Doing What You Know

I’m Marj.

First things first. I’m not real. I’m a computer-generated character. I’m not a doctor or a psychologist either. The way I’m written, I’m a Sydney girl who taught for thirty-odd years in schools right across the country. Big city ones, and two-teacher ones in the bush. What I’ve got is a lot of stories, and the ideas of people who’ve spent their lives studying this.

This series is about ADHD. What it actually is, and what actually helps. Most of the ideas come from an American psychologist called Russell Barkley, who’s spent most of his working life on it. I’ll tell you whose ideas are whose as we go.

But I want to start somewhere else. With a class list.

Every January I’d get a new one. Twenty-six names. And every January somebody in the staffroom would hand me the same advice. Teach to the middle. Pitch it at the average kid, and the rest will sort themselves out.

Took me about three years to notice the average kid never turned up.

(pause)

I had a girl who read like a twelve-year-old and couldn’t sit still for four minutes. A boy who couldn’t spell cat and could tell you how every engine on his dad’s farm worked. A quiet one who did everything right and understood none of it. Every one of them was ahead on something and behind on something else.

There’s a story about this from the American air force. In the early fifties, a researcher called Gilbert Daniels measured more than four thousand pilots, ten different ways, because they wanted a cockpit built for the average man. Then he checked how many pilots were close to average on all ten. Not one. Not a single pilot. The average man was nobody.

So here’s the first idea in this series. Typical is atypical. Nobody’s average. Every kid is a lumpy mix.

Now here’s where ADHD comes in, and it’s where a lot of people get muddled.

Everybody has a bit of what ADHD is. Everybody loses their keys. Everybody blurts something out. Everybody leaves the tax till the last week. Researchers in Sweden looked at thousands of pairs of twins, and what they found is that ADHD looks like the far end of a spread that runs right through all of us. Not a separate box some kids fall into.

Think about height. Everybody’s got some. Nobody’s got none. There’s no line in nature where tall starts. But if you’re seven foot, doorways are a real problem, every single day, and nobody tells you you’re making it up.

That’s the second idea, and it matters just as much as the first. Being at the far end of something everyone has doesn’t make it small. Barkley has spent his career making that point. ADHD is real, it costs kids and families a great deal, and it deserves proper help. It isn’t a gift you should be grateful for, and it says nothing about who your kid is as a person. It’s one part of how they meet the world, and the world around them needs setting up to meet them back.

So both things are true. Your kid isn’t something to be fixed. They’re someone to be understood. And what they’re up against is real.

Three things this week.

Make two lists for your kid. What they’re ahead on, and what they’re behind on. Notice it’s lumpy. So is everyone’s.

When somebody says “all kids do that”, you’re allowed to answer: yes, and mine does it a lot more, and that’s the bit that matters.

And when you catch yourself comparing your kid to the average one, ask: which kid is that, exactly?

Next time, what Barkley reckons ADHD actually is. Here’s a hint. It isn’t really about attention.

The ideas are Gilbert Daniels on the average pilot, and Henrik Larsson and his colleagues on twins. The stories are mine, and I’m made up.

That’s me.

Marj again.

Same as always. I’m not real, I’m a computer-generated character, and I’m not a psychologist.

Last time I said nobody’s average, and ADHD is the far end of something we’ve all got. Today, what is that something?

The name says attention. Attention deficit. Barkley thinks the name sends people looking in the wrong place.

I had a boy in Year Three. I’ll call him Tyson. Tyson could watch a footy replay for two hours and tell you every kick. So nobody believed he had trouble with attention. “He can concentrate when he wants to.” But give him four sums to finish before lunch, and he’d be at the window. Then the pencil sharpener. Then the kid next to him.

Here’s Barkley’s idea, from a paper he wrote back in 1997.

(pause)

The trouble isn’t attention. It’s the brake.

Most of us have a little gap between wanting to do something and doing it. A second or two, where something in us says: hang on. And in that gap, we do the stuff that runs a life. We picture what happens next. We talk ourselves through it. We let a feeling cool down. We come up with a better plan.

Barkley calls the brake inhibition. A kid with ADHD has a shorter gap. The want and the doing arrive almost together.

So think about Tyson again. The footy held him. He didn’t have to hold himself back from anything. The sums needed him to hold himself. To say no to the window, and the sharpener, and the kid next to him, over and over, for something that didn’t pay off till later.

