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... t of study in which the teacher talks and the students sit still, listen and take notes is also very difficult for the child with AD/HD. So are long written exams, evaluation methods requiring memory for details, learning by heart and many other characteristics of the education system in western society. Schools and teachers are bound to a curriculum and to certain achievement standards, their success depends on their ability to be up to these standards. Children with learning problems might hold the class back and teachers might react with hostility.
Moreover, the behaviours associated with AD/HD can be quite irritating even to the most understanding, caring and knowledgeable teacher and might again result in hostile feelings towards the child, even though the teacher might recognise that the behaviours is beyond the child's control. Economical issues influence many areas of life, and the school experience of the child with AD/HD is no exception. Lack of funds can account in part for the lacking education on AD/HD in the training of teachers but school budgets and the ways they are distributed have an obvious and direct influence on the child with AD/HD. Public education systems tend to suffer from chronic lack of funds. Classes range from 20 children per class in the best of cases to 40 or more children per class [ 4 ]. A single teacher in charge of a large number of children is unable to accommodate the special needs of one or a few children with AD/HD without neglecting the other children in the class.
Building more classrooms; employing more teachers. tutors and special needs professionals; and buying educational aids such as computers equipped with specialised software all require funds which are very rarely available to the school. When funds are available, they are often used for purposes considered more pressing or important than those of children with AD/HD or other problems. Even when a correct diagnosis is made, knowledgeable professionals are available and funds allow for a smaller class, tutoring or other forms of help, not always are the teachers or the people responsible for the curriculum willing and able to make allowances and changes needed by the child with AD/HD.
Some teachers still regard AD/HD with suspicion while others are too set in their ways to consider changing their educational approach. Changing one's perception of his job and work habits is a difficult process even when there is a strong will to change and sadly, not enough teachers are even willing to try. 'The solutions preferred by teachers... were centred on smaller classes, tougher sanctions and counselling for difficult youngsters. Changing teaching styles, curriculum and school climate were favoured by only two in ten' (Lane, 1990, p. 3). Because of the factors described here, the school experience of the child with AD/HD is very often one of discrimination, struggle, stigmatization, and abuse. Whether intentional or accidental, this negative experience can have a lifelong emotional toll.
Consequences of the school experience of the child with AD/HD It is difficult to distinguish between the direct consequences of AD/HD and the consequences of how child with AD/HD is treated by others in response to his AD/HD induced behaviours. For example, lack of impulse control can cause the child to behave in a disruptive manner in class: this is a direct consequence of AD/HD. The teacher will react to the disruptive behaviour by scolding the child, who will develop a negative self image. The negative self image is a consequence of the experience of life with AD/HD. School children are constantly required to learn new information, memorise, spell, calculate, pay attention, focus and behave properly. The child with AD/HD is bound to fail in many of these tasks.
Dropping out of school is perhaps the most direct consequence of recurring failure in school, and indeed, the dropout rate of children with AD/HD is higher than that of "normal" children (Weiss, 1992). In contemporary western society, where education is highly rated, low grades and incomplete education are disadvantageous starting points in life. AD/HD young adults find themselves facing many closed doors both in higher education and in the career world, but these are not the only consequences of a bad school experience. Much, perhaps most, of the damage is emotional and psychological.
Possibly the most common reaction of a child who is constantly told that he is stupid, lazy, not trying hard enough, bad, disruptive, immature, etc. is to believe these evaluations and develop a low self-esteem and a negative self image. 'Throughout childhood, at home and at school they are told they are defective. They are called dumb, stupid, lazy stubborn, wilful, or obnoxious. They hear terms like "space-shot", or "daydreamer" or "out in left field" all the time... Month after month, year after year, the tapes of negativity play over and over again until they become the voice the child knows best... This voice puts the child's self esteem down and down, out of the reach of the helping hands that might be extended, into the private world of adolescent self-reproach. '. (Hallowell, 1994, p. 17). 'By high school they almost had me convinced I has just plain stupid...
I would try. Believe me, I would try. I got lectures all the time on how I didn't try, but I did try. It's just that the biggest sledge-hammer didn't work... They'd tell me to try harder. Over and over again.
Try harder. And I'd try harder and it wouldn't work. After a while I figured I didn't have the brain to do it. And at the same time I knew I did.
But it just didn't work out. ' (Hallowell, 1994, p. 17). Self esteem can be damaged even when the child is occasionally told he is smart and can do well (when he tries) or when different people convey different messages. An inconsistent and contradicting message can as harmful a consistently negative one. Often the AD/HD child tries very hard to please and do well, in many cases without the desired result.
When effort is rarely rewarded, frustration builds up, to the point that frustration is almost constantly present and can be triggered by the smallest incident. Low self esteem and a low frustration threshold probably contribute to the high prevalence of depression among individuals who suffer from AD/HD. '... ADD and depression frequently coexist. This is not hard to understand when one considers the typical life experience of someone with ADD. Since childhood, the person with ADD has felt a sense of chronic frustration and failure. Underachieving all along, accused of being stupid or lazy or stubborn, finding the demands of everyday life extraordinarily difficult to keep up with, tuning out instead of tuning in, missing the mark time and again, living with an overflow of energy but an under supply of self-esteem, the individual with ADD can feel that it is just not worth it to try anymore, that life is too hard, too much of a struggle, that perhaps it would be better if life were to end than go on. ' (Hallowell, 1994, p. 157) 'Adults with ADD feel angry, frustrated, confused, and out of control.
They can be chronically depressed -- stuck in their grief, but grief over what they don't know. Their fear of failure... is enormous and repressive. And no wonder, when we consider how their lives have been filled with failure. Why would anyone so used to failure want to undertake new experiences or enter new situations that seem to set them up for more failure?' (Weiss, 1992, p. 41). Life with AD/HD can also be experienced as a perpetual trauma and result in a loss of the sense of identity and self: 'Cynthia was the over-controlled, passive type of ADD adult.
She had crawled far inside herself, away from the world around her. It...
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Research essay sample on Low Self Esteem Ad Hd
