To feel so sad for DD struggling with school.

[Sulking]

DD just finished her first year of primary school; at the start of the academic year she absolutely LOVED school. She was so so so excited not just to make friends but she’s was really excited to learn too. However; it quickly became apparent that her attention span isn’t all that great.

She not naughty at school; but she lacks focus severely - They’ll sit and do their phonics and DD get distracted by absolutely anything around her. She gets distracted during tidy up time which then lands her in trouble for not tidying.

It became such an issue that it’s made her not enjoy going to school anymore; she’s told me she tries to be good and to listen but her brain doesn’t let her and she doesn’t know why. She said she doesn’t like going to school anymore because she is always being told off for not concentrating or listening.

towards the end of the term they were doing more 1-1 with her which helped a little bit; and they have a specific room where they take children with additional educational needs. We’ve queried whether she might have ADHD and the school in all fairness have been absolutely brilliant in not just brushing it off; we of course won’t be able to go for a diagnosis of any kind before she is 6-7 years old, but they’ve put provisions in place and have said that they will put whatever provision in place that are needed to help her, regardless of any diagnosis. Which has helped me and my worries.. but obviously DD doesn’t quite understand and just thinks she’s naughty.

I do see similar behaviour at home too, she’s very easily distracted, very all over the place. She can be so so helpful, so kind and she is well aware of how to behave. But I watch her sometimes while she doing a task I’ve asked her to do, like tidy up, or throw something in the bin.. and she’ll be in the middle of said task and something will catch her attention that just pulls her away. It can be literally anything.

if anyone’s seen the movie up; she literally remind me of Doug when he sees/hear a squirrel 🤣 like she’s just zapped away from whatever she was doing.

but anyway; there’s obviously a lot of posts up from groups I’m apart of, friends and mums from her class asking about how everyone first year has gone and reading so many posts about how the children are absolutely loving school and thriving has just made my heart sink a little bit as I’m desperate for her to enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy school as a kid and I promised I would do everything I possibly could to make sure my kids didn’t feel the way I did and I just feel like I’m failing her already just a year in.

How can I help her? I feel a bit lost I’m not even sure what advice I’m expecting.

I would absolutely push for an ADHD assessment. If she has it, she simply won’t suddenly start concentrating.

if the teachers have pointed this out with 25 children (of the same age) in the class then it’s obviously something more than just “age appropriate”.

Girls are very easily missed for ND. Early diagnosis can support her future mental health.

My DD has inattentive ADHD and it's similar to what you describe. At that age I also noticed almost absence seizures where she would always be a split second behind everyone else in starting something. Like a "oh, right, we are doing this!" Moment happens in her brain as she realises everyone else already started.

Dd is now year 6. We haven't medicated but we do do lots of exercise before school, I noticed during lockdown that exercise hugely helped her focus. We walk 30 mins to school and do things like star jumps while standing i the queue and she does sensory circuits. We also give omega 3 daily and don't do screens during the week.

We also work with her a lot on the actual academics because she needs to be 30% in front of the class to allow for a buffer of her attention to drop. So we got her up the reading bands at home, we went through cgp maths books so she knows it before she does it at school. School then acts to cement the learning. That also gave her confidence which helped her mood around school. It also helped her to be seen as one of the brighter ones rather than the naughty ones. Labels stick and are hard to shed so I felt that was important.

Why did you not enjoy school?

Thanks all.
someone mentioned cutting back on screen time and to be fair we probably do end up having it on too much as background noise. They don’t do much sitting and watching as she’s too fidgety anyway, but we don’t tend to watch programmes either. If we do it’s usually older stuff like the OG does the explorer as it’s interactive, number blocks (because she does love numbers) or occasionally Bluey.. because who doesn’t love Bluey?!

she loves having a Disney movie on behind her while she dresses up and reenacts it for me in real-time so not sure if this counts as screen time or play 🤣

Im also a bit worried about year 1, they school are very 50/50 on which way the think she will go. Whether the structure and more sit down time will aid her rather than hinder her. But knowing a large part of why she isn’t enjoy school is because of the amount of time sitting down doing phonics (I thought it was a couple of hours at least by what she was telling me early on.. to find out form the teachers that it’s only 20 minutes a day split into two 10 minute sections) 🥲

thanks for all the reassurance; I’ll book in with the GP so they can at least start looking into it as I have heard the waiting lists were long! I just didn’t realise we could go before she turns 6 ☺️

OP mine can't filter out distractions. One thing that will become very, very important at school is that she is sat right in front of the teacher during any input.

