ADHD classroom Environment

A humorous  article on boredom in the classroom “How to Fight Boredom at School” got me thinking about how little has changed over the last half century since I was at school. There is still a negative ADHD classroom environment. Schools are still designed for an average child and are fairly inflexible institutions towards kids on either side of the average bell curve.

Imagine a normal healthy child who is a kinetic learner; they have to touch and move to be able to learn anything. Most of us have met the child who has to touch and fiddle with everything. Now imagine that child with a teacher who reads the lesson from a textbook in a monotonous droning voice. This is one of the 101 reasons for ADHD like behavior.

This healthy active energetic child is unable to follow the lesson. This is not laziness, this is a genuine inability to understand what the teacher is saying. The child could have a Mensa IQ of 140, but would still be unable to understand what the normal child next to him/her with an IQ of 90 can understand so easily. This is not good for a child’s self esteem. The child needs encouraging guidance, something few schools have resources for.

It is not primarily the fault of the schools. The bankers destroy the economy and the politicians do not have funds for the budgets schools need. The kid who needs to be hands on, moving and touchy-feely to be able to learn, is the loser.

The child becomes frustrated and bored. The stimulus this child needs is lacking entirely. The poor child feels like climbing up the walls and cannot help him/herself, lets out a loud sigh, which is misunderstood as a lack of respect. Then follows fingers drumming on the desk, something the child is unaware of,  becomes a disruption in class. Now there is something for the child to concentrate on: keeping still and quiet.

Hyperactivity and typical ADHD behavior is the natural effect of this. Involuntary foot tapping results in yet another reprimand, and the child is sent out of the class for disruptive behavior.

What does the child feel?

• Remorse for having behaved badly?
• Anger at being misunderstood?
• Relief?

Yes, relief at being freed from the confines of frustrating boredom. If this scenario continues the child is being positively reinforced to behave badly. This normal decent child in a classroom environment that triggers attention deficit will become a naughty “trouble maker.” The parents are called in and both school and parents start a campaign of retroactive actions aimed at the child’s behavior and not the cause of the behavior. There are a number of natural attention deficit cures for

This leads to a downward spiral of positive reinforcement for bad behavior, parents in a hair-tearing frustration with their child who had been “so sweet” before, and a loss of self-esteem in the child who receives 90% to 95% negative communication from adults who’s task it is to build self-esteem.

Thomas Edison’s mother removed him from school and home schooled him so that he could reach his full potential. Albert Einstein was a school dropout, but did not feel a loss of self-esteem, instead he criticised the school for stifling his creativity. Both of them had typical ADHD symptoms. ADHD is linked to creativity and a gifted child.

Many problem children do not fit into the school system, and as parents we need to strengthen their self-esteem and encourage them to learn to understand themselves so that they can, as adults, lead a successful and productive life after they leave the ADHD classroom problems behind.