Let's Chat About ADHD with Shaime Cortes-Vega
Shaime Cortes-Vega started her career as an educator in 2009. In that time, she’s worked as a special education middle school teacher, an upper grades elementary school teacher, and has now been a literacy coach for four years. She’s also a professional development specialist for Education to the Core. She’s passionate about all things reading science and ADHD and love to share information about these two topics.
In this episode we chat about:
What is ADHD?
The process of obtaining an ADHD diagnosis
Typical obstacles that kids with ADHD deal with during a day
Common diagnoses that would go together with ADHD
How to support someone you love who has ADHD
Hanna:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of My Literacy Space podcast. Today I am here with Shaime. You can find her on Dr. Cortez Writes on Instagram, and a really great experience and talking today about ADHD, so welcome to Shaime. How are you today?
Shaime:
Thank you so much. I'm exciting to be here to talk to you about ADHD and all the things related to that.
Hanna:
Yeah, and I think it's really great because as we're starting this brand new school year, some people are well underway, some people are already starting. I know that a lot of parents listen to the podcast, and I think this is something that I actually haven't talked about yet on the podcast, so I really am wanting experience as an educator and just let's first of all, go ahead and introduce yourself and then go right into a definition of ADHD.
Shaime:
Okay. So hello everyone. I'm Dr. Shaime Cortez-Abega. I have been in education since 2009. I've been an ESOL CARA, special education teacher, elementary school teacher. I have officially taught grades four through eight, and now I've been a literacy coach for three years, so I've worked with students K through eight in my, this is year 14 for me, I think, as a teacher.
Shaime:
I had a late diagnosis of ADHD. I did not know when I was a kid, but now looking back, it was like, oh, it's been there this whole time. So ADHD is usually like... Of course, with DSM-5, it's this persistent pattern of inattention and or hyperactivity or impulsivity that interferes with our daily life. It's not just something that just occurred in a week because of stress. This has been a part of your life for over six months, years. When you go to seek diagnosis, that's going to be asked of you, so it's something that impacts your daily life and it's a cognitive... It's a disability.
Hanna:
So I've noticed on one of your stories recently, I love that you share other Instagramers that I've ended up starting to follow because I wanted to understand a little bit more as well about ADHD and I, it was Dr. Brian FTW. It was the person's post that you had shared, and he really talks about that perhaps the name is misleading or gives not an accurate description, and I thought that was really great because a lot of people will say, I have a great time focusing. I'm not the one who's bouncing off the walls. So I loved a little bit extra. One of the ways that he described it as well is it's not really a deficit in attention, but a deficit in the ability to control our attention.
Hanna:
That kind of really helped me. He might have even have shared that today or yesterday, sometime I think, and then I wouldn't like-
Shaime:
I think it...
Hanna:
Okay. And I thought that that was like, that even might break it down even more for parents to understand that yes, it's a disability. Yes, it's recognized. Yes, you are seen by a psychologist or able to pull out some of those pieces. So tell me about, I know that there are different types, so where did we go from ADD to ADHD? I know that there's been lots of confusion even in those sort of acronyms that we see in education.
Shaime:
So now I know that on social media it can be confusing, because are, there's the seven types of ADHD and whatnot, but that's not in the DSM-5, which is the big book that psychologists use that give the definitions of these different disorders and things like that.
Shaime:
For ADHD, there are three types. There's an inattentive type, there's a hyperactive impulsive type, and then there's a combined type. So inattentive have difficulty with listening, difficulty paying attention, get sidetracked easily, often stereotyped as the whole squirrely kind of thing. Oh, look, I got distracted, but we know it's a lot deeper than that. With the hyperactive impulsive type, you'll see me move a lot because I have difficulty staying in my seat. A restlessness that's difficult to control. We're often just going on a motor. And the combined type means we present from all of those different, for the inattentive type and the hyperactive together.
Shaime:
And you can cycle through those. It just depends. And the severity of that can depend on the person as well. So I like in the neuro-divergent community, we often say that if you've met one person with ADHD, you've met one person or you've met one autistic person. Although we have commonalities, we're all different and our support needs and levels of support needs are going to be different as well.
Hanna:
So let's talk about what's the average age maybe that... When I was looking on in my research lately, I saw that one website said about the average age of diagnosis would be about seven, the average age, but symptoms can really be noticed any time, but even as young as between three to six years of age. What are you seeing in your work and in your research?
Shaime:
I would say if you're a parent or a teacher and you have a concern, there's no time that's too early to discuss it with a doctor. And you can go to your child's doctor. You can say, hey, I was looking online and I saw these symptoms and I've noticed this in my child. How would I go about getting the evaluation or these other concerns that I have?
Shaime:
Now, if the doctor is truly concerned, they're going to listen to what you say, and then they may refer you to a psychologist or they may consider, they may have a way to evaluate in office, in house. The important thing is the doctor listens to you and listens to your concerns and that they take you seriously, not only that they just diagnose you, your child or you, with ADHD right away, but we have to determine if it is ADHD. It could be something else. It could be anxiety. It could be a thyroid disorder if you're an older person being diagnosed. If you're a child, you want to make sure that whomever it is that you go see actually takes your concerns seriously goes through the evaluation process. Early intervention is best so we can start working on the things that can help you be successful, the coping mechanisms and things like that. But I think if you're worried about it, you should go talk to a doctor. There's nothing wrong with that.
Hanna:
Absolutely. Who is the best to diagnose ADHD?
Shaime:
I would say a psychologist, but if you don't know who to go to, if you don't have one in your pocket, like a lot of us unfortunately don't because mental health is a taboo thing in a lot of cultures, the first place you would probably go to discuss this is your child's pediatrician or your own doctor if you're seeking diagnosis, and then from there, they can refer you to a psychologist that perhaps specializes in ADHD children or things like that.
Hanna:
And what does the process look like to be diagnosed either as an adult or if you were doing that with a child? What does that process look like?
Shaime:
So you would start with your pediatrician and then from there you get referred to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and then there's a series of screeners that they can go through, and then there's, even the teacher will get a checklist. As a teacher, I've gotten... It escapes me now, but there's a checklist that's 10 pages or so that we go through about all the different skills and the degrees of difficulty that the child has with those skills, and there's also one that the parent would fill out for at home. And then the psychologist will probably talk to the child and it's a process.
Shaime:
It's not something that's going to just be like, okay, you're, based on what your mom said, you must be ADHD. There's all these things that must fall into place, but there are screeners and things online that you can take yourself just to, okay, am I maybe?
Shaime:
Because a lot of times people, like neuro-typical people don't usually think, oh, I must be ADHD. Or I'm my autistic? Why am I having difficulty with all these things? So if you are thinking all the time, whoa, I really relate to these ADHD videos or man, that really, my kid does all of those things, you can do one of those online screeners and then be like, wait a minute. Maybe I do need to talk to a doctor if this is a thing or if it's something else.
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Hanna:
What is your understanding, when I was also doing some reading in the last few months even as well, thinking even that it was talking about how boys are more likely to be diagnosed, and I was like... Let's talk about that because I think that it's socially influenced or we tend to think that girls are better behaved or they're not the squeaky wheel, so in my experience, that's not necessarily true, and I was really trying to dig and I was like, okay. That's a good question to unpack on a podcast because I don't know. I don't know if I believe that one. What do you?
Shaime:
I think the rates of diagnosis are going to depend on where. Right?