I had chronic anxiety, separation anxiety and generally just didn’t feel like I retained any information and felt like I was just plodding along behind everyone else academically.
I ended up coming out with very average GCSE’s, I just want DD to enjoy school in general and not sweat the small stuff.

Sorry, I missed if she was a summer born? Agree with lots of activity for ND kids, climbing is great but other things can be fun even if they are not sporty, I agree with a pp that it helps regulate. Remember the human brain is actually much better attuned to reading at around 6. My slower to learn readers did better at school than the one who was fastest to learn. Make sure she has things to do that she enjoys out of school or it becomes an unrelenting life of dreading school and feeling you’re in trouble or not measuring up. I wish schools had more space and smaller classes and time for physical activity. Because we are seeing the consequences of kids going from sedate lives at home to cramped schools, with a heavily academically focussed curriculum and it disengages so many kids.

Disclaimer, I was a non sporty kid who loved school but I realised as I got older I was in a minority. I also grew up pre screened and when kids still played all the time.

I think some just take longer to focus and sit still. I had a similar worry with dd. But her year 1 teacher reassured me around 20% of the class were like that. As time went on two of those were diagnosed with ADHD. But four just focused better as time went on. I found reading really helped dd. Once she was onto books she'd sit for hours reading. She did really well in her GCSEs and A levels in the end. She is a physical person I'd say though. Would hate a job that was all desk based. If she has got ADHD it doesn't affect her much. Give her time.

Hey! Sorry someone did ask if she was a younger one. Shes not she’s one of the older ones.

I think you’ll know more in year 1 as the expectations re learning ramp up. If she’s currently expected then there doesn’t feel like an immediate thing to worry about re attainment.

It is also worth doing some reading up in adhd in girls. It seems to present very differently to boys but the big thing to watch out for is self esteem. I’ve been worried about the possibility of adhd in one of my children. She’s beautifully behaved at school so the school don’t think that is the case at all but she meets a number of the potential criteria especially at home when she’s not masking. You are unlikely to get anywhere with an assessment unless school thinks it’s likely. In my area they closed the GP referral route all together- you can only refer via school.

However, there is a huge spectrum of ‘normal’ and there is just every chance my child (and yours) is just energetic and imaginative and has different interests. My two children play very differently and have different energy levels. The high energy one is natural born leader, always has ideas, loves dress up, group games, loves being outside, very rarely finishes a craft set or artwork and never enjoyed the process of building Lego. My other one will sit for hours drawing, loves building, would happily do maths sheets for fun. They have very different strengths and skill sets.

The high energy one has found primary hard and often dull as the focus is on the things she finds harder (grammar, spelling) with less time on the things that she really loves (history, science).I suspect will come into her own at secondary and more so in the workplace. The second one fits the model of what does well in primary.

Loads of reception kids struggle with concentration. My ds was the same.

Kids tend to have very short attention spans, and a noisy unsettled classroom is very distracting.

is your dd still unable to focus whilst the rest of the class is quiet? Reception is often a bit chaotic and it’s somewhat up to the teacher to create that calm atmosphere where kids can concentrate.

what is your dd like when you do school-type activities at home? We had to practice with ds, building up his powers of concentration at home - even then I can see his mind jumping about and I have to gently draw him back into what he’s supposed to be doing. You can say “we are going to focus on this handwriting task for 5 minutes then you can run off and play. Focusing means you need to be sitting down on the chair, not fiddling with things, and you need to be listening to me and thinking only about this task. If you focus, we will get it done quicker and you’ll learn better.” Then lots of praise for staying on-task. Occasionally I would speak very firmly to ds and say “I know you can do better, so stop mucking about.”

The way we did it was with handwriting and phonics practice - some games-based, some copying out and tracing letters, some learning through reading.

Reading is easier because books naturally get a bit longer as Y1 progresses so before long you’re reading for 15 minutes without noticing.

In year 1 my ds found transition incredibly hard because of all the distractions and the change of expectations. I asked his teacher to keep him separated from his friends during lessons so that he didn’t chat and mess about so much - this helped.

Give it a go for six months - practice extending concentration doing difficult tasks . Then if you know it can be done at home, then you can say whether it’s possible at all

oh and I agree with pp about physical exercise - it helps enormously. I try to do a 15 min hard bike ride with ds on a loop to school so he’s really “got the wiggles out of his system” before he’s expected to settle down.

