SUPPORTING CHILDREN WITH ADHD
Many of us might have one of these problems, but we do not have all of them. To have a diagnosis of ADHD, these problems must be bad enough to interfere with: How you get on with other people - or How you get on at work or school.”
Understanding ADHD What to know and how to support children During the pandemic, TikTok was alive with snippets of people’s lived experiences of ADHD. Many people, especially younger women and girls, were able to identify with the stories being shared: struggles to follow instructions, to start tasks, and resist temptations, to name just a few. Whilst this was helpful in raising awareness of the disorder amongst the general public, a recent study found that 52% of the information presented on TikTok with ADHD related content contained misinformation. So what is ADHD, which brain processes cause the traits we experience, and how can we support young
people with these agile and energetic brains? Let me start by defining ADHD and the criteria for diagnosis. ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and is defined by the Royal College of Psychiatrists as: “A pattern of behaviour which usually appears in childhood. Parents and teachers notice that a child is: unusually over-active; distracted, cannot stick to anything for any length of time; impulsive, does things on the spur of the moment or without thinking; unable to concentrate for any length of time.
50 | EDUCATION CHOICES MAGAZINE | AU T U M N 2 02 2
It is important to note here that the key defining factor for an ADHD diagnosis is how it affects relationships or performance at school or work: it must have an adverse effect on someone’s life to be a disorder. There are three types of ADHD presentations: inattentive (not hyperactive- impulsive), hyperactive-impulsive (not inattentive) and combined. Traditionally, girls are much less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than their male peers. The ratio of boys to girls diagnosed in childhood falls in the range of 2:1 to 10:1. This is a result of both environmental and systemic factors. Firstly, girls are much more likely to mask their ADHD traits at school than their male classmates. This is because girls are socially expected to be more compliant, quiet, tidy, etc. Secondly, the criteria for diagnosis, as is too often the case, was devised around male norms and doesn’t account for norms in females. Women and girls often receive diagnosis of anxiety, depression or bi-polar disorder before the underlying causes are better understood. The rise in girls and women being diagnosed with ADHD is largely thought to be a correction of this discrepancy - there have always been girls with ADHD, we just didn’t recognise it. Many