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
Either by country or by state in the United States, but it all depends. So a lot of times it could be cultural, like girls do tend to fly under the radar, and Dr. Brian calls it, you being like the, in reference to women, the ADHD unicorn. Right? Because a lot of times because of the social expectations and norms for girls, anxiety tends to become our coping mechanism, and because the people pleasing and we're afraid of failure and we're expected to be a certain way, then the anxiety masks the ADHD symptoms. So you might not see a girl jumping off the walls and this and that, and a lot of times, sometimes it's more slowly acceptable for a boy to do that, but it all depends on who the teachers are, parents, who's advocating for the kid, the psychologist or the doctor's experience with different children and how it presents differently.
Shaime:
And it's just, again, talking about that seriousness and really considering all of the things, and not looking at the kid just because they're a girl or they're a boy. Oh yeah. You're a girl. It must be anxiety or it's depression or it's a different disorder that's not ADHD. So there's this influx now of women that were diagnosed with anxiety, that were diagnosed with bipolar disorder or depression, and now they're starting to think, wait a minute. Maybe it wasn't that. Maybe it was ADHD this whole time. And in a way, I'm very thankful for social media for that because it's brought awareness to ADHD as a disability and condition that does affect girls too, and I think sometimes there is a little bit of a stereotype of what ADHD looks like or what's supposed to be.
Hanna:
Exactly. And the key in that study was like, they're more likely to be diagnosed. It doesn't mean they're more likely to have it. So I think that even that sort of can be misconstrued very quickly. What would be some typical obstacles that you see with the students that you are working with where ADHD is really impacting them in literacy? Let's talk specifically literacy. Where do you see that that's, and we can talk a little bit even about the executive functioning skills and things like that. Where do you see that impacting learning on a daily basis?
Hanna:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of My Literacy Space podcast. Today I am here with Shaime. You can find her on Dr. Cortez Writes on Instagram, and a really great experience and talking today about ADHD, so welcome to Shaime. How are you today?
Shaime:
Thank you so much. I'm exciting to be here to talk to you about ADHD and all the things related to that.
Hanna:
Yeah, and I think it's really great because as we're starting this brand new school year, some people are well underway, some people are already starting. I know that a lot of parents listen to the podcast, and I think this is something that I actually haven't talked about yet on the podcast, so I really am wanting experience as an educator and just let's first of all, go ahead and introduce yourself and then go right into a definition of ADHD.
Shaime:
Okay. So hello everyone. I'm Dr. Shaime Cortez-Abega. I have been in education since 2009. I've been an ESOL CARA, special education teacher, elementary school teacher. I have officially taught grades four through eight, and now I've been a literacy coach for three years, so I've worked with students K through eight in my, this is year 14 for me, I think, as a teacher.
Shaime:
I had a late diagnosis of ADHD. I did not know when I was a kid, but now looking back, it was like, oh, it's been there this whole time. So ADHD is usually like... Of course, with DSM-5, it's this persistent pattern of inattention and or hyperactivity or impulsivity that interferes with our daily life. It's not just something that just occurred in a week because of stress. This has been a part of your life for over six months, years. When you go to seek diagnosis, that's going to be asked of you, so it's something that impacts your daily life and it's a cognitive... It's a disability.
Hanna:
So I've noticed on one of your stories recently, I love that you share other Instagramers that I've ended up starting to follow because I wanted to understand a little bit more as well about ADHD and I, it was Dr. Brian FTW. It was the person's post that you had shared, and he really talks about that perhaps the name is misleading or gives not an accurate description, and I thought that was really great because a lot of people will say, I have a great time focusing. I'm not the one who's bouncing off the walls. So I loved a little bit extra. One of the ways that he described it as well is it's not really a deficit in attention, but a deficit in the ability to control our attention.
Hanna:
That kind of really helped me. He might have even have shared that today or yesterday, sometime I think, and then I wouldn't like-
Shaime:
I think it...
Hanna:
Okay. And I thought that that was like, that even might break it down even more for parents to understand that yes, it's a disability. Yes, it's recognized. Yes, you are seen by a psychologist or able to pull out some of those pieces. So tell me about, I know that there are different types, so where did we go from ADD to ADHD? I know that there's been lots of confusion even in those sort of acronyms that we see in education.
Shaime:
So now I know that on social media it can be confusing, because are, there's the seven types of ADHD and whatnot, but that's not in the DSM-5, which is the big book that psychologists use that give the definitions of these different disorders and things like that.
Shaime:
For ADHD, there are three types. There's an inattentive type, there's a hyperactive impulsive type, and then there's a combined type. So inattentive have difficulty with listening, difficulty paying attention, get sidetracked easily, often stereotyped as the whole squirrely kind of thing. Oh, look, I got distracted, but we know it's a lot deeper than that. With the hyperactive impulsive type, you'll see me move a lot because I have difficulty staying in my seat. A restlessness that's difficult to control. We're often just going on a motor. And the combined type means we present from all of those different, for the inattentive type and the hyperactive together.
Shaime:
And you can cycle through those. It just depends. And the severity of that can depend on the person as well. So I like in the neuro-divergent community, we often say that if you've met one person with ADHD, you've met one person or you've met one autistic person. Although we have commonalities, we're all different and our support needs and levels of support needs are going to be different as well.
Hanna:
So let's talk about what's the average age maybe that... When I was looking on in my research lately, I saw that one website said about the average age of diagnosis would be about seven, the average age, but symptoms can really be noticed any time, but even as young as between three to six years of age. What are you seeing in your work and in your research?
Shaime:
I would say if you're a parent or a teacher and you have a concern, there's no time that's too early to discuss it with a doctor. And you can go to your child's doctor. You can say, hey, I was looking online and I saw these symptoms and I've noticed this in my child. How would I go about getting the evaluation or these other concerns that I have?
Shaime:
Now, if the doctor is truly concerned, they're going to listen to what you say, and then they may refer you to a psychologist or they may consider, they may have a way to evaluate in office, in house. The important thing is the doctor listens to you and listens to your concerns and that they take you seriously, not only that they just diagnose you, your child or you, with ADHD right away, but we have to determine if it is ADHD. It could be something else. It could be anxiety. It could be a thyroid disorder if you're an older person being diagnosed. If you're a child, you want to make sure that whomever it is that you go see actually takes your concerns seriously goes through the evaluation process. Early intervention is best so we can start working on the things that can help you be successful, the coping mechanisms and things like that. But I think if you're worried about it, you should go talk to a doctor. There's nothing wrong with that.
Hanna:
Absolutely. Who is the best to diagnose ADHD?
Shaime:
I would say a psychologist, but if you don't know who to go to, if you don't have one in your pocket, like a lot of us unfortunately don't because mental health is a taboo thing in a lot of cultures, the first place you would probably go to discuss this is your child's pediatrician or your own doctor if you're seeking diagnosis, and then from there, they can refer you to a psychologist that perhaps specializes in ADHD children or things like that.
Hanna:
And what does the process look like to be diagnosed either as an adult or if you were doing that with a child? What does that process look like?
Shaime:
So you would start with your pediatrician and then from there you get referred to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and then there's a series of screeners that they can go through, and then there's, even the teacher will get a checklist. As a teacher, I've gotten... It escapes me now, but there's a checklist that's 10 pages or so that we go through about all the different skills and the degrees of difficulty that the child has with those skills, and there's also one that the parent would fill out for at home. And then the psychologist will probably talk to the child and it's a process.
Shaime:
It's not something that's going to just be like, okay, you're, based on what your mom said, you must be ADHD. There's all these things that must fall into place, but there are screeners and things online that you can take yourself just to, okay, am I maybe?
Shaime:
Because a lot of times people, like neuro-typical people don't usually think, oh, I must be ADHD. Or I'm my autistic? Why am I having difficulty with all these things? So if you are thinking all the time, whoa, I really relate to these ADHD videos or man, that really, my kid does all of those things, you can do one of those online screeners and then be like, wait a minute. Maybe I do need to talk to a doctor if this is a thing or if it's something else.
