Children with ADD/ADHD are capable of appropriate classroom behavior, but they need structure and clear expectations in order to keep their symptoms in check. As a parent, you can help by developing a behavior plan for your child—and sticking to it.
Very structured schools are great at helping keep kids with ADHD organized and focused throughout the school day, but when that structure isn't available at home, disruptive behavior can be a consequence.
How Can ADHD Affect Kids at School? ADHD can affect a student's ability to focus, pay attention, listen, or put effort into schoolwork. ADHD also can make a student fidgety, restless, talk too much, or disrupt the class. Kids with ADHD might also have learning disabilities that cause them to have problems in school.
Children with ADHD struggle more with boredom and putting mental effort into challenging tasks. Virtual learning or in-person school with more rules may lack the novelty and excitement. Teachers may need to find new ways to keep children with ADHD from being bored and keep them engaged in learning.
Inattentive Symptoms of ADHD:
Doesn't seem to be listening when spoken to directly. Has trouble organizing tasks and possessions. Often fails to finish work in school or chores in the classroom. Often avoids or resists tasks that require sustained mental effort, including doing homework.
Sometimes it may feel that way, but raising a child with ADHD to be a well-behaved child is not impossible. You just need to develop strategies for developing positive behaviors, while curbing negative ones.
Your child's behaviours might not be so obvious in school. This could be because they are not presenting what many think of as the 'classic signs' of ADHD. You might also feel that your child is hiding their symptoms when at school. This is known as masking.
These may include hyperfocus, resilience, creativity, conversational skills, spontaneity, and abundant energy. Many people view these benefits as “superpowers” because those with ADHD can hone them to their advantage.
Punishing a child with ADHD for difficult behaviors is ineffective and counterproductive because they don't have the luxuries of regulating their emotions and behaviors like a neurotypical child would. Punishment only results in them feeling guilty and ashamed for what they couldn't control.
In fact, in research studies, children with a diagnosis of ADHD possess the self-regulation or self-control of children approximately two-thirds of their chronological age. It's not that their self-control isn't developing, it's developing at a much slower pace.
Some ADHD children may interact with peers in a bossy manner. In an attempt to gain control of their environments, they may try to control the actions of others. This bossiness typically creates angry and annoyed feelings in others.
Unfortunately, ADHD symptoms are often mistaken for emotional or disciplinary problems. As a result, children with ADHD may be labeled as unmotivated, or “bad kids.” This is far from the truth. ADHD is a brain disorder, and children aren't “misbehaving” on purpose.
Those with ADHD symptoms displayed more severe aggression than children in the control groups. Externalizing behavior problems and aggression, which increased as ADHD symptom severity increased, appeared to be related to the hyperactivity-impulsivity ADHD domain.
ADHD causes kids to be more inattentive, hyperactive, and impulsive than is normal for their age. ADHD makes it harder for kids to develop the skills that control attention, behavior, emotions, and activity. As a result, they often act in ways that are hard for parents manage.
Some children with ADHD are hyperactive, while others sit quietly—with their attention miles away. Some put too much focus on a task and have trouble shifting it to something else. Others are only mildly inattentive, but overly impulsive.
The study found that children who exhibited ADHD symptoms only at school were more likely to have deficits in attentional control, specifically. When children demonstrated symptoms only at home, researchers found that their parents had higher levels of stress and rated their parenting as harsher than normal.
High-functioning ADHD isn't a formal diagnosis. It's a phrase used to describe people living with ADHD who see little to no major impact on daily life. Just because you've reached great success or have found ways to work around ADHD symptoms doesn't mean ADHD might not be affecting you.
Kids with ADHD often have behavior problems. They get angry quickly, throw tantrums, and refuse to do things they don't want to do. These kids aren't trying to be bad. The problem is that ADHD can make it hard for them to do things they find difficult or boring.
Parents who have children at high risk of ADHD mostly applied authoritarian parenting. Lack of parental attention through parenting can increase dopamine and norepinephrine levels in children, which is one of the causes of hyperactivity and will increase the risk of ADHD in children.
ADHD symptoms
There are three kinds of behavior involved in ADHD: inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Of course all young children occasionally have trouble paying attention to teachers and parents, staying in their seats, and waiting their turn.