Year 8 son, suspected ADHD/ODD, 3-year wait for assessment. He refused his first detention today — advice please.

[SweatyLama]

Hi everyone, I need some help with my Year 8 son. He has ADHD and has been on the specialist waiting list for over 3 years. The school is aware of his needs, although we don't have a formal diagnosis yet.
Last Friday, he was given his first-ever detention for lateness, scheduled for today (Monday). Last year, I managed to help him get to school on time, but this year he has started reacting aggressively to my help. Any reminders to get up, finish breakfast, or stop "staring into space" result in him shouting, calling names, and remaining in a trance-like state. This led to his 10th late arrival of the year, and I received a message that he had to attend a 30-minute detention today.
When I told him, he reacted extremely negatively. He said he wouldn’t go and said that he wished he could do bad things to the people who issued the detention. He has now come home and admitted that, as promised, he did not go to the detention.
He is currently very upset and crying, but still refuses to attend any makeup detention. I suspect his ADHD is complicated by ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder), even though he’s had a clean behaviour record for all 8 years of school until now.
Which tactic should I choose?
Be my son’s "advocate": ask the school to cancel the punishment and provide support, considering these issues aren't his fault but a result of the lack of medical help?
Support my son in his decision not to go?
Are there any other options?
My arguments that it’s easier to just sit through the 30 minutes and try not to be late in the future are completely rejected. What would you do in my position?

Support is not reliant on a diagnosis, but on evidence of need. However, your son will need to deal with things he doesn’t want to do plenty of times in his life. Being on time is necessary when at work and losing your temper with people because you disagree with sanctions, won’t go well.

If he gets a diagnosis of ADHD and ODD, he may be helped by medication, but there will still be things he won’t want to do I imagine.

Unfortunately, your pragmatic suggestion of sucking up the 30 minute detention hasn’t met with his approval. Having failed to attend that detention, the school may well escalate it to a further sanction and so on. I’m not sure that you can argue that the issues aren’t his fault and due to the lack of medical help, because you haven’t yet seen a medical professional.

I think he needs to know that some things, whether you like them or not, are necessary. Being at school on time is one of them. How can he be helped to get there on time, so he doesn’t get a late detention? What about sanctions at home if he’s late? What will motivate him to be on time?

If he has managed all through primary school and year 7, what has changed to make it so difficult now?

In primary school, I was much more 'hands-on'. I’d even go as far as putting his socks on for him because he would just zone out staring at his foot if he tried to do it himself.
In Year 7, I tried various strategies like checklists and phone reminders. However, this year, any intervention from my side is met with extreme negativity. I believe this is linked to puberty and the transition into his teens. He wants more independence and autonomy, but he simply cannot manage the practical side of it yet.

Also, back in primary school, the school brought in an educational psychologist. They provided a set of recommendations for both teachers and us as parents on how to support his learning and help him manage his frustration

Yes, puberty will be having an effect, but there are non negotiables, especially if he doesn’t want to get into trouble. Are the recommendations from the EP with the secondary school and being used to support him? It might be worth contacting the SENCo to see what strategies are being used and what can be added/ removed to help him in school.

It’s very crap he’s been waiting so long for his assessment. My son got his assessment before Xmas and he’d been on the waiting list since yr 5. (I chased his position on the list every month since he started y8 as despite liking school the hormones were kicking in and changing behaviour)

Does your son like school? (I mean once he’s there, no one likes getting up to go anywhere!) Has he got lots of friends? Getting on well with lessons? How big is the school?

if that’s all pretty positive, I’d take a supportive stance. Maybe take him out (driving range, maccys etc) and tell him he’s not in trouble and you’re on his side. Ask him if he’s got any ideas or if he wants help. The neutral space and offer of help could be enough to start to solve the problem without losing face/activating the ODD button. I’d be looking to dodge the detention but get him to identify what he can do to rectify the lateness (such as, to get to school on time I need to leave the house at 8.15am. If I am going to be late, I will ring the school office to advise. I aim to prove I am serious by not being late again this term). Basically, give him back some power and get him to be accountable.