Hanna:
What is your understanding, when I was also doing some reading in the last few months even as well, thinking even that it was talking about how boys are more likely to be diagnosed, and I was like... Let's talk about that because I think that it's socially influenced or we tend to think that girls are better behaved or they're not the squeaky wheel, so in my experience, that's not necessarily true, and I was really trying to dig and I was like, okay. That's a good question to unpack on a podcast because I don't know. I don't know if I believe that one. What do you?
Shaime:
I think the rates of diagnosis are going to depend on where. Right?
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
Either by country or by state in the United States, but it all depends. So a lot of times it could be cultural, like girls do tend to fly under the radar, and Dr. Brian calls it, you being like the, in reference to women, the ADHD unicorn. Right? Because a lot of times because of the social expectations and norms for girls, anxiety tends to become our coping mechanism, and because the people pleasing and we're afraid of failure and we're expected to be a certain way, then the anxiety masks the ADHD symptoms. So you might not see a girl jumping off the walls and this and that, and a lot of times, sometimes it's more slowly acceptable for a boy to do that, but it all depends on who the teachers are, parents, who's advocating for the kid, the psychologist or the doctor's experience with different children and how it presents differently.
Shaime:
And it's just, again, talking about that seriousness and really considering all of the things, and not looking at the kid just because they're a girl or they're a boy. Oh yeah. You're a girl. It must be anxiety or it's depression or it's a different disorder that's not ADHD. So there's this influx now of women that were diagnosed with anxiety, that were diagnosed with bipolar disorder or depression, and now they're starting to think, wait a minute. Maybe it wasn't that. Maybe it was ADHD this whole time. And in a way, I'm very thankful for social media for that because it's brought awareness to ADHD as a disability and condition that does affect girls too, and I think sometimes there is a little bit of a stereotype of what ADHD looks like or what's supposed to be.
Hanna:
Exactly. And the key in that study was like, they're more likely to be diagnosed. It doesn't mean they're more likely to have it. So I think that even that sort of can be misconstrued very quickly. What would be some typical obstacles that you see with the students that you are working with where ADHD is really impacting them in literacy? Let's talk specifically literacy. Where do you see that that's, and we can talk a little bit even about the executive functioning skills and things like that. Where do you see that impacting learning on a daily basis?
Shaime:
Talking about executive functioning. I really love that the active ear reading... We talk a lot about the reading rope and the simple view of reading in the reading science and science of reading communities, circles, but we haven't talked as much about the active ear reading, and what I love about it is that it does consider the executive functioning skills needed to be able to read well. Executive functioning is planning, organization, task persistence, task initiation, being able to start a task, and there's so much involved in being able to read and being able to write.
Shaime:
Think about what a kid needs to know a letter. They have to know its name. They have to know the sounds that it makes. They have to recognize the capital letter, the lower case form. They have to be able to write the capital form and the lowercase form. So as they're writing and forming, there's all these things that their brain has to do, and their working memory has to retain all of that in the process and they have to not get distracted, so it can be really debilitating in the classroom because it requires this level of focus that our brain is just, has such a hard time. Especially as a kid, while we're really little, in kindergarten, first grade, we don't have the coping mechanisms yet to be able to focus for extended periods of time, to be able to do all the things that we need to do, to be able to recognize that this letter makes this sound or to be able to form those letters.
Shaime:
And because, unfortunately, because of a lack of awareness and understanding of ADHD, a lot of times our kiddos that are ADHD tend to be like, oh, that one doesn't know to behave and there's a lot of kind of negative connotations, lack of motivation. This one is just behaves badly. She never stays in her seat. She's always talking. That's why she doesn't know how to read because she's just not paying attention, but really when you start to look a little more deeply at that kid, you're like, wait a minute. Put all the biases aside, start to look and be like, wait. What kid doesn't want to know how to read? They all want to know how to read, so what about what's going on in the classroom or what's going on with the kid is keeping them from accessing the content?
Shaime:
And when we start looking at unresolved problems and lacking skills, instead of the kids' behavior, we start to narrow down, oh, this child is struggling with reading because of these other issues that they're having, their inability to stay seated for example, as their teacher is teaching, or their difficulty with impulse control. I'm supposed to be [inaudible 00:13:37] manipulative, but you're like toys and they're so fun, so I've gotten distracted with them now.
Shaime:
So it can be very overwhelming as a teacher if you don't know anything about ADHD or anything about autism, because unfortunately a lot of programs, they have maybe what? One course about teaching students with disabilities, if that? Don't blame the teacher for that. It's not their fault. It's very difficult to be able to [inaudible 00:14:01] to teach students with disabilities if you have not been trained on how to do that appropriately.
Hanna:
I want to talk about two things too that kind of made me think about other things that you've shared on your feed, as well on Instagram, about ADHD masking. That's something that I think that I've been much more attentive as I'm working with kids in the last two or three years of really watching, what are they doing? What is that sort of, not just the behavior, and I don't mean behavior in bad behavior. I just mean it's how we move through the day. So what are those kinds of things?
Hanna:
Here's some of the things that I've noticed is they seem to be daydreaming and you can see that some teachers are like, come on, back focus, and actually a lot of them are trying to calm the chaos, all the thoughts racing, racing through their head, and sometimes they are zoning out because there's just so much. They're not sure where to be listening, looking, acting, so I think that that's something that I've really noticed quite often is watch out for the kids that are daydreaming and think of a way that we can redirect without just saying pay attention. What are some other masking, ADHD masking things that you notice that kids typically?
Shaime:
Masking our symptoms is usually because we have heard things like that so often. You're not paying attention again. You're not listening. You forgot that again? And it's that kind of like negative shaming. You start to internalize those things, so we start to mask our symptoms so that we don't get in trouble. So I know that even as an adult, I find myself, if I'm going to go to an important meeting, I have to give myself a little pep talk. I'm like, be normal.
Hanna:
Yeah, yeah.
Shaime:
Don't act like this. Don't act like that. Don't blurt out. I'm trying to tell myself all the things that I'm not supposed to do in the name of professionalism. But a lot of times our kiddos will, they have been in the education system for a long time, they'll just shut down, and I call it turtling. They'll take their hoodie, turtle in.
Shaime:
And as a teacher looking at that, you're like, oh, they don't want to do the work, but really it's that they are so afraid of not pleasing you or so afraid of hearing those things I've heard so often. I'm not smart enough to do this. I can't do this. It didn't come out right the first time. There's a post that I think they might be from The ADHD Alien about ADHD imperfection and how we struggle with making mistakes and accepting that it's okay to make a mistake, a lot of times in relation to these negative things that we've heard growing up. We weren't paying attention. We weren't listening. We weren't doing all these other things.
Shaime:
So masking your symptoms. A lot of times our kids will try to contain all the ADHD-ness, but a lot of times it just comes down as shutting down and they're just, I'm not going to do it. I don't want to, because if I try, I'm going to get distracted and then I'm going to get in trouble. So for me, it's really important as a educator, as a parent, because my little girl's five or six and I'm noticing it.
Shaime:
It's really important to affirm that they are okay the way that they are. You're fine as you are, and I'm going to be here with you through the whole process to support you. It's very important that as children are learning their executive functioning skills, like all the planning that goes into cleaning a room for example. I have to plan what I'm going to do first, the order that I'm going to do it in, what I'm going to clean, not get distracted in the process, but with my toys that are in my room, do it in a specific amount of time. Those are all things that are like, that's really hard for me as an adult. So for some reason we have this expectation of kids, I told you to clean your room. Go do it. But they're like six or seven. We have to support them through that process.
