at least one! Even one sympathetic teacher will help-although there's a few less office politics at play if its someone whose supposed to be overseeing the 504 or IEP) Recently, when attitudes got out of control (and its been my unfortunate experience its usually a teacher's attitude more than my kids!) I emailed all of her teachers with an article about why people miss the signs of ADHD in girls, along with an explanation that even though my daughter's been diagnosed, sometimes people mistake the symptoms because they don't always look the same on a girl as a boy. I said it would help all of us if we were on the same page, and I wanted to share what kind of advice I employ at home. I also listed the credentials of the well-known doctors interviewed and the article was off the scholastic website. Suddenly my daughter had a good day at school, and wasn't singled out for losing and forgetting things. Just a thought-anything to add to your arsenal.

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thanks to all who replied, today is the conference, i am going in with the what are you going to do about it plan. i am not there to see what and how anything happens, and i know punishing him, or threatning him is not going to keep him from doing it again. he knows that being disrespectful is wrong, he may not think what he is doing all the time is being disrespectful, he wants to be able to explain himself, they want him to stop and shut up. So i have some handouts and problem solving strategies for them.. i will ask them not to yell at him, and give more positives. Not take away recess, I found it interesting that the next day after i talked to him, he tried real hard to do the right thing and the teachers response was "B you are behaving so well today what's up?? i couldn't believe it, they have to question and and ask him why he is being good!! instead of saying, wow you are an awesome kid today keep up the good work , i really appreciate how hard you are trying. The Brain Boosters Cd series by Celebrate Calm is great for parents and teachers, now if you can only get them to listen to them! She has had them for over a month and still hasn't listened. I guess i will be picking them up today!

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Please let me know how your conference went!! We are having the same issues with our child, he is 7. We have our conference Thursday!! ANY WORDS OF WISDOM WILL BE GREAT!!!

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it went well, i was very prepared and my husband and i talked before going in there. we decided to let the teachers talk first and take notes on what they had to say. Then we responded to their concerns. fortunately our son is doing very well academically and his medication is working. There were not alot of issues except his being argumentative which comes across as rude and disrespectful. He often bothers others with noises and movement but they handle that well. it was obvious to me the 2 teachers clearly do not really understand what is ADHD and how my child's brain works vs a child without adhd(. These are teachers who are due to retire ) i explained it to them, it was like a light bulb went on and they could understand that he wasn't deliberatly being disresectful and argumentative, he is wired that way. I educated them on all of the things we do for him from medicine, behavioral modification, supplements, to testing centers and programs attended , to the drs we see and the lab tests that we have had done. More to show them that there clearly is a medical issue and not just a defiant lazy child. I journal alot of what my child tells me when he comes home, i listen and write it all down. i let him vent , i do not ask him" how was your day?" Because that is my anxiety on listening to what he did wrong, so i think positive and let him offer that if he feels he needs to , i just show happiness and calmness when he comes home. sometimes he journals when he has a bad down and writes his thoughts on paper., his teachers were surprised when i shared some of his thoughts., he thinks they hate him because they yell alot and give very few positives. He says the kids make fun of him, exclude him. They were not aware that certain boys had started a club and specifically exclude him. So after listening to their issues, i reponded with what is going on in his brain and why he can't let some things go. i offered suggestions of what they can do differently. i told them he needs to hear from them that they like him! he needs way more postivies than negatives, sometimes they need to just ignore the small stuf, and sto stop using his name in front of the other kids.. He has alot of anxiety over going to school and they were going to hear why. We collectively worked together to help him. I think they were prepared to tell me all of his faults so that i could lecture him to get him to stop, but i offered them the practical solutions that may work better so they can move on with teaching and he is not yelled out in front of all of his peers. i gave them lots of classroom ideas that i found online, alot came from this ADDitude . So good luck and just be prepared and share with them some of the things your child has to say. They may learn something about themselves that needs work! You are your child's best advocate and supporter! Don't let them overwhelm you with the negatives!!

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So glad I found this post on the site! My son was just recently diagnosed ADHD (age 7) - still not sure about the diagnosis because the psychologist only met with him 4 minutes and has never seen how he acts in school and doesn't do "in school" evaluations because "she doesn't have time". Anyway, we've been getting notes home since Kindergarten about how talkative, inattentive and disruptive he is in class and we've met with his teachers, emailed and talked with them on the phone many times, everything that was ever said was negative except that he is "REALLY smart" and has great manners (???). Bad for his self esteem and it was making home life hard because we never heard anything positive he did. So even before he was diagnosed, I did a lot of research, started a reward program and gave him chores of his own to be responsible for and his first grade teacher began sending home a daily behavior chart giving positive AND negative feedback. I think it surprised her when she had to start summing up his morning and afternoon seperately, she found that he was not disruptive and inattentive and impulsive ALL THE TIME! In fact, he would go DAYS getting his in-class work done on time, not interrupting and no tallies (the school's discipline where you have to pull your "Star Stick"). My son is not on medication, but I have reduced the amount of food dyes he was getting (no more Goldfish - LOL!) and he has been on Carlson's Fish Oil for Kids and I've actually seen some improvement with just these changes. He is also in Tang Soo Do martial arts too and is doing GREAT. It's starting to be spring here and my son probably has some allergies because his nose is itchy and running and I'm now starting to wonder if this is possibly affecting his behavior because he went 10 days with no problems at school and now that I have him on allergy medicine, I'm getting "talking out of turn, inattentive to work and emotional" notes home this last week. Anyway, this is all trial and error for me as a parent (based on what I know about myself and how I was in school I probalby have ADHD too and just never got diagnosed). I am very hopeful for my son - he is truly a great kid! - and I'm now just starting to understand how to bring the best out in him by encouraging him, giving him positive feedback and not yelling about the tallies at school (I agree that sometimes the notes home from the teachers seem kind of silly - did my kid actually get a note home from the kindergarten PE teacher that he "kicked the ball too hard"? Really???) and sometimes literally BRIBING him to do his best and stay focused. My son is really into Bionicles and Legos so my husband bought 2 Bionicles he wanted, set them up on the kitchen counter and told him if he goes 5 straight days at school with no tallies or notes home, he would get one of the Bionicles. Let's just say he now has BOTH Bionicles so I KNOW bribing has it's place. LOL! Good luck to everybody and hang in there!!!!

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I have not had time to read through the all of the posts. However, I spend a lot of time working on teaching kids how to self-advocate properly. The toughest thing is working on having self-advocacy not be perceived at "talking back." For the most past, depending on the kid, I work on first asking, "Can we step outside?" or saying nothing for 5 minutes and then asking to discuss after class. The latter works best for kids that need a few minutes to compose themselves. Otherwise, I like the step outside, as staff are acutely aware of how many eyes and ears are watching, and they are hyper-sensitive of setting the precedent of backing down publicly.

I also work with teachers on how to not get into Power Struggles with kids, so I try to train them to exercise the "removing the audience." option.

I think this is a great idea for another blog post. Thanks.. http://askdreric-schoolpsychologist.blogspot.com/

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