Tales of Stress and AD/HD: High School - Page 2

Scenario #2: The Parent

Through a dad’s eyes: It all comes out when my sophomore daughter gets stuck on a homework assignment.The other night I walked by her closed bedroom door and heard her sniffing and sobbing. She had her ear buds in, so she didn’t hear me when I tapped on the door. I opened it slowly and she looked up, teary and embarrassed. She screamed "Get OUTTA here!" and I retreated like a rabbit. She reset, though, when she saw the look on my face. Suddenly it was dad and his little girl again—just like that. "What's going on, Sweet?" I asked. "This homework is so, so hard, Dad!" she exclaimed, "and so stupid! Why do they make us do this stuff? I'll never need it later, and I sure don't need it now!"

Her teachers tells us that our daughter, a sophomore, seems to be "getting it" at school. She's getting B's and some C's on her report card. They say, "Well, that's not bad—it's a very challenging curriculum.” They tell us (and her) that she should "speak up more in class and join the discussion." The smart, happy little girl who got mostly A's all through elementary school and most of middle school tells us that she just can't keep up with the intense flow of words and ideas she's confronted with every day in high school. She has AD/HD, inattentive type, and her medication hasn't fixed this problem.

She says she doesn't speak up in class because she often has no clue what they're talking about. "Better to be silent than dumb," she says, as if she's rehearsed this line before. She seems to get sadder by the day. She's tired, has little energy, and is perpetually plugged into her music, which consists of some pretty dreary and depressing tunes. She’s drifting away from her friends, after-school activities and, most sadly, from us, her family. We’re worried.

My take on this: This girl is really behind the AD/HD eight ball. This is a classic example of a teen who managed to handle the school demands in early grades—possibly because elementary school teachers are less driven by the need to "cover the curriculum" than their counterparts in middle school and high school—but, now that she’s in a fast-paced, challenging academic environment, is hitting a wall. She’s having trouble receiving, filtering, and storing the information she’s bombarded with throughout the day. Her executive functions are malfunctioning. She’s having trouble making decisions about what’s important and what’s not, and everything feels out of control as she drowns in a sea of facts, words, directions, complex social demands, and organizational challenges.

When kids don’t feel in control, they get stressed, which has a negative impact on the parts of her brain that she needs most—the parts that help her remember and organize. We can see how this is a double deficit: she can’t process because she’s so stressed, and she’s stressed because she can’t process.

My advice: Something has to be done to break this cycle of fear, frustration, and failure. If someone is drowning in the deep end, we intuitively lead that person to the shallows so they can get their feet on solid ground. That’s what this girl needs. In a busy, noisy high school, “the shallows” can often be reached by:

• providing kids with smaller classes,
• having them take fewer courses,
• or getting them more help in the courses they do take.

This might result in having to make up courses in summer school or staying on for an extra semester after senior year—commonplace adjustments in colleges that are, unfortunately, a hard sell in high schools. Some kids need to be told that they don’t have an option. Slowing down or reducing the course load may help a teen gain the stability needed to move ahead with confidence.

If a child is immensely overwhelmed by the stimulation and demands of a large high school, it might be time to consider another smaller and perhaps more specialized school. Building a firm foundation for learning in high school will help to assure success later in college, so now’s the time to take action.

And, yes, if the medication isn’t working, it’s time to check in with your physician about the medication type or dosage. Some kids need their meds adjusted when they get older and bigger.

For more on parenting and AD/HD, don’t miss father and educator Carter Norman’s account of AD/HD myths, diagnoses, and treatments.

Continue to the next page for Scenario #3: The Teacher.