Shaime:
And it's okay to have that expectation that your room's going to be clean, but then support them through what that's going to look like. And even as an adult for myself, I have visual checklists because I have so many responsibilities, and it's not enough to just have a planner when you're ADHD. A lot of people, just use a planner. Listen. I have a graveyard of planners which I haven't used in my light.
Shaime:
That is not a quick fix, but I have finally figured out something that works for me, and I have these visual checklists and dry erase boards all over my house. So I do that for my ADHD friends at school too. And you have a checklist. These are the things that I need you to do. So a lot of times, even for, and I think I went, I got distracted, but a lot of times for assignments instead of where it says directions, I'll write, what do I do? And then I just step it up. One, two, three, four. So these are the four things I need to do to be able to complete this assignment, because a lot of times ADHD people or children with ADHD just don't know what done looks like. What is it going to look like when I'm done? I don't know.
Shaime:
So even taking a picture of their room. This is what your room should look like. These are the steps that you have to go through. The order doesn't really matter. We can go in any order, but here we go. This is what the end product's going to look like, and then even having a timer, and making it urgent, make it a game, make it fun. Okay, I'm going to start cleaning this side. You've clean that side. Whoever finishes first gets to go get a icy or something. There's all these things that you can do to support kids, and I honestly forgot what the original question was.
Hanna:
Oh no, I was, no, that's fine. I was just asking how do we support them? And when they're masking, we were talking about when they're masking, and then moving into sort of supporting, but that was literally my next question, because when I'm thinking about... You gave excellent examples at whole, so how do we, in the classroom, how can we really support?
Hanna:
And I love that. Maybe the directions don't need to be so wordy. Maybe they need to be more with, like you said, the checklist of first you're going to do this, so that kind of first, next, then, after that, kind of that phrasing really, if it needs to be sequential, but also I love that you said a lot of times it doesn't even really have to be sequential. It has to get done. And so sometimes that's, yeah, that's a piece of it.
Hanna:
So what would that look like in the classroom? I know even visually, there's some ways that we can support students, even when we think about how yes, people are having these beautifully decorated classrooms and yet it's so overwhelming for a child to look somewhere and get the answer. With my students, one of the things that I love to do, I'm not in the classroom anymore, but within in my tutoring is they have their own literacy journal, and so there's nothing on my walls that are posters that they have to look up to. We look and we have tabs on the pages for you. Did we have a vowel question or did we have a spelling question or did we have a whatever kind? And it's really helping them organize that, so they know where to go for the answer, not glancing up at the room.
Shaime:
Yes.
Hanna:
And if they do, they've taken their eyes off their work. Now I forgot what I was looking at [inaudible 00:20:57]. So what other kinds of ways? So you said give maybe a little checklist would be helpful. I'm saying have stuff at their spot where they're just looking at their own materials. What would be some other helpful tools for kids in a classroom?
Shaime:
I love that because I had a reading binder for my students because it was just, I noticed that once they take their eyes from their page to look up at the board and look somewhere else, in that little span of time, I've already gone and distracted what I'm supposed to be doing. So having that resource there for them, because we have to change our anchor charts out anyways, and then they're like, we were working on main idea last week. I haven't mastered that yet. Now, where do I look for that? It's in your binder. It's right there.
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
Also when you're having a timer, make sure to have a visual timer, one of those ones that has the red so they can see it actually moving, because it's difficult for us to visualize time. For me, I don't understand what it feels like, what five minutes feels like, especially if I'm really hyper fixated on something like super focused, three hours could pass and I don't eat any food and I'm perfectly fine, but then a five minute conversation, I can't focus and everything is all these intrusive thoughts, so it just depends. But having a visual timer is really helpful so that they understand exactly how much time they have for this specific task.
Shaime:
Being flexible. Modeling flexibility a lot of times as well. Oh gosh. I think her name is @dr.siggie on Instagram. She is absolutely amazing for those prompts as a parent or even as a teacher for how you can model frustration tolerance, for how you can model being flexible, because a lot of that, we have to show our kids so that they can practice. It's very important how we talk to ourselves because our children hear that. And also having those visual checklists and things like that for them to do, showing them exemplars of what it's supposed to look like when it's done, not necessarily the same assignment, but explicitly modeling what the expectation is and making sure they actually have their attention before you talk, and you don't have to be mean about it.
Shaime:
You can say, hey. I always tell my kids, and I'll wait. I'll get their attention. I say their name and I wait. I say, are you with me? And then I wait for them to look at me or whatever it is that this way that they show me, and they say, yeah. I say, okay. I'm going to give you directions, and I keep it short.
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
Real short. And I say, I want you to do this piece first, and they're working on that. And if I notice, you have to also be very observant of your kids, because if you notice that they're really struggling, really getting frustrated and they're about to shut down, it's really important that you build that relationship with them so that they are comfortable in letting you know, I'm really frustrated right now. This task is too much for me right now. What is something else I can do? And then jump back in it. And those are all words that we have to model for our kids. They're not just going to know how to do that.
Shaime:
That's when you get a lot of chair throwing maybe or different explosive kind of behaviors, because it's difficult for us, for ADHD people to regulate our emotions as well, so it's not just about attention and focus and impulse control. We experience emotions, very, very big emotions.
Shaime:
And something I forgot to put on the freebie was RSD or rejection sensitive dysphoria, where criticism for an ADHD person can be really like, it feels like the world is ending sometimes. So just be very cognizant of how you give corrective feedback to your neuro-divergent kiddos and make sure that it is feedback that is meant to be constructive and helpful to them, not just, and I can't think of anything negative right now, but we have to be very careful of the things that we say to them so that they can feel comfortable making mistakes in your classroom, so they can feel like they have the opportunity to grow and that you want them there in the classroom with them to be with you.
Hanna:
Yeah. I wanted to talk about too, something that I maybe didn't really understand for a very long time was the stimming that happens, and like the jiggling of the knee or the kind of twiddling of the pencil or sound effects. That's a huge one is either they're going or they're tapping, and I think that that's a lot of times corrected, over-corrected, and really that's their way of processing a lot of what's going on and they're very unaware of that. So how do we give students then the way to stim the way that they need to in their work and not distract the 20 other somethings that are in the classroom? Because it's really common, really common. Yes.
Shaime:
I think that, but some educators might not like what I'm going to say, because they need to stim and they need to fidget, and a lot of times that's the way that we focus. So a lot of times I'm doing this kind of number. I'm spinning.
Shaime:
But not all kiddos will have fidgets or have been taught how to use them properly. I'm fidgeting with my ring right now to help me get my thoughts together as I'm talking. It's very easy to get distracted as I'm talking. But it's very frustrating as a teacher, again, because a lack of awareness of what ADHD is. They're not being bad. They're not making noise to irritate you on purpose. They're not breaking the literally erasers and turning them into little toys on their desk.
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
And that's mostly the most common one that I see because it's the most common object that they have. Right?
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
The pencil eraser, eraser caps, then you'll see them playing with little toys and things like that, or they make noise. I have... Oh, I love him so much. One of my students in my tutoring group right now, I was teaching him in third grade last year, and he would make velociraptor noises in the middle of class, and I would just honestly, like gentle reminders. Kate, my little dinosaur friend, let's get back on task, and he'd be like, okay. And he'd just focus back on what he was doing, but he and I have enough of a relationship that I can do that with him, but I'm not doing it every five seconds. Stop with the noise. Stop with the noise.