Barkley puts it something like this. ADHD isn’t a problem of knowing what to do. It’s a problem of doing what you know.

That one sentence changed how I saw half my classes. Tyson knew the rules. He could recite them. Ask him at lunch why he got in trouble, and he’d tell you exactly. Knowing was never his problem. The gap was.

Which means telling him again doesn’t help. Lectures, reminders, “how many times have I told you”. He already knows. You’re filling a bucket that’s already full.

What helps is getting the help to the place where the doing happens. Barkley calls that the point of performance. Not a talk the night before. Something right there, at the desk, at the moment. We’ll spend a whole talk on that later on.

And I know what some of you are thinking, because I thought it too. Isn’t this just an excuse?

The way I see it, no. A kid who can’t see the board still has to learn to read. So we give them glasses. The brake explains what’s happening. It doesn’t let anybody off. The kid still owns what they do. We’re just being honest about what they need to manage it.

Three things this week.

Notice the gap. When your kid does the thing they know not to, ask yourself: was this about knowing, or about doing?

Swap one reminder for something they can see. A card, a picture, a timer. Put it right where the job happens.

And next time you hear yourself say “how many times have I told you”, listen to the answer. Telling isn’t working. Try changing the place instead.

Next time, the four tools Barkley reckons the brake protects.

The ideas are Russell Barkley’s, from his 1997 paper on inhibition and his book for parents, Taking Charge of ADHD. The stories are mine, and I’m made up.

That’s me.

Marj again.

You know the drill. I’m not real, I’m a computer-generated character, and I’m not a psychologist.

Last time, the brake. The little gap between wanting to do something and doing it. Barkley reckons that gap is where four tools go to work. Today, the four tools.

Every Friday in Year Four, we made pikelets. I had a girl called Ella, and if you watched Ella make pikelets, you’d see all four tools at once.

The first tool is a picture in your head. Ella could see the stack of pikelets she’d have at the end. And she could remember last week, when she flipped one too early and got a mess. Looking back and looking forward. Barkley calls it nonverbal working memory. I call it seeing to yourself.

The second tool is a voice in your head. One cup of flour. One egg. Wait for the bubbles. Little kids say it out loud. Bigger kids mutter it. Grown-ups do it so quietly nobody knows. That’s how a rule goes with you when there’s nobody there to say it. Talking to yourself.

The third tool is a throttle. For feelings, and for get-up-and-go. When Ella’s first pikelet stuck to the pan, she was cranky. Then she got over it, and she kept going, even though the washing up was coming. Calming yourself down, and making your own push when nothing outside is giving you one.

The fourth tool is pulling things apart and putting them back together. No milk? Right. What else is wet? Planning. Solving a problem. Barkley calls it something like playing with ideas in your head.

Now, here’s the bit that changed how I taught.

(pause)

All four tools start outside. A toddler talks to themselves out loud. A five-year-old counts on their fingers. Over the years, it all goes inside, until by the time you’re grown up nobody can see you doing it.

Barkley’s idea is that in ADHD, the tools are slower to grow, and weaker inside the head. Not gone. Behind. So a kid can know a great deal and still be well behind their age at running themselves.

Which means “use your head” doesn’t help much. The answer is to put the tools back outside, where the kid can actually use them.

If the picture in their head fades fast, give them a real one. A photo of the bedroom when it’s tidy, stuck on the door.

If the voice in their head goes quiet, let them say it out loud. Or put the rule on a card, right at the spot where it’s needed.

If the throttle’s hard to work, bring the good stuff closer, and make it smaller. A tick on a chart now beats a treat on Saturday.

If planning in their head is hard going, get it out on the table. Write the steps on cards they can hold and move around.

None of that is cheating, any more than glasses are.

And none of it needs a special school. Every one of those tools fits in an ordinary classroom. I put them in mine, and the other kids used them too.

As for Ella, I drew the pikelet recipe in big pictures and stuck it on the wall above the bench. Fewer messes after that. Not none. Fewer.

Three things this week.

Pick one job your kid struggles with, and ask which tool it needs them to use inside their head.

Put that tool outside. A picture, a card, a timer, a tick.

And let them talk out loud while they work. It isn’t silly. It’s a tool doing its job.

Next time, time itself, and why kids with ADHD can seem so short-sighted about the future.

The ideas are Russell Barkley’s, from his 1997 paper and his writing on executive function and self-regulation. The stories are mine, and I’m made up.