He’s clearly upset by the whole situation and probably giving himself a really hard time internally - maybe even thinking something is really wrong with him/he’s stupid/bad person as the situation keeps happening. The more punishment and shouting that goes on, the more that position will be reinforced.

In terms of getting him motivated, it’s down to him. What works for us is that we have no screens or telly in the morning, only radio. There’s breakfast options to eat on the go. We keep school books downstairs and a school schedule pinned in the kitchen and we do a 10min run through of the week on Sunday. If he’s stuck in inertia in the morning, I will embarrassing dance/sing/perform/loud fart to get him smiling. It’s very hard to fight with someone who is twerking and embarrassing themselves.

Set him up for success. He’s gonna have to get himself to places on time for the rest of his life. He’s probably never going to pack his bag the night before but there will be something that works for him

Does he have a support plan with school? Ishe getting any help from the Sen department eg help with executive function difficulties, mental health support, help with managing homework etc?

Are his teachers aware of his needs - you say school is, but has this been passed on to all his teachers?

Have you made school aware of how difficult he is finding getting out of the door in a morning?

I would suggest that you request a meeting with the sendco - either they are aware and the support he has isn't working, or there is no support plan and he needs one!

Apply for DLA
Use the money to pay for private assessment
And then for private medication as it's unlikely to be accepted by GP

I got some pictograms for the morning. There's a picture of clothes, breakfast etc and then a velcro spot to put a green tick on when dd has done that. She gets a dopamine hit, and I'm out of the equation. Do you have a time timer? We've also found setting alarms on phones helps as it takes us out of the equation.

Are you sure it's possible ODD? Sounds more like PDA to me, which is more "can't" than "won't". My daughter has PDA.

There are lots of strategies for dealing with PDA but it isn't easy if they won't cooperate.

I suggest you go private for a diagnosis as this will help.

I believe the primary school must have passed on some information to the secondary school, as I was recently contacted by the IDP Co-ordinator. They sent a parent questionnaire asking how the school can best support my son.
If I understand correctly, this co-ordinator is exactly the person I need to speak with about new strategies. I’ll send them an email right away.
Thanks so much for the advice! x

Thank you so much for the advice and support. You seem to handle things so well! I really need to learn from this, as my current support doesn’t seem very effective and often feels like it's doing more harm than good.
My son does follow the 'no gadgets in the morning' rule, and he actually packs his bag the night before. But even then, he’s late. He stays in bed for a long time or just sits and daydreams after his tea. In the mornings, he’s in such a state that even jokes can trigger him, though I’ll definitely try your 'embarrassing' approach!
Sadly, he doesn't really have friends. He’s only recently started playing Minecraft with some peers and went out with them for the first time last weekend. Last week, he couldn't find a partner for pair work in Chemistry and was too shy to tell the teacher. After loving his teachers in primary school, he now dislikes almost all of them in secondary. He takes even the smallest, innocent remarks to heart.
I’ll try to have that chat about 'rectifying the situation', but right now he’s dug his heels in. He says he won’t go to the detention even if it leads to exclusion.
I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I just don't have a blueprint for this — in my own childhood, it never even crossed my mind that I could break the rules. x

My Parenting manual is to do the opposite of how I was parented. And I got a late adhd diagnosis, so I have these behaviours too.

i know very little about PDA/ODD, so only coming at it from adhd, but you or your son can certainly hack it to your advantage.

I used to motivate myself with shame. Just said the most horrible things to myself internally. Which reflected what all the adults around me said about me (hey dad!). I can read a tiny flicker of disappointment or frustration from a tiny eyebrow twitch across the room. And that isn’t a problem until it is.