Shaime:
Also, teaching them that there's a variety of different ways that I can stim that might be less distracting. Also, having a calm down corner available with different fidgets and you're explicitly teaching how to use those fidgets because if you don't do that, they do appear to be toys. And a lot of them can be toys. I like the, oh gosh, it's a little pillow or a little toy that has a sequence that you can touch and it changes color from one side to the other. That is more of a quiet, doesn't make a lot, but sometimes it doesn't replace.
Shaime:
They're looking for sensory input, auditory input. They're going to tap. They're going to do these things. And sometimes it's just, okay, instead of tapping on the desk, let's tap on your thighs, because it can be distracting to the other students. But also another thing that we forget is we talk a lot about the ADHD student or the autistic student and doing all these things so that they can fit in our classroom, but we don't talk a lot about the neuro-typical children in the classroom and what they can do to be more accepting. Yes. Students that need to stim, they need to fidget, and say, this is just something that he or she needs to do right now to help them focus. It's okay.
Hanna:
And we all have something we do to help us focus. Everybody does that. It's just a different way that sometimes it may not be as noticeable to other people. Even shifting. We both at the same time just shifted in our chairs right now.
Shaime:
Yeah.
Hanna:
We're attending to each other and we've learned a different, and that's not distracting at all. And I think we can also just be more aware of keep those mini lessons short. They're mini. They're called mini lessons for a reason and then quickly to our spot to do something, and some of those ways of the interesting callbacks and the whole body...
Shaime:
The whole brain [inaudible 00:28:59].
Hanna:
Not the whole body listening, necessarily.
Shaime:
Right. Whole brain teaching, whole brain teaching.
Hanna:
But whole brain teaching. Right? Yes. Because some of those ways of really engaging the callbacks, and the turn and tell your friend that rule, and come back and things like that. The whole brain teaching is so good, and even incorporating whole movement breaks in your day, even every 20-ish minutes. And that might seem that you're like, oh, that's going to really interrupt the flow of the day. Actually, it's really going to benefit. Something that I say to my students all the time is if your bum is numb, your brain is probably numb too. Right?
Shaime:
Yes.
Hanna:
Because you're sitting there, and I see you squirming in your chair. Your brain's probably squirming too for some feedback and movement, so I think that's important. What are some common diagnoses that would go together with ADHD? I know you mentioned anxiety would be one. Are there some other ones that are more common?
Shaime:
Like comorbid?
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
Sometimes the anxiety forms as a coping mechanism to mask the ADHD symptoms. There are people that have both autism and ADHD.
Hanna:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of My Literacy Space podcast. Today I am here with Shaime. You can find her on Dr. Cortez Writes on Instagram, and a really great experience and talking today about ADHD, so welcome to Shaime. How are you today?
Shaime:
Thank you so much. I'm exciting to be here to talk to you about ADHD and all the things related to that.
Hanna:
Yeah, and I think it's really great because as we're starting this brand new school year, some people are well underway, some people are already starting. I know that a lot of parents listen to the podcast, and I think this is something that I actually haven't talked about yet on the podcast, so I really am wanting experience as an educator and just let's first of all, go ahead and introduce yourself and then go right into a definition of ADHD.
Shaime:
Okay. So hello everyone. I'm Dr. Shaime Cortez-Abega. I have been in education since 2009. I've been an ESOL CARA, special education teacher, elementary school teacher. I have officially taught grades four through eight, and now I've been a literacy coach for three years, so I've worked with students K through eight in my, this is year 14 for me, I think, as a teacher.
Shaime:
I had a late diagnosis of ADHD. I did not know when I was a kid, but now looking back, it was like, oh, it's been there this whole time. So ADHD is usually like... Of course, with DSM-5, it's this persistent pattern of inattention and or hyperactivity or impulsivity that interferes with our daily life. It's not just something that just occurred in a week because of stress. This has been a part of your life for over six months, years. When you go to seek diagnosis, that's going to be asked of you, so it's something that impacts your daily life and it's a cognitive... It's a disability.
Hanna:
So I've noticed on one of your stories recently, I love that you share other Instagramers that I've ended up starting to follow because I wanted to understand a little bit more as well about ADHD and I, it was Dr. Brian FTW. It was the person's post that you had shared, and he really talks about that perhaps the name is misleading or gives not an accurate description, and I thought that was really great because a lot of people will say, I have a great time focusing. I'm not the one who's bouncing off the walls. So I loved a little bit extra. One of the ways that he described it as well is it's not really a deficit in attention, but a deficit in the ability to control our attention.
Hanna:
That kind of really helped me. He might have even have shared that today or yesterday, sometime I think, and then I wouldn't like-
Shaime:
I think it...
Hanna:
Okay. And I thought that that was like, that even might break it down even more for parents to understand that yes, it's a disability. Yes, it's recognized. Yes, you are seen by a psychologist or able to pull out some of those pieces. So tell me about, I know that there are different types, so where did we go from ADD to ADHD? I know that there's been lots of confusion even in those sort of acronyms that we see in education.
Shaime:
So now I know that on social media it can be confusing, because are, there's the seven types of ADHD and whatnot, but that's not in the DSM-5, which is the big book that psychologists use that give the definitions of these different disorders and things like that.
Shaime:
For ADHD, there are three types. There's an inattentive type, there's a hyperactive impulsive type, and then there's a combined type. So inattentive have difficulty with listening, difficulty paying attention, get sidetracked easily, often stereotyped as the whole squirrely kind of thing. Oh, look, I got distracted, but we know it's a lot deeper than that. With the hyperactive impulsive type, you'll see me move a lot because I have difficulty staying in my seat. A restlessness that's difficult to control. We're often just going on a motor. And the combined type means we present from all of those different, for the inattentive type and the hyperactive together.
Shaime:
And you can cycle through those. It just depends. And the severity of that can depend on the person as well. So I like in the neuro-divergent community, we often say that if you've met one person with ADHD, you've met one person or you've met one autistic person. Although we have commonalities, we're all different and our support needs and levels of support needs are going to be different as well.
Hanna:
So let's talk about what's the average age maybe that... When I was looking on in my research lately, I saw that one website said about the average age of diagnosis would be about seven, the average age, but symptoms can really be noticed any time, but even as young as between three to six years of age. What are you seeing in your work and in your research?
Shaime:
I would say if you're a parent or a teacher and you have a concern, there's no time that's too early to discuss it with a doctor. And you can go to your child's doctor. You can say, hey, I was looking online and I saw these symptoms and I've noticed this in my child. How would I go about getting the evaluation or these other concerns that I have?
Shaime:
Now, if the doctor is truly concerned, they're going to listen to what you say, and then they may refer you to a psychologist or they may consider, they may have a way to evaluate in office, in house. The important thing is the doctor listens to you and listens to your concerns and that they take you seriously, not only that they just diagnose you, your child or you, with ADHD right away, but we have to determine if it is ADHD. It could be something else. It could be anxiety. It could be a thyroid disorder if you're an older person being diagnosed. If you're a child, you want to make sure that whomever it is that you go see actually takes your concerns seriously goes through the evaluation process. Early intervention is best so we can start working on the things that can help you be successful, the coping mechanisms and things like that. But I think if you're worried about it, you should go talk to a doctor. There's nothing wrong with that.
Hanna:
Absolutely. Who is the best to diagnose ADHD?
Shaime:
I would say a psychologist, but if you don't know who to go to, if you don't have one in your pocket, like a lot of us unfortunately don't because mental health is a taboo thing in a lot of cultures, the first place you would probably go to discuss this is your child's pediatrician or your own doctor if you're seeking diagnosis, and then from there, they can refer you to a psychologist that perhaps specializes in ADHD children or things like that.