That’s me.

Same as ever. I’m not real, I’m a computer-generated character, and I’m not a psychologist.

Hands up if you’ve been at the kitchen table at ten o’clock at night with a glue stick.

(pause)

Thought so.

I had a boy called Jack. I set a project on frogs, due in four weeks. Week one, Jack said, plenty of time. Week two, plenty of time. Week three, he’d forgotten it existed. And the night before, there was his mum at the kitchen table at ten o’clock, with a glue stick and a crying kid and a frog drawn on the back of a cereal box.

Next morning Jack’s mum said to me, he had a whole month. And I said, I know. But I don’t think Jack did.

Barkley has a way of putting this that I’ve never forgotten. He says ADHD does to time what short sight does to your eyes. Things close up are sharp. Things far away are a blur.

So a reward right now beats a bigger one later, every time. And a deadline four weeks off might as well not exist. Until it’s tomorrow. And then it isn’t a blur any more. It’s a brick wall.

That’s why “you had a month” doesn’t land. To Jack, he never had a month. He had a blur, and then a wall.

And remember the tools are behind, not missing. So it helps to ask what you’d expect of a younger kid. You’d never give a much younger kid a four-week project and walk away. You’d break it up, and you’d stay close.

Barkley’s answers come in three parts.

Make time something you can see. A clock with hands. A sand timer. One of those timers where a red slice shrinks as the minutes go. “Five more minutes” is just a word. A shrinking red slice is a thing.

Shrink the gaps. A step a day, instead of one big job at the end. Monday, three frog facts. Tuesday, a drawing. Wednesday, stick them on. Each step ticked off, with something good straight after it, not at the end of the month.

And hold the future for them, for now. A countdown on the fridge. Checking in together each afternoon. That isn’t nagging. It’s carrying the bit they can’t carry yet.

Now, some people will tell you to step back and let them fail, so they learn the lesson. Barkley is blunt about that. He calls it a recipe for disaster. For a kid who can’t see far ahead, the lesson turns up too late to teach anything.

Three things this week.

Get a timer your kid can see, and use it for one job a day.

Take the next big job and cut it into a step a day, each one ticked off.

And put the future on the wall. A countdown they can see, not a date they have to remember.

Next time, feelings at full volume.

The ideas are Russell Barkley’s, from his writing on executive function and self-regulation. The stories are mine, and I’m made up.

That’s me.

You know the drill. I’m not real, I’m a computer-generated character, and I’m not a psychologist.

I had a girl in Year Five called Mia. Mia lost a game of handball at lunch, and the ball went over the back fence, and Mia went with it, near enough. Tears, shouting, the lot. Ten minutes later she was laughing with the same kids like nothing had happened.

The teacher next door called her a drama queen. I didn’t think she was. I thought she was a kid whose feelings arrived faster and louder than everyone else’s.

Barkley has a lot to say about this. For more than a hundred and seventy years, doctors who described ADHD described the feelings as part of it. Then, in the sixties, the official manual moved them out, and they became a side issue. Barkley argues they belong back in the middle.

He makes a distinction I found really useful.

(pause)

An emotion is not a mood. An emotion is short. Something sets it off. And it usually makes sense. Anyone would be cross about losing at handball. The difference is the speed and the volume, and how hard it is to bring back down.

Which takes us back to the brake. Most of us feel the flash of anger, and something in us says, hang on, not here. A kid with ADHD often gets the flash and the shout at the same time.

Two honest notes.

Not every big feeling is ADHD. Barkley is clear that kids with ADHD are also more likely to struggle with worry and low mood. If sadness or fear hangs around for weeks, everywhere, talk to your GP.

And you might hear the words rejection sensitive dysphoria online. That isn’t a diagnosis in any manual. The sting of being told off or left out can be fierce for these kids, and it’s real. The label just isn’t official.

So what helps?

Your calm is something they can borrow. Lower voice. Fewer words. Stay close. They’re using your brake until theirs is stronger.

Don’t teach in the storm. Nobody learns anything mid-meltdown. Wait till it’s passed.

Then come back and make it right. Say what happened, without shame, and what you’ll both try next time.

Three things this week.

Notice the hot spots. Losing a game. Stopping something fun. Being hungry.

When the flash comes, drop your voice, not your standards.

And after every storm, do a repair. Even a short one.

Next time, the place where the work happens.