Sounds like my dd at that age snd she is adhd. It’s hard I found lots of outdoor parks in nature garden and dancing and martial arts classes really helped her to burn the energy and focus better. She struggled with organisation and being in busy messy places as she got older so I start work on those things.
try not to worry she will get lots of help in state school there are lots like her.
she may be dyslexic and that’s why struggles with phonics as my dd was too. Not reading till 7 but now teaches early years she can spot the signs straight away but the teachers are banned from commenting until they are 7. All will work out. ADHD makes for fabulous early years teacher as will other jobs .

My little boy (7) has autism and ADHD. In year R he was seen as the naughty one, who wouldn't focus and never sit still and always distracted. He always said he tried to be good and didn't know what to do to be good. As the year went on things got worse. He went to year 1 and by Xmas was starting to hate school. In january school refusal started and he was escaping school every day. The school could not cope with him and were threatening to permanently excluded him. Anyway, long story short, we moved him. The new school took all his diagnosis onboard and have put so many extra provisions in place for him along with thearpy. He still rarely sits in class and listens, he will be walking around the room or swinging on his chair or something totally random, BUT they say he is listening and taking everything in. He has breaks when he needs it and also goes to the hall to run off his heightened emotions.

I think what I am trying to say in this long post is to talk to the school on day 1 of year 1. Don't let the school make your child feel unsupported to the point they do not want to go to school. Ask them to put together an individual learning plan showing all provisions and support. And also, ask your child what school can do to make it a happier place.

I would say not to worry. She won’t be the only child like this. In practice, many children of that age have a shorter attention span. The trick is to treat attention span like a muscle. Just like with your body, you do various exercises to strengthen the muscle. The same is true for attention, but you need to build up attention and tolerance for different tasks. I would suggest over summer, invest in time doing tasks she really enjoys and is happy to do for a bit longer. If she’s better at being supported in activities and loses interest when you walk away, also work to scaffold getting her focused and then gradually giving her space. She needs to learn to focus on activities but also to focus alone. Those skills will then help her in building up the ability to pay attention to tasks that don’t interest her as much, when you start the school year again.

for now, rather than push things over the summer I would suggest organic activities like going to the library, reading books, playing games which maybe have a phonics component, etc.

You will really notice a huge difference once you’ve worked on building up that ability to concentrate AND to work independently which I suspect is going to be part of the issue as well.

Firstly I'd say she's very little, and they do all mature at differrent rates, so try to allow a little time to see how she develops. Secondly I'd say that diagnosis or not a lot of techniques that work well for neurodiverse brains also work well for neurotypical brains, so watch some videos on youtube or get a book from the library to get some tips, but off the top of my head (from a family with ADHD, AuADHD and ASD diagnoises) I'd suggest:

• 'tidy the playroom' - as an instruction this is really broad and time wise is quite long and we'd all intepret this slightly differently. Be specific, even if this means breaking down the task into really small steps 'put away the lego' then when that's done 'put away the books' and so on.
• Instead of full sentences try using single words, it can feel really blunt especially if you're neurotypical, but saying 'socks' gets socks on ready to go out the door much better than 'put your socks on'
• Single stage instructions work better 'get your bag' rather than 'get your bag and your shoes on then get in the car'
• TV. So this is a really interesting one. Firstly having it on in the background won't help a neurodiverse child to concentrate on a task or what you're saying, it's an extra distraction they need to work around. The classroom can be similar, Billy is talking, Charlie is tapping her pencil, Lucy is crying and James is rocking on his chair, it's a very busy environment that doesn't make it easy to focus, so reduce the clutter (visual, autitory, sensory) if you can. Have you heard of the spoon theory? If all their spoons are going on trying to mask or concentrate they run out a lot sooner than if they have an environment that is working with them rather than against them. The other thing about the tv was raised with me by an ed psych but I've never forgotten it. If you think about some of the tv programmes you watched as a kid, and even more so that your parents watched as a kid, and try to watch them with a child now who is used to modern tv, they don't focus on them, certainly don't enjoy them. They cover similar topics and the same kind of humour, but if you watch them apparently now the average time between scence change or camera angle is 7 seconds, it used to be more than 40 seconds. Kids tv now chops and changes (scenes, viewpoints, camera angle etc) very quickly or uses sounds and lighting which are startling to keep kids attention, it's not the child's fault, but it does lower their attention span the more they watch of this kind of programming. Watch some of your kids shows and see which ones chop and change the most and try to wean off them (youtube shorts are also a nightmare for kids who struggle with concentration) to shows which operate from a fixed viewpoint (programmes recorded as live tv can be a good place to start)
• Try to focus on the positives of school. So when she comes out first question is phrased as 'what was good about school today' or 'tell me the best bit about your day today' and she'll probably tell you 3 or 4 things most days, only after that do you ask 'anything not so good today?' (one of these is phrased to assume something good happened, even if it was lunch or they played a good game at break, it doesn't give her brain the oppertunity to turn negative, whereas the other asks if anything bad happened and she can say 'nope, all good!' if nothing was actually wrong with the day)

I hope in time she finds strategies that work for you all and it's also possible that with a different teacher in September they'll teach in a way that suits her learning style better too. Good luck

Oh bless her. As a woman finally diagnosed with ADHD after 44 years and an 11yo with the condition, I can empathise!