Hanna:
And what does the process look like to be diagnosed either as an adult or if you were doing that with a child? What does that process look like?
Shaime:
So you would start with your pediatrician and then from there you get referred to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and then there's a series of screeners that they can go through, and then there's, even the teacher will get a checklist. As a teacher, I've gotten... It escapes me now, but there's a checklist that's 10 pages or so that we go through about all the different skills and the degrees of difficulty that the child has with those skills, and there's also one that the parent would fill out for at home. And then the psychologist will probably talk to the child and it's a process.
Shaime:
It's not something that's going to just be like, okay, you're, based on what your mom said, you must be ADHD. There's all these things that must fall into place, but there are screeners and things online that you can take yourself just to, okay, am I maybe?
Shaime:
Because a lot of times people, like neuro-typical people don't usually think, oh, I must be ADHD. Or I'm my autistic? Why am I having difficulty with all these things? So if you are thinking all the time, whoa, I really relate to these ADHD videos or man, that really, my kid does all of those things, you can do one of those online screeners and then be like, wait a minute. Maybe I do need to talk to a doctor if this is a thing or if it's something else.
Hanna:
What is your understanding, when I was also doing some reading in the last few months even as well, thinking even that it was talking about how boys are more likely to be diagnosed, and I was like... Let's talk about that because I think that it's socially influenced or we tend to think that girls are better behaved or they're not the squeaky wheel, so in my experience, that's not necessarily true, and I was really trying to dig and I was like, okay. That's a good question to unpack on a podcast because I don't know. I don't know if I believe that one. What do you?
Shaime:
I think the rates of diagnosis are going to depend on where. Right?
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
Either by country or by state in the United States, but it all depends. So a lot of times it could be cultural, like girls do tend to fly under the radar, and Dr. Brian calls it, you being like the, in reference to women, the ADHD unicorn. Right? Because a lot of times because of the social expectations and norms for girls, anxiety tends to become our coping mechanism, and because the people pleasing and we're afraid of failure and we're expected to be a certain way, then the anxiety masks the ADHD symptoms. So you might not see a girl jumping off the walls and this and that, and a lot of times, sometimes it's more slowly acceptable for a boy to do that, but it all depends on who the teachers are, parents, who's advocating for the kid, the psychologist or the doctor's experience with different children and how it presents differently.
Shaime:
And it's just, again, talking about that seriousness and really considering all of the things, and not looking at the kid just because they're a girl or they're a boy. Oh yeah. You're a girl. It must be anxiety or it's depression or it's a different disorder that's not ADHD. So there's this influx now of women that were diagnosed with anxiety, that were diagnosed with bipolar disorder or depression, and now they're starting to think, wait a minute. Maybe it wasn't that. Maybe it was ADHD this whole time. And in a way, I'm very thankful for social media for that because it's brought awareness to ADHD as a disability and condition that does affect girls too, and I think sometimes there is a little bit of a stereotype of what ADHD looks like or what's supposed to be.
Hanna:
Exactly. And the key in that study was like, they're more likely to be diagnosed. It doesn't mean they're more likely to have it. So I think that even that sort of can be misconstrued very quickly. What would be some typical obstacles that you see with the students that you are working with where ADHD is really impacting them in literacy? Let's talk specifically literacy. Where do you see that that's, and we can talk a little bit even about the executive functioning skills and things like that. Where do you see that impacting learning on a daily basis?
Shaime:
Talking about executive functioning. I really love that the active ear reading... We talk a lot about the reading rope and the simple view of reading in the reading science and science of reading communities, circles, but we haven't talked as much about the active ear reading, and what I love about it is that it does consider the executive functioning skills needed to be able to read well. Executive functioning is planning, organization, task persistence, task initiation, being able to start a task, and there's so much involved in being able to read and being able to write.
Shaime:
Think about what a kid needs to know a letter. They have to know its name. They have to know the sounds that it makes. They have to recognize the capital letter, the lower case form. They have to be able to write the capital form and the lowercase form. So as they're writing and forming, there's all these things that their brain has to do, and their working memory has to retain all of that in the process and they have to not get distracted, so it can be really debilitating in the classroom because it requires this level of focus that our brain is just, has such a hard time. Especially as a kid, while we're really little, in kindergarten, first grade, we don't have the coping mechanisms yet to be able to focus for extended periods of time, to be able to do all the things that we need to do, to be able to recognize that this letter makes this sound or to be able to form those letters.
Shaime:
And because, unfortunately, because of a lack of awareness and understanding of ADHD, a lot of times our kiddos that are ADHD tend to be like, oh, that one doesn't know to behave and there's a lot of kind of negative connotations, lack of motivation. This one is just behaves badly. She never stays in her seat. She's always talking. That's why she doesn't know how to read because she's just not paying attention, but really when you start to look a little more deeply at that kid, you're like, wait a minute. Put all the biases aside, start to look and be like, wait. What kid doesn't want to know how to read? They all want to know how to read, so what about what's going on in the classroom or what's going on with the kid is keeping them from accessing the content?
Shaime:
And when we start looking at unresolved problems and lacking skills, instead of the kids' behavior, we start to narrow down, oh, this child is struggling with reading because of these other issues that they're having, their inability to stay seated for example, as their teacher is teaching, or their difficulty with impulse control. I'm supposed to be [inaudible 00:13:37] manipulative, but you're like toys and they're so fun, so I've gotten distracted with them now.
Shaime:
So it can be very overwhelming as a teacher if you don't know anything about ADHD or anything about autism, because unfortunately a lot of programs, they have maybe what? One course about teaching students with disabilities, if that? Don't blame the teacher for that. It's not their fault. It's very difficult to be able to [inaudible 00:14:01] to teach students with disabilities if you have not been trained on how to do that appropriately.
Hanna:
I want to talk about two things too that kind of made me think about other things that you've shared on your feed, as well on Instagram, about ADHD masking. That's something that I think that I've been much more attentive as I'm working with kids in the last two or three years of really watching, what are they doing? What is that sort of, not just the behavior, and I don't mean behavior in bad behavior. I just mean it's how we move through the day. So what are those kinds of things?
Hanna:
Here's some of the things that I've noticed is they seem to be daydreaming and you can see that some teachers are like, come on, back focus, and actually a lot of them are trying to calm the chaos, all the thoughts racing, racing through their head, and sometimes they are zoning out because there's just so much. They're not sure where to be listening, looking, acting, so I think that that's something that I've really noticed quite often is watch out for the kids that are daydreaming and think of a way that we can redirect without just saying pay attention. What are some other masking, ADHD masking things that you notice that kids typically?
Shaime:
Masking our symptoms is usually because we have heard things like that so often. You're not paying attention again. You're not listening. You forgot that again? And it's that kind of like negative shaming. You start to internalize those things, so we start to mask our symptoms so that we don't get in trouble. So I know that even as an adult, I find myself, if I'm going to go to an important meeting, I have to give myself a little pep talk. I'm like, be normal.
Hanna:
Yeah, yeah.
Shaime:
Don't act like this. Don't act like that. Don't blurt out. I'm trying to tell myself all the things that I'm not supposed to do in the name of professionalism. But a lot of times our kiddos will, they have been in the education system for a long time, they'll just shut down, and I call it turtling. They'll take their hoodie, turtle in.
Shaime:
And as a teacher looking at that, you're like, oh, they don't want to do the work, but really it's that they are so afraid of not pleasing you or so afraid of hearing those things I've heard so often. I'm not smart enough to do this. I can't do this. It didn't come out right the first time. There's a post that I think they might be from The ADHD Alien about ADHD imperfection and how we struggle with making mistakes and accepting that it's okay to make a mistake, a lot of times in relation to these negative things that we've heard growing up. We weren't paying attention. We weren't listening. We weren't doing all these other things.
