Secondary school/ADHD

[Mitchd1]

Hi we are at the end of our tether. Our 13 year has go into trouble on many occasions at school since year 7. There have been many detentions. She’s now in year 8 has been suspended for a day for swearing at a teacher. Totally justified because her behaviour is shocking, rude, argumentative, it’s never her fault. She has been to CAMHS because we thought counselling may help. She wouldn’t talk to them.The school have tried too putting measures in place where she’s struggling academically. A friend said she may have ADHD. I don’t want to put a label on her but I just want to help her. CAMHS said she’s just being a challenging teenager but it’s serious now as the school want to expel her if she carries on in this vein. Has or is anyone experiencing this or knows of anyone? Are their parents assessing their children for adhd and if so where did they go?

Not sure how much this helps.

I hadn’t realised but there are three types of ADHD. Girls are often affected differently to boys. My daughter is now 23 - only last year did we find out that she has inattentive and distractibility type ADHD. This condition is often missed in girls and their life is a struggle without them realising why. My daughter wasn’t violent at school but she became aggressive at home when she wasn’t coping. Often anxiety goes hand in hand with this condition. A full ADHD assessment requires a very long appointment with a specialist psychiatrist in order to be diagnosed. Extensive questionnaires are completed by both the child and the parent as behaviours when very young are also used as indicators of this condition and ADHD will only be diagnosed if certain behaviours were present as a small child. On the NHS, my understanding is that a wait for an ADHD assessment appointment is over a year long. I have a friend who waited a year and a half with her son. We went private - went on to the psymplicity health website where there are many different psychiatrist consultants to choose from. We went with Dr Tiangga who has been brilliant with my daughter. There used to be a scheme whereby you could book a private appointment for an adhd assessment but have the NHS pay for it - I can’t remember what it is called and I don’t know if it’s still active but it was a year or so ago ( we didn’t use it). I think to use the scheme you have to get a referral from your nhs GP first. Might be worth googling to see if you can find info on it. I understand you not wanting to label your daughter but I have to say, it has helped my daughter hugely to understand why she struggles in certain ways. She is a university student now and we have managed to get extra support for her due to the condition, to help her cope with her studies. I hope that you can get some answers and find something to help your daughter x