ADHD!! What would you do??

You asked what to do: I think first thing would be some information gathering. 9 year olds aren't always the most reliable informants.

As a teacher, she should absolutely NOT have said that. I’ve had children in my class get diagnoses and their parents still haven’t told them immediately.

As teachers, we should always be following the child and family’s lead on sensitive topics like this.

The teacher may have a child with ADHD herself.
She may have ADHD herself.
It may have just slipped out.
I'd probably start from the assumption she was trying to be helpful.

No, she was extremely grateful. Given she was already in special provision in another town, 10 miles away, while her twin sister was walking to our local school, and she was having psychotherapy four times a week at CAMHS from age 5, she knew she was very different from her twin sister - and felt a failure. That is way more than “struggling at school”.

She barely understood a word we said, and certainly not abstract words like “different”; and we struggled to understand her. She knew that.

I would in the first instance talk to his teacher about how you don’t want DS to know about possibly having ADHD until a diagnosis has been given (and find out the context of the conversation he had with his teacher). Schools are much more open about discussing and supporting neurodiversity than in the past, a good thing IMO and it might have been a general discussion to the group/class rather than aimed at your child.

Also, won’t your DS be curious about why he’s meeting with paed/psych in a hospital/clinical setting? Won’t you have a conversation about it beforehand?

Really? Surely telling a 6 year old they've got brain problems is way worse? Isn't it enough to tell her that her brain (and many other people's brain, some estimates put ADHD at 10% of pop) works differently to some other people's brains. Or even just don't talk about brains at all and just emphasise that everyone is different.

If a 6 year old is struggling at school the message should be everyone learns things in their own time and that's ok. The things she finds hard will seem easy in a few years time.

I told DD1, aged 6 who was questioning me, why she couldn’t do things in school that she was not stupid - she had brain problems. She was very relieved, as she already knew she was a failure in mainstream.

Children can have low esteem, because they feel a failure without knowing why. I can’t see the point in leaving them believing that, while you wait months/years for an assessment?

I think the teacher should have checked with you first before mentioning it.

But having said all this having been through assessment with a child, the assessors do insist that you have discussed the diagnosis and what it means with your child before having the assessment (this may just be where I live? And obviously if they're old enough to understand too, But it was NHS)

I would try and see her point of view. She was probably trying to help him understand that his behaviour wasn’t his fault. Maybe talk to your child from the point of view that he has areas of executive dysfunction and needs a test (or assessment if he will understand that) to find out what’s going on with him so he can get the best support at school. He’s old enough to not be left to feel like he’s just naughty/failing and you should have communicated with him more.

How was the teacher supposed to know you had not mentioned this to your DC unless you had told them?