Shaime:
So masking your symptoms. A lot of times our kids will try to contain all the ADHD-ness, but a lot of times it just comes down as shutting down and they're just, I'm not going to do it. I don't want to, because if I try, I'm going to get distracted and then I'm going to get in trouble. So for me, it's really important as a educator, as a parent, because my little girl's five or six and I'm noticing it.
Shaime:
It's really important to affirm that they are okay the way that they are. You're fine as you are, and I'm going to be here with you through the whole process to support you. It's very important that as children are learning their executive functioning skills, like all the planning that goes into cleaning a room for example. I have to plan what I'm going to do first, the order that I'm going to do it in, what I'm going to clean, not get distracted in the process, but with my toys that are in my room, do it in a specific amount of time. Those are all things that are like, that's really hard for me as an adult. So for some reason we have this expectation of kids, I told you to clean your room. Go do it. But they're like six or seven. We have to support them through that process.
Shaime:
And it's okay to have that expectation that your room's going to be clean, but then support them through what that's going to look like. And even as an adult for myself, I have visual checklists because I have so many responsibilities, and it's not enough to just have a planner when you're ADHD. A lot of people, just use a planner. Listen. I have a graveyard of planners which I haven't used in my light.
Shaime:
That is not a quick fix, but I have finally figured out something that works for me, and I have these visual checklists and dry erase boards all over my house. So I do that for my ADHD friends at school too. And you have a checklist. These are the things that I need you to do. So a lot of times, even for, and I think I went, I got distracted, but a lot of times for assignments instead of where it says directions, I'll write, what do I do? And then I just step it up. One, two, three, four. So these are the four things I need to do to be able to complete this assignment, because a lot of times ADHD people or children with ADHD just don't know what done looks like. What is it going to look like when I'm done? I don't know.
Shaime:
So even taking a picture of their room. This is what your room should look like. These are the steps that you have to go through. The order doesn't really matter. We can go in any order, but here we go. This is what the end product's going to look like, and then even having a timer, and making it urgent, make it a game, make it fun. Okay, I'm going to start cleaning this side. You've clean that side. Whoever finishes first gets to go get a icy or something. There's all these things that you can do to support kids, and I honestly forgot what the original question was.
Hanna:
Oh no, I was, no, that's fine. I was just asking how do we support them? And when they're masking, we were talking about when they're masking, and then moving into sort of supporting, but that was literally my next question, because when I'm thinking about... You gave excellent examples at whole, so how do we, in the classroom, how can we really support?
Hanna:
And I love that. Maybe the directions don't need to be so wordy. Maybe they need to be more with, like you said, the checklist of first you're going to do this, so that kind of first, next, then, after that, kind of that phrasing really, if it needs to be sequential, but also I love that you said a lot of times it doesn't even really have to be sequential. It has to get done. And so sometimes that's, yeah, that's a piece of it.
Hanna:
So what would that look like in the classroom? I know even visually, there's some ways that we can support students, even when we think about how yes, people are having these beautifully decorated classrooms and yet it's so overwhelming for a child to look somewhere and get the answer. With my students, one of the things that I love to do, I'm not in the classroom anymore, but within in my tutoring is they have their own literacy journal, and so there's nothing on my walls that are posters that they have to look up to. We look and we have tabs on the pages for you. Did we have a vowel question or did we have a spelling question or did we have a whatever kind? And it's really helping them organize that, so they know where to go for the answer, not glancing up at the room.
Shaime:
Yes.
Hanna:
And if they do, they've taken their eyes off their work. Now I forgot what I was looking at [inaudible 00:20:57]. So what other kinds of ways? So you said give maybe a little checklist would be helpful. I'm saying have stuff at their spot where they're just looking at their own materials. What would be some other helpful tools for kids in a classroom?
Shaime:
I love that because I had a reading binder for my students because it was just, I noticed that once they take their eyes from their page to look up at the board and look somewhere else, in that little span of time, I've already gone and distracted what I'm supposed to be doing. So having that resource there for them, because we have to change our anchor charts out anyways, and then they're like, we were working on main idea last week. I haven't mastered that yet. Now, where do I look for that? It's in your binder. It's right there.
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
Also when you're having a timer, make sure to have a visual timer, one of those ones that has the red so they can see it actually moving, because it's difficult for us to visualize time. For me, I don't understand what it feels like, what five minutes feels like, especially if I'm really hyper fixated on something like super focused, three hours could pass and I don't eat any food and I'm perfectly fine, but then a five minute conversation, I can't focus and everything is all these intrusive thoughts, so it just depends. But having a visual timer is really helpful so that they understand exactly how much time they have for this specific task.
Shaime:
Being flexible. Modeling flexibility a lot of times as well. Oh gosh. I think her name is @dr.siggie on Instagram. She is absolutely amazing for those prompts as a parent or even as a teacher for how you can model frustration tolerance, for how you can model being flexible, because a lot of that, we have to show our kids so that they can practice. It's very important how we talk to ourselves because our children hear that. And also having those visual checklists and things like that for them to do, showing them exemplars of what it's supposed to look like when it's done, not necessarily the same assignment, but explicitly modeling what the expectation is and making sure they actually have their attention before you talk, and you don't have to be mean about it.
Shaime:
You can say, hey. I always tell my kids, and I'll wait. I'll get their attention. I say their name and I wait. I say, are you with me? And then I wait for them to look at me or whatever it is that this way that they show me, and they say, yeah. I say, okay. I'm going to give you directions, and I keep it short.
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
Real short. And I say, I want you to do this piece first, and they're working on that. And if I notice, you have to also be very observant of your kids, because if you notice that they're really struggling, really getting frustrated and they're about to shut down, it's really important that you build that relationship with them so that they are comfortable in letting you know, I'm really frustrated right now. This task is too much for me right now. What is something else I can do? And then jump back in it. And those are all words that we have to model for our kids. They're not just going to know how to do that.
Shaime:
That's when you get a lot of chair throwing maybe or different explosive kind of behaviors, because it's difficult for us, for ADHD people to regulate our emotions as well, so it's not just about attention and focus and impulse control. We experience emotions, very, very big emotions.
Shaime:
And something I forgot to put on the freebie was RSD or rejection sensitive dysphoria, where criticism for an ADHD person can be really like, it feels like the world is ending sometimes. So just be very cognizant of how you give corrective feedback to your neuro-divergent kiddos and make sure that it is feedback that is meant to be constructive and helpful to them, not just, and I can't think of anything negative right now, but we have to be very careful of the things that we say to them so that they can feel comfortable making mistakes in your classroom, so they can feel like they have the opportunity to grow and that you want them there in the classroom with them to be with you.
Hanna:
Yeah. I wanted to talk about too, something that I maybe didn't really understand for a very long time was the stimming that happens, and like the jiggling of the knee or the kind of twiddling of the pencil or sound effects. That's a huge one is either they're going or they're tapping, and I think that that's a lot of times corrected, over-corrected, and really that's their way of processing a lot of what's going on and they're very unaware of that. So how do we give students then the way to stim the way that they need to in their work and not distract the 20 other somethings that are in the classroom? Because it's really common, really common. Yes.
Shaime:
I think that, but some educators might not like what I'm going to say, because they need to stim and they need to fidget, and a lot of times that's the way that we focus. So a lot of times I'm doing this kind of number. I'm spinning.
