Supporting Children with ADHD and Dyslexia: Insights and Strategies for Parents and Educators with Susan Hughes

Jenny Cole: 1:02

Welcome to Positively Leading the Podcast. My name's Jenny Cole and I'm your host, and I'm really thrilled to have with me today Susan Hughes. Welcome.

Susan Hughes: 1:11

Susan. Hi Jenny.

Jenny Cole: 1:12

I'm delighted to be with you today, Susan is a really rare guest because she's not a leader in schools, but she's someone that I wanted to introduce to my audience and have her share her wisdom to my audience and have her share her wisdom. She in fact started out as a management accountant and then moved to Western Australia with her husband and her two children and found herself with the primary care responsibilities for her two boys, something that she'd not done back in Ireland. Her husband had previously been the stay-at-home dad and nothing in her previous 20 years in the corporate world had prepared her for that. When her oldest son was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, she went back to university to support him and through this journey, she needed to change her parenting approach, and this is the area that she's been working in and on for the last few years, and when she's not talking about ADHD, she is reading, hiking, mountain biking and model sailboat racing. Goodness me, susan, you're a busy woman. Welcome again.

Jenny Cole: 2:21

Thanks, I like diversity, yes indeed Share with us a little bit more about that story of your son getting a diagnosis of dyslexia and ADHD. How old was he and when did you first know he needed some additional support?

Susan Hughes: 2:40

Well, he was my first child, so, as with all first children, you don't know what you're doing. But when he went straight into kindy because we arrived halfway through the kindy year and in pre-primary the teacher flagged that he was a bit dreamy, didn't really really seem to pay a lot of attention to stuff. So that was kind of the first that I ever heard that there was anything going on because, as I say, first child, he was no different to me. That there was anything going on because, as I say, first child, he was no different to me. And then when he went into year one, because I'd had that alert, I think I wanted to be involved in the school. So I used to go in and help with the school reading. And one day a child was reading, I think, harry Potter or something ridiculous like that in year one and my poor boy was struggling to read three-letter, four-letter one. And my poor boy was struggling to read three-letter, four-letter words and I remember looking going, hmm, there's something going on here. So that was year one and he wasn't diagnosed with dyslexia in year one. He had a horrible year in year one because he came to the conclusion he was stupid Because everybody else could learn to read. From his perspective he couldn't. So clearly that equals stupidity. So his self-esteem started to go down really quickly in year one. In year two I was very lucky I had a teacher who was able to take stock, take me aside and go there's definitely something going on, it's dyslexia. Go and get him support. So he had five terms of that's all it took five terms of explicit teaching and because it's one-on-one and it's being taught the way he needed to hear it, he learned to read, but the damage was already done in terms of his self-esteem because he was behind and then that didn't solve everything. In year three it became obvious that he was still struggling and just the way the world works sometimes.

Susan Hughes: 4:21

I was friends with another ADHD coach and she actually mentioned ADHD to me first. Now I already was a coach. I had qualified as a coach before I moved to Australia because I knew I wanted to get out of the corporate world and I thought that's what I'll do, I'll do business coaching. And then met somebody else. I had gotten involved in the ICF board. I was their treasurer with my financial background. It was a great way to start in terms of getting to know coaches in Australia and I met another coach who was a parent coach, so I trained with her first and that was a light bulb moment that I can use my coaching skills within the family environment.

Susan Hughes: 5:00

And so, between that and the realization of something else going on for my son, that's what led me to go back to university, because my absolute pivotal moment was going into the teacher in year four and saying, right, he's diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, how are we going to support him? And she looked at me and said I don't know. And I went right, that's not good. So that was many years ago and I now know so much more about the education system and I actually am really respectful of that teacher with being honest with me and telling me she didn't really know what to do. I think that was in retrospect. That was massive honesty on her behalf. So that's what drove me back to university.

Jenny Cole: 5:40

Right, so tell us about your university study and what that helped you to realise about ADHD and dyslexia.

Susan Hughes: 5:48

So I think it was from my own son. Having such a difficult education, I got a real understanding of how incredibly important education is to me. It's one of my highest values and I hadn't really appreciated that until I watched my son struggle and I knew I didn't want to be a teacher as such. But I am passionate about further education, I love learning, I love learning new things, and so being able to pass that knowledge on to others to me was the way to go. So again, you know, when you look back on your journey, and I just met the right person at ECU and she directed me to doing a Master's of Education and basically she basically instructed me work hard for a semester and then you can transfer to research. So that's what I did me work hard for a semester and then you can transfer to research. So that's what I did and I transferred to research and I got to do a thesis and it was looking at the benefits of parenting, of coaching parents with ADHD. So that was just the most magnificent experience.