Going to school every day is boring and tedious. And he’s too big now for you to put his socks on (although mine would still let me do this). You’re just going to have to try on stuff to see what works. Urgency, might be one of his levers - a “300 seconds” warning over “five minutes until you need to leave” feels far more urgent to me. Mine loves a hot chocolate/cup of tea on the way to school and putting the travel cup next to his shoes moves him along. Could he make a playlist which is exact and timed to the journey (gamification/chalkenge). Does he know his brain is working against him in the mornings? Does he know there will be a situation where his brain will be perfectly suited to succeed where others would find it intolerable?

is there a peer or mentoring group he could access locally? Can you join him/drop him off at a war hammer group so he can find his tribe? (I will defend this community with my life, they are good people. My nephew was terrified about trying this club but the welcome was seamless ). It is red-flagging to me that he didn’t say anything to his teacher over the science partner. I projected for so long that I could do everything on my own and admitting I needed support was weakness. But that was the very powerful shame taking over. He’s still very young, does he want to change schools? Our local college takes kids at year 10 - I’d have bloody loved that independence even if on paper it would have been logistically more difficult to get to (it wouldn’t have been for me)

I would just pester the assessment service and the teacher liaison and be the squeaky wheel. Help him find a place or network that not school or home. Ps. The rules are just vibes, and you (and he) can totally bend them if you ask nicely.

this situation sounds so hard for both of you, but you will get him through this. Don’t laugh, but I found out so much from TikTok. Yeah, apply common sense but don’t discount crowd sourcing a pile of strategies that have worked for others. Take care

And why not let him sack off the detention? What’s the harm? They are not going to expel him and it’s not like one incident will entirely scupper his GCSE’s. Hes 12 or 13 and his nervous system is short-circuiting to freeze and fight. Hes cornered. He can’t make rational decisions or learn from this while he’s stuck in this loop. From what you said, despite his words, the person hurting from this situation is him. You mentioned you’re a rule-follower, may I suggest you out-do him in rule breaking? Why don’t you both sack off real life on a school/work day and do something fun and frivolous like rollercoasters or drive round a race track. Get out the mum box, be creative, make him question everything!

Most kids are pretty conventional deep down, imagine if you pre-agreed with his HEAD OF YEAR that you were going to tell the school to “F off” in an in-person meeting*. My kid would be in school 10 mins early every single day to avoid any possible scenario where his unpredictable and shocking mum might be called back in again. You know him best, what would be the last thing he’d expect…

*if you do this, never ever come clean it was a pre-arranged swear. Even when he’s 45. Go to your grave as a legend :)

you need to proceed with a diagnosis and some professional strategies asap.
meds may or may not be the answer.

my own plus my grandkids all have adhd and respond well to am exercise. although not available to everyone swimming is the best, followed by running and cycling. 20 minutes on the stationary bike/eliptical/treadmill will often help them focus for the am. it's not always easy to fit into the daily routine but can be a massive help as it stimulates dopamine and norepinephrine release.

I think you need to understand how his brain works as I don’t think you do. For a start stop telling him to stop staring into space is not going to be helpful in any shape or form.

The whole staring into space is because he has a busy mind and is a deep thinker. Ask him what he is thinking about - it’s a way of triggering him to be in the present moment. And then link what he is thinking about to what he needs to do.

People with adhd lose track of / get bored if the steps for an admin task are too long. Hence why a check list doesn’t work.

Also think about how you plan things - do you think through in your mind the steps and imagine doing them? Some people with adhd don’t do that naturally. The night before school ask him to speak out the steps in the morning - ask him to imagine himself doing x and then ask him what he thinks his next step would be. He needs to learn a routine to get ready off pat so he’ll do it automatically while his brain is busy doing something else.

and definately pack and get ready night before. Stick coloured stickers on spines of his books - Monday books get blue stickers, Tuesday yellow stickers etc. work out how many blue stickers books he needs so he can remember to look for that amount.

i think of adhd like driving a car, you fully concentrate when you get in it and reverse … but after 10mins driving becomes automatic and people balance that with letting their minds drift a bit to their thoughts. People with ADHD live their lives with drifting into thoughts and their bodies do things automatically. Train their bodies to do the steps they need.

