Alex Partridge

Spurningar og svör frá Sli.Do

How would you advise a teacher to approach a teenage student who does not yet know he/she has ADHD?

I think the biggest thing is to approach the behaviour with curiosity rather than judgement.

When I was younger, nobody knew I had ADHD — including me. So if I wasn't concentrating, forgot something, talked too much or didn't do the work, the assumption could easily be that I wasn't trying hard enough.

The problem is, if a child hears that enough, eventually they start believing it.

So instead of saying, "Why haven't you done this?" I think there's enormous power in asking, "What's making this difficult for you?"

You don't necessarily need to tell a teenager you think they have ADHD. You're not there to diagnose them. But you can notice patterns, speak to the appropriate people in the school and create an environment where that student feels safe enough to tell you what they're struggling with.

Because quite often the child who looks like they don't care actually cares enormously. They've just spent years getting things wrong and might have decided it's safer to pretend they don't care than to keep trying and failing.

What are your biggest tips to stop masking?

I don't think you just wake up one morning and decide, "I'm never masking again."

For a lot of us, masking has been a survival strategy. You've spent years studying what other people do, editing yourself and trying not to be the person who's "too much", "too sensitive", "too loud" or "too weird".

For me, unmasking is more about noticing the tiny moments where I'm abandoning myself in order to make somebody else comfortable.

Am I saying yes when I want to say no? Am I pretending I understand something because I'm embarrassed to ask again? Am I hiding how overwhelmed I am? Am I changing my personality depending on who's in the room?

Then I try to make small corrections.

Maybe I say, "Actually, I need you to explain that again." Or, "I need a bit of time to think about that." Or even just, "No."

The goal isn't to never mask. Sometimes we all adapt ourselves to different environments. The goal for me is to stop believing that the unedited version of me is somehow unacceptable.

How can I help students with bad RSD take my feedback less to heart and instead use it as the improvement it is meant as?

For someone who experiences rejection very intensely, feedback can sometimes feel less like "this piece of work needs improving" and more like "there is something wrong with me."

So I think separating the person from the work is really important.

You can say, "I know you're capable of this. That's why I'm giving you this feedback."

And be specific. "This paragraph needs more evidence" is much easier to process than "This isn't good enough."

I'd also be careful about giving sensitive feedback publicly. If a student already carries a lot of shame, being corrected in front of their peers can make the emotional reaction much bigger.

And sometimes give them time.

If their nervous system has gone into fight, flight or freeze, they're probably not absorbing your brilliant feedback anyway. Let the emotion settle and then come back to it.

You don't need to remove criticism from their lives. They need to learn how to receive feedback. But you can help teach their brain that feedback isn't rejection.

How do you deal with ADHD paralysis? Any recommendations, maybe for students also?

The biggest thing I've learned is that telling myself to "just do it" almost never works.

ADHD paralysis can look like laziness from the outside, but internally you can desperately want to do something and still feel completely unable to begin.

So I try to make the starting point almost ridiculously small.

Don't "write the essay". Open the document.

Don't "revise biology". Put the biology book on the desk.

Then maybe read one paragraph.

I also use other people. Sitting next to somebody who's working can make it much easier for me to start. People sometimes call this body doubling.

And with students, I think teachers can help by making the first step incredibly clear. A huge task with a distant deadline can be overwhelming. "By tomorrow, I just want you to write the first paragraph" feels much more achievable.

Sometimes motivation comes after starting, not before it.

What would have helped you most, especially in school, to hear or experience to improve your self-esteem? Could your teacher have helped you in some special way?

I think I needed somebody to notice what I was good at before I became completely obsessed with what I was bad at.

School naturally measures certain abilities very well. Can you sit still? Can you remember information? Can you organise yourself? Can you complete something by a deadline? Can you perform consistently?

Those things were difficult for me.

But I was curious. I had ideas. I was creative. I could become incredibly interested in things.

I wish somebody had helped me understand that struggling with one set of skills didn't mean I wasn't intelligent.

Because children create identities from the feedback they receive.

If you're constantly forgetting things, losing things and being told to try harder, eventually "I forgot my homework" becomes "I'm useless."

A teacher probably couldn't have fixed everything for me. But one adult consistently saying, "There's nothing wrong with your brain. We just need to work out how your brain learns," could have changed an enormous amount.

How can we motivate students with ADHD who have stopped trying, without dismissing their struggles or lowering expectations?

I think sometimes "I've stopped trying" actually means "I've stopped putting myself in situations where I might fail."

If you've tried over and over again and the result is always disappointment, eventually giving up protects you.

Because if I don't try, I can tell myself I could have done it.

So I wouldn't immediately focus on motivation. I'd try to understand what happened to it.

Ask them: "What part of this feels impossible?"

Then make the challenge smaller without making the expectation smaller.

That's an important distinction.

You're not saying, "You have ADHD, therefore I don't expect as much from you." You're saying, "I still believe you can get there, but we might need to find a different route."

And then create opportunities for them to succeed again.

Because success creates evidence.

One completed piece of work becomes evidence that they can finish something. One good lesson becomes evidence that they're not stupid. One teacher believing in them becomes evidence that maybe they should believe in themselves too.

For me, that's the balance: compassion without giving up on somebody.

Sometimes the student who's stopped trying needs somebody else to hold the belief in them for a little while, until they're ready to hold it themselves again.