Firstly, the school is right in saying it’s too early to assess. It’s is 6-7 at the earliest. You may want to think about saving some money if you can for assessment, as waiting list here are 2+ years and we had our son seen in weeks by paying. However, a good school shouldn’t need a diagnosis to make adjustments and support her, and it does sound like your school are saying that, which is great!

I agree with others, for now relax and enjoy the holidays. One thing to bear in mind is how much neurodiverse children mask at school to cope with expectations. They need extra decompression time at home, so make sure her holidays allow time to play and relax.

I've got a similar child. She's 12 now.

There's a book you might find useful called "Smart But Scattered".

See how she is with reading etc.

My eldest has adhd symptoms but is more impulsive etc. And demand avoidant.
She i think chooses not to tidy up etc.

Its quite hard getting adhd diagnosis for a girl.
Possibly especially for a girl where similar to a pp we assist a lot at home.
We organise her bag, home work etc.

If the TV is on 2 hours in the morning and then again aftee lunch til dinner, that's virtually all the time! It's no wonder she has no attention span!

But is it sustainable? what is happening to the learning of all the other children when one child is walking round the classroom, swinging on his chair and doing 'random stuff' whilst the teacher is trying to deliver the input?

Well, clearly it is otherwise the school would put new measures in place. He is one of 6 SEN children in a class of 30 so not the only one. From your response you clearly don't have a SEN child or a child that struggles in school, otherwise you would understand.

What a dickish thing to say. Read the bloody room. 🙄

Adult with ADHD here! I'm going to assume she has ADHD too, and suggest ideas based largely on my own experience.

First of all, well done for being on this so early. I flew under the radar - a very typical girl with ADHD who would have likely been caught early today. She will have struggles, as you've already observed her confidence waning, but the fact that you've caught it early will do wonders. I highly recommend reading Understanding ADHD in Girls and Women to inform your journey.

In terms of how she feels about reading, it's early days. She might not get the hang of it until she's 7 (later than that would be a concern), and until then it can be frustrating and dull as ditchwater. I didn't get it at all until I was 7, and then it clicked and I went from 0 to 100. I was suddenly able to read books that I loved TO MYSELF, and once that happened I didn't stop. Even though your daughter sounds like she's on track, until you can read what you want it can still be boring and uninspiring - not the best if you have ADHD.

Until then, maintain a love of stories and reading by reading to her. It'll help with elements of reading for her even though she won't be doing the phonics. Library visits are brilliant, and a good rainy day activity. She'll be able to pick whatever and discover what inspires her. If she's a fairy-princess type girl, I recommend the Rainbow Magic series. Personally I can't stand them (I was more into pirates as a child), but my daughter loves them. The Twits by Roald Dahl is wickedly funny and has nice short chapters and pictures.

In terms of confidence, try and find out what grabs her attention. The "Attention Deficit" part of ADHD is misleading - it's more of attention inconsistency. People with ADHD can "hyperfocus" for hours. If your daughter does have ADHD, she'll likely do this.

The summer holidays is the idea time for her to explore different hobbies and find out what will keep her hooked. Different arts and crafts. Kid's mechanical-type building sets. Lego doesn't use words in their instructions. Different books from the library (see below). Jigsaw puzzles (my library has a puzzle swap so after the first puzzle it's free), board games (especially strategy ones that might appeal to her mathematical brain), puzzle books and logic puzzles. Buy her a cheap tin whistle or a recorder that comes with a how-to book. I learnt to read music using the tin whistle before I learnt to read words properly - and if your daughter is good at maths and shapes she may find it as easy as I did. Once you find her passion, you've found something that she can be proud of and build her confidence.

Re: TV. That is a lot of TV. Waaay too much on weekends during term time, and too much for every day during the holidays (I know it can be hard!). The above activities should help reduce that. For background noise, try replacing it with radio (talk or music), music or audiobooks. Instead of putting a Disney Movie on, use a Disney soundtrack (her dressing up for you sounds so cute). If you're streaming, disable autoplay.