also I would push back on the detention - schools do not punish dyslexic kids for spelling errors but they seem to punish adhd kids for poor exec functions and displaying the traits of their disability. There should be consequences but detention is basically shaming them for having adhd. It will lead to confidence issues and school refusal

@nodogz
Thank you, @nodogz . Your words really moved me.
I’ve just emailed the school to ask them to reconsider the punishment. I explained that the detention has had a very negative impact on my son and is only pushing him further away from our goal — getting him to school on time. I’ve also requested a meeting with the IDP Co-ordinator to discuss new strategies.
I told my son that I could be quite stubborn myself when I was younger! I told him that I also pushed boundaries, but I eventually learned where to cross the line and where it was better to just keep quiet, curse them under my breath, but act in my own best interest. He knows I’m not a fan of the idea of 'punishments' — I find them humiliating and ineffective. I told him that if I were in his shoes, the detention would make me furious too, and while I might sit through the 30 minutes, I’d probably keep being late just out of spite while I was still angry!
Interestingly, in the country where I went to school, they didn't punish children for being late like this.
I’m going to look and see if we have any Warhammer clubs nearby. Thank you again for all the advice and support. I know he’s finding things so hard and he is suffering, but it’s heartbreaking when I don’t know how to help and he won't talk about it.

My daughter is now yr 11. There was a stage where I felt she needed to be protected from the world but also the works needed to be protected from her (and her temper). She got into to trouble at school and I found it really stressful.

i think the thing to do is try and stay calm. The school need to have rules and he needed to learn to navigate them. Even if that is negotiating some leniency. If this is his first brush then he may decide to tough it out but the likelyhood is that he will calm down in time. It’s the tricky thing of standing with him and fixing it with him not for him.

Sending a handhold for you - he needs to come out of his shell and start learning himself . It’s normal for this age.

You need;
EHCP assessment
apply for DLA
Speak to LA autism team
read up everything on PDA
keep him on roll at school.

Where this story ends is probably in a different setting with a totally different approach and a much happier kid.

I have to say, how did you get to where you’re putting his socks on in y6 and yet not pushing like mad for diagnosis?

Can you help him rationalise that a detention for lateness is a small consequence compared to the adult world. For example a teacher being late every day would be sacked and have no job. The consequence of being late is a detention, to try and deter the lateness. A diagnosis won't be a free pass out of any consequence ever, so there needs to be a boundary somewhere.

Similarly, a diagnosis won't be a magic bullet. You need to parent the child in front of you. By asking school to cancel the detention, you're telling him it's OK to be late. PPs have given loads of great strategies you can try to get him there on time. If he wants to avoid the consequences, he needs to be there on time.

There’s a point where puberty and neurodiversity clash and everything becomes a trillion times more difficult. It sounds like you’re in the middle of that. I just want you to know that it gets better.

Often we tend to think that the future is dependent on how we react to their faults and failures and we forget that development plays a huge role. There are bits of his brain that haven’t grown yet. Just because he’s late to school doesn’t mean that he’ll be unable to hold down a job in the future.

I don’t think there is necessarily a right or wrong way to deal with this, as long as you keep communication and connection going.

My approach was to contact school on slow mornings and say we needed more time but would be in. Attending school at all was difficult and had been agreed as a primary goal so they were supportive. My son also has a pda/odd streak (not diagnosed but he’s instinctively oppositional which can be very brilliant when you’re not on the sharp end) and being allowed and supported to be late, mostly galvanised him to be on time. We really only had to use that concession when it was truly needed.

But that was possible because I have flexibility in the mornings, because his school isn’t accessible by walking or cycling and he relies on lifts. In other circumstances I would have had to approach it differently.

He's 17 now and vastly improved at the self management skills - his brain had to grow those capacities.

This "trance like state" - have you considered epilepsy/ absences?

