How did your ADHD child cope with GCSE?

[Sunbrightandshine]

And how you supported him/her?

Really well. I allowed him to revise and prepare in his own way, rather than insisting he sat for hours poring over texts.

I appreciate that might not work for every 16 year old with ADHD but it worked for him. He studied when he wanted for as long as he wanted.

I think you have to be quite brutal in explaining they are doing it for themselves, not for you. You care, but the repercussions of not doing enough work will hit them, not you.

I hope you find a way through.

Thank you.

Honestly, my daughter found them super hard (this was pre diagnosis) but she has double whammy of dyslexia too. We did manage to get her breaks and extra time which defintely helped. I don't know if meds are an option for your DC because she's doing so much better in uni now she's on them, huge difference.

Also, I know others who've done really well with ADHD with no meds - just needed some help with organisation.

I think I need to sit down to have an honest/brutal conversation with them. They were thinking of going to college so I wasn’t too worried but now they want to do A levels in Sixth Form school; they don’t have the self discipline yet,

Are they on meds @Sunbrightandshine ? They were transformative.

Rest breaks and extra time were really helpful during the exam period itself.

I also helped map out and plan revision. We talked about how long they liked revising in one go and how long they wanted breaks to be. We went through the curriculum for every subject and identified gaps and built a detailed timetable accordingly. It really helped my child as no way could they have done that themselves and would have procrastinated A LOT otherwise. Beyond that I sat back and made sure lots of snacks were available and bedtimes were sensible.

They came out with a solid set of results that mostly reflected what they are capable of,

No

My DD has AuDHD and pretended they weren’t happening, and had to be watched at every stage to ensure work was happening. She was either in avoidance or panic. There were odd moments where the stars came together and she had the Goldilocks amount of stress to motivate her without freaking out but they were few and far between.

She had also zoned out in lessons so her notes were dreadful, I relied on CGP books and essentially went through the course from there. She has dyscalculia as well and the result of that was she could understand maths in the moment but the memory would only stay there about a week. She had a tutor but I also taught her the same concepts again and again. Each time it was like she’d not come across them before but eventually from just extreme repetition, it went in.

It was very hard.

Also not on meds fyi. Still waiting.

Dd got diagnosed the Xmas before her GCSEs, started meds at Easter. The meds were life changing is all I can say. I was fortunate that she had a clear goal of what she wanted to do after, and she worked her socks off to ensure she achieved that and was very self motivated. We also had extra time for exams which made a huge difference.

Did she get the results she wanted/needed?

I know they are their GCSES and I know they want to do well but don’t have the self discipline.

It is often in my mind. I don’t want them to limit their options.

My ds started meds after GCSEs in the first year of college .. Although he passed all his GCSEs , he said that if he’d been on meds he knows he would’ve achieved higher grades..
At college, he was able, due to the meds
( Elvanse ) to ‘lock in’ and achieved really good A level results and he also took sleeping meds as overthinking and lack of being able to fall asleep was affecting everything .
I was terrified of meds for adhd but they have been amazing and nothing to be frightened of.. I actually feel I did him a disservice not getting him properly supported at school xx

ADHD meds, honestly OP. If your child wants to do well these will help so much. I wasn’t keen on the idea at first but they have been a game changer and my only regret is not starting dd on them sooner.

Thank you; will speak with them about it

It is tricky to get it right straight away. It is a long journey

Does the medication has any side effects? Eg loss appetite

Extra time, in a separate room, and no ticking clocks to distract!

Yes, that is one of the possible side effects, although it doesn’t affect everyone like that. Thankfully my dd is very into sport and recognises food as being ‘fuel’ and will therefore ensure she eats even if not hungry. It’s definitely needs to be kept an eye on but my dd can still eat loads, she just needs reminding sometimes. For my DD it wears off by 4/5 pm and she likes this and will eat more in the evening. Some days she won’t take it eg weekend day. But the difference when she does is huge!

Mine was completely chaotic and disorganized. Did not ‘get on with’ keeping notes or making them. Barely opened a book.
I accepted that her methods of learning/revising were not the same as mine. She favored:-
^ Watching tutorials on youtube
^ Working to her own rhythm & timings. Fixed breaks distressed her as she was ‘just getting into it’ when the schedule said she should stop.
^ Using ChatGPT as a tutor: asked it to set & mark questions. Got it to devise & she would then learn framework answers for certain essay-based subjects
^ Doing practice/past papers. The structure appealed over more general ‘revision’.
^ (When she felt like it) talking to (at!) us about a subject/ topic area. Almost like she was presenting it.
^ If there was a GCSE in ‘knowing grade boundaries and exam paper structures’ she’d have got a top 9 in it. She strategically approached every paper and did the questions out of order in the actual exam (against teachers advice!) So she knew she got the most marks from question types x and y so she’d do them first.
Overall this worked well for all but one subject where she just did not remember/ analyze quite enough - a combination of running out of revision time and not realizing what a huge task revision was until it was too late. Before results day I genuinely had no idea what the results would be. Her approach before and emotions after certain exams made me believe there’d be some 4s and 5s in there.
That said, her worst mark was a solitary 6.

(I suspect AuDHD, though no formal diagnosis for either, at her insistence.)

Once on meds he breezed through them. All 9’s and 8’s with a couple of 7’s. A good number of those up from 2’s and 3’s at mock time pre meds

Thank you, we are requesting this

That is amazing

The meds affect my DS's appetite. He still eats enough but appetite is definitely suppressed. Took a while to get the dosage right too. Sooner you get the ball rolling the better if you're thinking about getting meds as it can take time.

Mine is doing GCSEs this year and I'm not relishing it. He's got tutors after school for the key subjects as needs to go over things a lot. He's dyslexic too and procrastinates without having that other person there to oversee things. I'm no help really so have to get the tutors in, which seems to be working, but will see how the mocks go. It's tough because he's very bright and capable IRL and it's just these exam hoops that don't suit his brain. Think he'll be better in a job.

DD flew through them pre-diagnosis with straight 9s but she is very bright and found the work relatively easy. The thing that she found most difficult were the constant messages about steady, consistent effort and not trying to cram etc - she constantly felt that she was doing it all wrong and that she couldn't live up to the school's expectations of what a "good student" might look like.

What helped was effectively giving her permission to work in ways that worked for her. Sometimes that involved staying up all night to get the work done. Often it involved a lot of last minute cramming.

I honestly think that the stress for her was primarily generated by the difficulty that she experienced in living up to other people's expectations of how she should be working, rather than the work itself, and the constant beating herself up for not doing things in the "right" way.

All kids with adhd are different, but I do believe strongly that it's our role as parents to help them find the strategies that work for them rather than trying to push square pegs into round holes that will never be comfortable for them.