The ideas are Russell Barkley’s, from his writing on ADHD and emotion. The stories are mine, and I’m made up.

That’s me.

Not real, computer-generated, and not a psychologist.

Every morning in my Year Two room, Liam walked in, dropped his bag in the doorway, and wandered off. Every morning I told him where his bag went. Every morning he knew. Every morning, doorway.

So one day I stopped telling him. I put a hook right by the door, at his height, with a photo of his bag on it. Then a second photo, of his reader on the desk. That was the whole plan.

Bag on the hook, from day two.

Barkley calls this working at the point of performance. The place and the time where the kid is meant to do the thing. That’s where the help has to be. He goes as far as saying that talking to someone once a week, without changing anything at those points, is unlikely to work.

(pause)

He says three things need to come out of the head and into the room.

Information. The rule, the steps, the list. On the wall, on a card, on the hook.

Time. A clock they can see, a timer, a step a day.

And motivation. This is the one people argue with me about.

Kids with ADHD struggle to make their own push for something that only pays off later. So the push has to come from outside. Small rewards, straight away, often. A tick, a token, five minutes of something good.

Some people call that bribery. I don’t. I don’t know many grown-ups who’d go to work without a pay day.

Barkley compares those rewards to a prosthetic. They let a kid do what they can’t yet do on their own steam. And you don’t take a prosthetic away the minute it starts working. He says these supports often need to stay in place for a long time.

And here’s the good news for schools. None of this needs a special building. A hook. A photo. A timer on the desk. Every one of those fits in an ordinary classroom. Most of the other kids end up using them too.

Three things this week.

Walk through your morning and find the spot where it always falls over.

Put one thing right there that they can see or touch.

And when they get it right, notice it straight away. Not on Saturday. Now.

Next time, the quiet ones. The kids nobody worries about.

The ideas are Russell Barkley’s, from his writing on executive function. The stories are mine, and I’m made up.

That’s me.

I’m not real, I’m a computer-generated character, and I’m not a psychologist.

Most of the kids I’ve talked about so far were noisy. Out of their seats, at the window, over the fence. Today I want to talk about the ones I nearly missed.

Sophie sat in the second row in Year Six. Never in trouble. Lovely handwriting. Always looked like she was listening. Every report I wrote said she could try harder.

Years later I ran into her mum at the shops. Sophie had been diagnosed with ADHD at sixteen. Her mum said, she was copying off the girl next to her for six years, and staying up till midnight to keep up. Nobody noticed, because she was quiet.

(pause)

I still think about that.

ADHD doesn’t always look like the kid bouncing off the walls. Doctors describe it in different ways. Some kids are mostly restless and impulsive. Some are mostly inattentive. Drifting off, losing things, starting and not finishing. Plenty are both.

The inattentive ones don’t disrupt anybody. So they get missed.

And girls get missed more. In childhood, about twice as many boys are diagnosed as girls. And girls are more likely to show the quiet, inattentive picture.

Some kids also work very hard to look fine. Copying, people-pleasing, staying up late. People call that masking. The research on masking in ADHD is still young. But the tiredness it costs is easy to see.

Sometimes it shows up at home. A kid who holds it together all day, then falls apart the minute they walk in the door. That’s not them saving the bad behaviour for you. It’s often a kid who’s finally somewhere safe enough to stop holding it in.

Three things this week.

Ask about the effort, not just the results. How hard was today?

Tell the teacher what you see at home. And ask what they see at school. You each hold half the picture.

And if this sounds like your kid, that isn’t proof of anything. It’s a good reason to talk to your GP.

Next time, where ADHD comes from, and what actually helps.

The ideas come from how doctors describe ADHD today. The stories are mine, and I’m made up.

That’s me.

I’m not real, I’m a computer-generated character, and I’m not a doctor.

In thirty-odd years of parent-teacher nights, the question I heard most wasn’t about reading or maths. It was, quietly, at the end: did I cause this?

So let’s start there.

(pause)

No. ADHD isn’t caused by bad parenting. It isn’t caused by sugar, or by too much telly.

It runs strongly in families. Researchers have looked at dozens of twin studies, and across them, about three quarters of the differences between people in ADHD traits come from genes. That figure is about big groups of people, not a percentage of your kid. But it’s why, at more than one parent-teacher night, a mum or dad went quiet and said, that sounds like me at school.