Thank you for the advice. If I understand correctly, the system in Wales (where we live) works slightly differently.

1. Regarding the IDP/EHCP: I actually emailed the school today and the IDP Co-ordinator replied saying they have now flagged my son’s file so he won’t receive any more late detentions as a reasonable adjustment. They also sent me a parent questionnaire to ask how I think the school can best support him. To be honest, I was hoping the school would be the ones offering me advice on strategies!
2. About DLA: I’ve seen this mentioned twice now. Am I right in thinking you can apply for DLA without a formal diagnosis? We only have evidence of need at the moment, so I’m not sure how to approach the application.
3. Regarding the Autism team/Special school: My son doesn't have autism, and he’s actually doing well academically. His teachers haven't had any issues with his behaviour in class for 8 years, so I don’t believe a special school is needed. He just needs support to manage the executive dysfunction in a mainstream setting.

It has been very difficult to speed things up.

Last year, I couldn't even find out where we were on the waiting list! My GP didn't know, and the numbers on the letter went unanswered. My husband eventually found someone who confirmed he is on the list, but they just told us to wait. If anyone knows how to 'push' the Welsh health boards, please let me know.

This is very common in neurodiverse teens.

the school clearly recognise this, which is good.

yes you can apply for DLA without a formal diagnosis. The more paperwork you have the better generally.

in terms of getting him into school - strategies will vary depending on whether the issue is executive dysfunction or not wanting to go.

executive dysfunction - body doubling, book into breakfast club if there is one (my kids had breakfast at school for years), pack bag night before with you so ready to go, folders for each subject book and homework, rewards for getting dressed etc - we used chocolate buttons.

not wanting to go - depends on why. Get Senco/equivalent to circulate his plan again. Practice conversations with teachers at home to build confidence. Any academic issues, bullying?

Also you say there has been a questionnaire to ask what school can do.

you say he has no friends so put that on the questionnaire. Ask if he can access any sen space at break or lunch and if they can do anything to try to help him with this - suggest a club for him, give him some time in a social skills group etc.

teachers - say he takes negative comments to heart and is really struggling. Ask for some positive feedback that he can be given.

Finding out where you are on the list is something that is gatekept in my area too.

You've had some great advice. I would push for whatever adjustments the EP recommended. A soft landing at school might also help, eg going to SEN support rather than mainstream tutor group, and having somewhere quieter to go at lunch and break. Often there are things quietly going on at school that you don't know about until your child is offered them. Great that the coordinator has adjusted for the detentions. I think that bodes well, but the key is to get ahead of it with adjustment if he is not coping, and not just chase it down when things have already gone too far awry. I think quick wins are very important here. One of the challenges with SEN parenting I find is that you are fighting multiple battles on different scales at the same time. EHCP great, but it'll take 6 months, quick wins important to stop things falling apart in the meantime. They are both critical path in their different ways.

Your relationship with him, his trust in you, has never been more important.

You may be able to negotiate some deal with him eg you'll drop him in on PE days or pick him up on Tuesdays & Fridays. It's a nice way to send the message that you are supporting him & he doesn't have to do it all alone, while impacting on you less than if you are having to react to regular crises.

If he is at the end of his tether it might not be the time to introduce new hobbies. He might not have the bandwidth. He might need to do less to start with until he has the social battery for new activities. Maybe look for some fun things he could try in the summer.

Talk to SEN department.

Go to your GP and tell them horror stories. They can refer you to a community pediatrician who will have yo write a letter and although she /he cannot diagnose for ADHD as this is CAMHS she/he can include in the letter that ADHD is suspected. This letter will help at school

Consider doing assesment private but with the place recognised by NHS. This is important.

Ensure he eats sugarless breakfast as it affects his mood. Very important is that he sleeps enough. If he cannot fall asleep ask GP for melatonin small dose. If you lucky they will prescribe.

Focus that he meets expectations for all the subjects he will have to take at GCSE.

Learn to " F*ck it"- being late is not the worse thing in life