Shaime:
But not all kiddos will have fidgets or have been taught how to use them properly. I'm fidgeting with my ring right now to help me get my thoughts together as I'm talking. It's very easy to get distracted as I'm talking. But it's very frustrating as a teacher, again, because a lack of awareness of what ADHD is. They're not being bad. They're not making noise to irritate you on purpose. They're not breaking the literally erasers and turning them into little toys on their desk.
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
And that's mostly the most common one that I see because it's the most common object that they have. Right?
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
The pencil eraser, eraser caps, then you'll see them playing with little toys and things like that, or they make noise. I have... Oh, I love him so much. One of my students in my tutoring group right now, I was teaching him in third grade last year, and he would make velociraptor noises in the middle of class, and I would just honestly, like gentle reminders. Kate, my little dinosaur friend, let's get back on task, and he'd be like, okay. And he'd just focus back on what he was doing, but he and I have enough of a relationship that I can do that with him, but I'm not doing it every five seconds. Stop with the noise. Stop with the noise.
Shaime:
Also, teaching them that there's a variety of different ways that I can stim that might be less distracting. Also, having a calm down corner available with different fidgets and you're explicitly teaching how to use those fidgets because if you don't do that, they do appear to be toys. And a lot of them can be toys. I like the, oh gosh, it's a little pillow or a little toy that has a sequence that you can touch and it changes color from one side to the other. That is more of a quiet, doesn't make a lot, but sometimes it doesn't replace.
Shaime:
They're looking for sensory input, auditory input. They're going to tap. They're going to do these things. And sometimes it's just, okay, instead of tapping on the desk, let's tap on your thighs, because it can be distracting to the other students. But also another thing that we forget is we talk a lot about the ADHD student or the autistic student and doing all these things so that they can fit in our classroom, but we don't talk a lot about the neuro-typical children in the classroom and what they can do to be more accepting. Yes. Students that need to stim, they need to fidget, and say, this is just something that he or she needs to do right now to help them focus. It's okay.
Hanna:
And we all have something we do to help us focus. Everybody does that. It's just a different way that sometimes it may not be as noticeable to other people. Even shifting. We both at the same time just shifted in our chairs right now.
Shaime:
Yeah.
Hanna:
We're attending to each other and we've learned a different, and that's not distracting at all. And I think we can also just be more aware of keep those mini lessons short. They're mini. They're called mini lessons for a reason and then quickly to our spot to do something, and some of those ways of the interesting callbacks and the whole body...
Shaime:
The whole brain [inaudible 00:28:59].
Hanna:
Not the whole body listening, necessarily.
Shaime:
Right. Whole brain teaching, whole brain teaching.
Hanna:
But whole brain teaching. Right? Yes. Because some of those ways of really engaging the callbacks, and the turn and tell your friend that rule, and come back and things like that. The whole brain teaching is so good, and even incorporating whole movement breaks in your day, even every 20-ish minutes. And that might seem that you're like, oh, that's going to really interrupt the flow of the day. Actually, it's really going to benefit. Something that I say to my students all the time is if your bum is numb, your brain is probably numb too. Right?
Shaime:
Yes.
Hanna:
Because you're sitting there, and I see you squirming in your chair. Your brain's probably squirming too for some feedback and movement, so I think that's important. What are some common diagnoses that would go together with ADHD? I know you mentioned anxiety would be one. Are there some other ones that are more common?
Shaime:
Like comorbid?
Hanna:
Yeah.
Shaime:
Sometimes the anxiety forms as a coping mechanism to mask the ADHD symptoms. There are people that have both autism and ADHD.
Hanna:
Yep.
Shaime:
There are also people that have ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder. I think that a lot of times, and I don't have the statistics in my brain for this, but a lot of times it's a very severe or [inaudible 00:30:30] behaviors are often labeled as ODD, but they may, that without the person actually violating the background of the child, that they may have PTSD or they may have CPTSD, or complex PTSD, from traumas and things that they've experienced in their past. So it may not be ADHD, but the symptoms can be very similar, the inattentiveness, the impulsivity, the inability to stay focused on certain things. I can't function in the classroom the way that I'm supposed to, which is why it's so important, and I know it's not available to everybody and I wish it was, to be evaluated by a doctor, by a psychologist that really is going to take in not only the symptoms that the child is presenting, but also understand the child's background, because I've only ever taught in Title 1 schools, and man, I'm telling you there have been some really traumatic things that my children have experienced. I had one student show up to school after his brother was shot in front of him, and he came to school that morning.
Shaime:
So these are things that psychologists teachers, school psychologists need to consider when going through the evaluation process. It's not just about whatever was written on the MTSS papers. It's not just about all the checklists that everyone filled out, but what has happened in this child's life? Is it ADHD or is it something else? Because the treatment is going to be different based on what it is, and I think too often we look too much at the behavior and we jump to conclusions on what that is. I don't know if that makes sense, but I think that-
Hanna:
Yeah. Totally. Yeah.
Shaime:
Go about the process a little differently, because sometimes it's not ADHD. Sometimes it's something else.
Hanna:
I have loved chatting about ADHD with you from your own experience of as yourself, but also working with the students in your classroom, and your experience is just so wonderful. Thank you for sharing so much constantly on Instagram about it too, because it really helps me go down sort of some of those little rabbit holes of, oh, I need to understand that a little bit more, and I go follow that person, and so I appreciate when you take the time to share and that it enlightens all of us to be able to get a snapshot into that space so that we can actually have a little bit more empathy and the strategies to go with it. So I appreciate you. Thank you so much for spending time with me today.
Shaime:
Thank you so much for letting me share. I appreciate it.
Hanna:
All right. Take care.
Shaime:
There are also people that have ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder. I think that a lot of times, and I don't have the statistics in my brain for this, but a lot of times it's a very severe or [inaudible 00:30:30] behaviors are often labeled as ODD, but they may, that without the person actually violating the background of the child, that they may have PTSD or they may have CPTSD, or complex PTSD, from traumas and things that they've experienced in their past. So it may not be ADHD, but the symptoms can be very similar, the inattentiveness, the impulsivity, the inability to stay focused on certain things. I can't function in the classroom the way that I'm supposed to, which is why it's so important, and I know it's not available to everybody and I wish it was, to be evaluated by a doctor, by a psychologist that really is going to take in not only the symptoms that the child is presenting, but also understand the child's background, because I've only ever taught in Title 1 schools, and man, I'm telling you there have been some really traumatic things that my children have experienced. I had one student show up to school after his brother was shot in front of him, and he came to school that morning.
Shaime:
So these are things that psychologists teachers, school psychologists need to consider when going through the evaluation process. It's not just about whatever was written on the MTSS papers. It's not just about all the checklists that everyone filled out, but what has happened in this child's life? Is it ADHD or is it something else? Because the treatment is going to be different based on what it is, and I think too often we look too much at the behavior and we jump to conclusions on what that is. I don't know if that makes sense, but I think that-
Hanna:
Yeah. Totally. Yeah.
Shaime:
Go about the process a little differently, because sometimes it's not ADHD. Sometimes it's something else.
Hanna:
I have loved chatting about ADHD with you from your own experience of as yourself, but also working with the students in your classroom, and your experience is just so wonderful. Thank you for sharing so much constantly on Instagram about it too, because it really helps me go down sort of some of those little rabbit holes of, oh, I need to understand that a little bit more, and I go follow that person, and so I appreciate when you take the time to share and that it enlightens all of us to be able to get a snapshot into that space so that we can actually have a little bit more empathy and the strategies to go with it. So I appreciate you. Thank you so much for spending time with me today.
Shaime:
Thank you so much for letting me share. I appreciate it.
Hanna:
All right. Take care.
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Connect with Shaime Corets-Vega @drcorteswrites
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