Misunderstood
For more than two decades I have been supporting students with ADHD in schools. Most showing up on my caseload because of handwriting or “sensory” issues. And staying for much longer than they needed to.
These bright and engaging students usually make rapid gains in our therapy sessions. However those gains never seemed to generalize back to the classroom. AT ALL. Despite my best efforts, strategies, equipment, and incentive programs, but nothing seemed to sustainably help.
Working in a small Pre K- 8th grade school setting, I would watch them go from grade to grade, slowly lose their shine. They were often labeled as lazy and non-compliant, or as “behavioral” students who just needed to try harder.
They would start hating school, start acting out, detaching and exhibiting behavior problems.
It was heartbreaking.
I felt powerless, thinking, “OT’s can’t help, we don’t treat attention problems.”
Turns out, while I understood these children really well…
I didn’t fully understand ADHD.
Engineering Environments
I then came across an article by a well-known ADHD researcher, Russell Barkley.
He wrote:
“Disorders like ADHD pose great consternation for the mental health and educational arenas of service because they create disorders mainly of performance rather than knowledge or skills.
Mental health and education professionals are more experts at conveying knowledge , how to change; far fewer are experts in ways to engineer environments to facilitate performance, where and when to change.”
That moment changed everything! We are the “experts in engineering environments to facilitate performance”. That’s what we do! My mindset completely changed, and I became empowered, determined to read, research and take every course and training I possibly could about ADHD.
I needed to engineer our school environment to facilitate performance for students with ADHD.
ADHD impacts occupational performance!
With a renewed understanding that “ADHD impacts occupational performance“, my entire school-based practice transformed.
I began working collaboratively with the teachers , supporting the teachers on behalf of my students and scaffolding supports at the point of performance.
I spent less time pulling the student from the classroom and more time supporting the teacher and the student in the classroom. The difference in my students’ classroom performance was remarkable.
Today I provide school-based occupational therapists with an actionable framework of interventions that can empower our general education classroom teacher and facilitate sustainable classroom performance for students with ADHD.
So glad you are here!
❤ ️Lori
About Lori Flynn
Lori Flynn is a practicing school-based occupational therapist with over 20 years of experience. She is a certified clinical ADHD rehabilitation provider, ADHD parent coach, ADHD parent, and has managed over 40 years of her own ADHD lived experience.
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