As someone new to this forum, I have been reading many of your posts and feel "at home" and deeply sad for the amount of heartbreak and frustration that families seem to be going with. For every parent that is frustrated, there are little children who are feeling more of an impact that we are.
As a teacher and a parent of a child with ADHD, I want to share something with you that I learned from our neuropsychologist that has made a profound shift in my perspective both as a parent and a teacher.
She shared an analogy that makes such sense. Imagine your child is pushing around a grocery cart each day. Every child starts there day off with, let's say, 5$. From the moment your child wakes up to the moment they fall asleep that night, everything they do costs currency. Depending on your child and their individual triggers (sensory processing, additional diagnosis - LD, anxiety, depression, OCD, etc.) all of these cost more money. If your child hasn't slept well, self-regulating all day will cost more than if they had a good restful and restorative sleep. Depending on what they eat can make using their brain cost a little less (power foods) or cost more (sugars, no breakfast etc.). Then you look at stress in the home, at school and with friends. Any stressors require more effort and energy and therefore cost more for the day.
Once your child gets to school, they can either have most of their money left, they could have spent some getting to school or they could have spent most or all of their money by the time they get to school. You can probably predict that for those of you who have a child who struggles a lot before they get to school, they are highly likely to have a terrible day at school because they don't have anything else to give for all of the high expense requirements/demands put on them all day. Thus, typically behaviours erupt. Without understanding this, the teacher and the child battle it out all day, while the teacher gets beaten down, the learning environment for other children is lost and most importantly your child is left feeling out of control and their self esteem suffers greatly as they see themselves and compare themselves to the views of others.
You may think that this makes sense so far, but this is where for me, it blew my mind!
What if I told you that all the strategies that you or your child's teachers may be trying to implement (e.g., deep breathing, walk breaks, exercise during the day, wobble seats, etc.) do NOT give your child more money to get through the day!!!!??? That is right... I as a teacher and parent thought that all of these good accommodations and strategies helped my child get "recharged" so that they could come back and focus more or have the ability to complete the task upon their return. According to our neuropsychologist, I was wrong. The strategies ARE ESSENTIAL, but they don't give your child any more money to spend later in the day. The strategies allow your child to cope with the negative feelings inside their body and brains, can give them moments to feel more positive (self-esteem), and can stretch out the day making it more manageable for them to get to the end of the day.
For me as a parent, this is an important distinction to make because it means that I need to know what are high cost ticket items for my child in daily life, and what are strategies that allow her to feel more positive about herself so that she can continue to feel good about herself as she goes back and has to perform again with tasks that can make her feel like a failure. Knowing this information for example, now helps my husband and I plan our family outings accordingly. For our daughter, outings that involve public spaces with lots of loud noises and lots of people and visual distractions like the mall, a fair, the zoo, or a friends birthday party etc. we know that we need to reduce challenging demands for her before the outing, and after the outing to reduce the chances for her running out of money and feeling like a failure. Before we knew this, we would plan to go to a fair with friends (sounds like fun) and then we would have dinner out (again, super fun) and go to see the fireworks on display after, before heading home past her bedtime. Then we learned to use strategies like bringing a headset for the sounds of the fireworks, set limits before we go into the fair on how many tickets, etc. We made sure she had a good sleep the night before and healthy food. We talked to her about being able to take a break and find a quiet spot away from everyone and do some deep breathing and mindful moments together to recharge. But with all that preparation required, when it still resulted in a meltdown, we felt like failures as parents.
Then, with this new perspective, we tried a similar outing. We determined that the fair, dinner out and the fireworks are all fun, but they are high ticket items for our daughter. We continued to use the strategies that we did previously with the idea that they were going to help her feel successful and spread out the day for her. Then we asked our daughter which of the events were most important to her to attend. We knew that we couldn't do all of them even thought our friends family could and we really wanted to. Not yet anyways. In the end our daughter really didn't like to rides at the fair and she decided that she would like to skip the fair and meet up with our friends after the fair for dinner and fireworks. Instead of going into a restaurant with lights, sounds etc. We decided to pick up a pizza and go to a local park and have a quiet picnic with our friends. This decision allowed us to be apart of the fun, get some exercise at the park and then have as much "currency" available to get through the fireworks without a meltdown. She used her headset, chose her place to sit where she felt safe and brought her Ipad to listen to relaxing music if it got to loud or she felt anxious. In the end, we all had a great time and our daughter got to feel successful!!!! Plus it was a lot cheaper ~ which my husband liked!
The same principle works for teachers at school. They need to consider what requests and demands require a lot of "currency" from your child when at school. Sometimes it can be a subject area, other times it can be cumulatively trying to follow the routine all day without forgetting anything and staying organized. It can also be social stressors at recess that leave your child struggling when they return to class. Once determined, then your child, you and your child's teacher need to determine the strategies that can provide your child with some relief (e.g., exercise, quiet music, time in cozy corner, taking a walk, helping another student in a lower grade, playing on a sports team, wobble seat, time to explore a topic of their choice - hobby etc.) At times, until a child's stamina can mature, if a teacher wants your child to be able to show what they know and do their best on a particular test, they need to consider giving your child the test at your child's best performance time during the day (which is usually at the beginning) and reduce expectations before it is determined that your child is almost of of currency. The importance of this is that the child also has to use their "currency" after school. If they have to go to daycare, or an after school extra curricular, a family event, tutoring, appointment etc. These tasks are all going to require "currency". You don't want to spend all of a child's currency at school and leave them feeling explosive at home each night. Although they may be successful at school, if they feel like a failure every night, the damage is the same.
As a result, there needs to be tight communication between home and school. Both need to understand this process and work together to set the tasks for a given day for a child. Thus, if a child is going to have a huge presentation or test on a particular day, then where possible, don't book anything else after school that day unless it is a "feel good" activity. Having said that, my daughters basketball and Hip Hop were "feel good" activities... however, getting to the activity, making sure homework was complete in time to go and rushing back after cost more currency. In the end after my daughter and I discussed this observation, she decided that she only wanted to do extra curricular activities on the weekend. Our weeks are much smoother now!
I would love to hear your thoughts on this perspective and how it may apply to your situation. One question I have is, what if your child's teacher does not agree and see it this way and therefore, puts too many high demands on your child all day and publically points out your child's flaws costing way more currency than she has? My child never has any currency after school and therefore, our family is hostage to her explosive behaviours. I can't live this way, although I understand that she has been pushed beyond her threshold. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
With gratitude,
TogetherWe'reStroger
Public Schooling and Helping Children with Disabilities. 
I am new here and wondering about holding back a year in school.
Newly diagnosed ADHD/ ODD
3.5 year old recently diagnosed 
Meltdowns leaving fun places