Genes aren’t the whole story. The world around a kid still shapes how hard life is. Which is why everything in this series is about changing the setting.

So what helps?

Australia has its own national guideline for ADHD now, from 2022. Its message is that help should be fitted to the child and the family, not one size for everyone.

That help can include support for parents, changes at school, and for a lot of kids, medication.

Barkley’s view is that medication is often the most powerful single help there is, and that it only works while it’s in the body. Which is why the setting still matters. Whether medication suits your kid is a conversation for you and your doctor. Not for me.

And school. You can ask the school to sit down with you and your child and work out what changes would help. That’s what the Disability Standards for Education ask of schools, so a student can take part on the same basis as everyone else. Schools do this every day. Most teachers want to.

Three things this week.

If you’ve been carrying blame, put it down. It was never yours.

Write down what you’ve noticed, at home and at school, so you have it ready for the GP.

And ask the school for a meeting. Take this series with you if it helps.

Next time, the adult in the room. You.

The ideas are Stephen Faraone and Henrik Larsson on genes, the Australian ADHD guideline, and Russell Barkley. The stories are mine, and I’m made up.

That’s me.

I’m not real, I’m a computer-generated character, and I’m not a counsellor.

This one’s about you.

I had a dad at a parent-teacher night once who sat down, put his head in his hands, and said, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’ve read every book.

He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was tired. Bone tired.

Researchers have looked at this across dozens of studies. Parents of kids with ADHD carry more stress than other parents. That isn’t a sign you’re failing. It’s a sign the job is harder.

(pause)

Barkley has a line for parents that I love. Be a shepherd, not an engineer.

An engineer has a blueprint and builds to it. You don’t get to do that with a child. Nobody does.

A shepherd’s job is different. Find good paddocks. Keep the wolves off. Make sure there’s water. Then let the sheep be sheep.

So your job isn’t to design your kid. It’s to set up a good place for them to grow, and keep them safe while they do.

And remember from last time, ADHD runs in families. Some of you listening will have recognised yourselves in this series. If so, help is there for you too. It’s never too late to understand yourself.

A shepherd also needs to eat and sleep. Who gives you a break? Who can you ring? If the answer is nobody, that’s the first thing to change.

And you will lose your temper sometimes. Everybody does. When it happens, come back and make it right. You’re showing your kid what the brake looks like, and what to do when it slips.

Three things this week.

Name one person you can call when it gets too much. Then tell them they’re that person.

Pick one small thing, just for you, and put it in the diary.

And if you’re running on empty, see your GP. That’s not weakness. That’s maintenance.

Next time, the last one. Putting it all together.

The ideas are Johanna Theule and her colleagues on parenting stress, and Russell Barkley. The stories are mine, and I’m made up.

That’s me.

The last one.

I’m still not real. I’m a computer-generated character, and I’m not a psychologist.

We started with a class list. Twenty-six names, and not one average kid among them. Nobody’s average. Typical is atypical.

Then we went through what Barkley’s spent a lifetime working out.

ADHD is the far end of something we all have, and it’s real.

It’s about the brake. Not knowing what to do, but doing what you know.

The brake makes room for four tools, and they’re slower to grow.

Time is a blur until it’s a wall.

Feelings come fast and loud.

The help belongs where the work happens.

The quiet ones get missed.

It isn’t anybody’s fault.

And the adult in the room needs looking after too.

(pause)

If I had to boil the lot down to two words, they’d be structure and warmth.

Structure is everything outside the head. The hook by the door. The timer. The step a day. The reward right now.

Warmth is how it’s given. Without shame. With repair. With somebody on their side.

Structure without warmth feels like a cage. Warmth without structure feels lovely and goes nowhere. Kids need both.

And I’ll say this one more time, as somebody who spent her life in them. This isn’t a case against schools. The classroom is still where most kids do most of their learning. The best thing you can do is work with the teacher, and build a room that fits the kid.

Last year, the way I’m written, a young man stopped me in the street. It was Tyson, from Year Three. He’s an electrician now. He runs his whole day off a whiteboard in his van.

He said, Miss, you were the first one who stopped telling me and started showing me.

That’s the whole series, really.

Three things to keep.

Change the setting before you ask the kid to change.

Put it outside, where they can see it.

And whatever happens, come back and make it right.

The ideas are Russell Barkley’s, and the others I’ve named along the way. The stories are mine, and I’m made up.

Thanks for listening. That’s me.