Jenny Cole: 6:38

I never cried so much as an adult writing the thing, but in terms of the depth of knowledge about coaching, about parenting and specifically around ADHD, and so that makes me quite unique in that I have that really in-depth knowledge which I then layer over my coaching qualification, and that's why I was really keen to have you on, because you have even though you've not been a classroom teacher and you're not a leader, you do have a depth of knowledge in education and coaching.

Jenny Cole: 7:08

And, uh, coaching is a bit of a bad name for me in the business circles, because we know what it is, which is about getting the best out of other people. So I'm sure when you're coaching parents, your job is to, you know, help them understand what they already know or, you know, promote them along. Um, in the business world it often means giving advice. So I must admit, when I first saw that you're a parent coach, I thought, oh, you were going in like super nanny to tell people what to do, and that didn't sit very right. But obviously you know you're balancing those fabulous educational qualifications and the coaching skills. What does a parent coach do? What would it look like when you're working with a family?

Susan Hughes: 7:51

So a huge part of ADHD parenting is actually the psychoeducation around it. So there's a huge component that I actually give to them in terms of fast forward them. This is what you need to know about ADHD how it impacts the child, how it impacts how they're actually performing, why they're not doing what they're meant to be doing. As you know from the classroom, if you're dealing with children in the classroom, so much of ADHD looks like a chosen behavior. They look like they're not listening, they look like they're not getting started on a task, they look like they're not finishing, they look like they're daydreaming, and all of that is actually as a result of the ADHD brain. When you understand that, you can then match your expectations to what they're able to do in the moment, because the other difficulty with ADHD it's a roller coaster of abilities.

Susan Hughes: 8:35

So what I often say to parents is your child may be able to tie their laces on Monday, but on Tuesday morning they can't do it, and that is so frustrating as a parent. You're looking at them going. You could do it yesterday. Why can you not do today? It's because of the ADHD brain. And the same thing happens in the classroom. You could do something yesterday. You could do this maths equation last year and you can't do it today. Why not? It's the ADHD brain. It's really complex to actually look at and it looks like a chosen behaviour, and so it's very frustrating to live with until you really understand it.

Susan Hughes: 9:08

Yes, and for parents and for teachers, it's the difference between I can't tie my shoelaces today versus I won't tie my shoelaces because it often looks like I won't do it and I'm being difficult and deliberately not listening and I'm not doing what you've asked me to do, and so what I do is I combine the education with the parental strengths and, in fact, with teachers I do the same thing. I combine it. What are your actual strengths and what can you actually lean into to actually maximize your strengths and match them with the child's abilities? Because when you combine those, it's really, really impressive, and you know, because at the end of the day, it's about finding a solution that works for the child. But you need to layer through, you need to look at it through the lens of ADHD. So that's what I say, that's what I basically teach parents you need to view everything they're doing through the lens of ADHD and if you are 100% convinced it's not ADHD by all minds, do something different. But you know what? It's always ADHD.

Jenny Cole: 10:04

Absolutely, and we talked about earlier, before we started, that neurodiversity is a bit of a buzzword. My worry is that ADHD has somehow got lost in that and now when we say neurodiverse, we only think autism. Do you believe that the strategies that you teach parents and teachers for ADHD are also useful, often for students with autism? Is there a crossover?

Susan Hughes: 10:33

There is. If you look at the Venn diagram, between autism and ADHD there's a huge overlap. But I fully appreciate I'm probably biased and I'm completely immersed in the ADHD world. But from watching my own sons get through school, the executive functioning weaknesses that are specifically for ADHD there is some with autism as well, but it's much more there, for ADHD impacts every single thing they need to do in the classroom, every single thing like planning organizations, sticking at something, getting started on something, working on consequences. All of it is executive functioning weaknesses.

Susan Hughes: 11:09

We know that the child with ADHD, their brain is developing slower, that executive functioning is 30% or three years behind their peers. That is a massive gap. Kids move into high school and the peers are 12 on average. Our kids with ADHD are 9 or 10. Like, that gap is just so big when you think of the expectations on those children and unfortunately the gap gets bigger as they go up through school because obviously the executive function becomes more developed in a neurotypical child and that's what causes the huge problems. If we're expecting the children to perform at the same level and they can't, that's where the damage to self-esteem and the shame kicks in, because then they're like well, there must be something wrong with me. I can't do this. That's what creates the greatest damage.

Jenny Cole: 11:56

So the executive functioning is obviously really important. Is there something that you'd like teachers to be able to know or do? That just might be helpful? You know small level resources or ideas that they can implement straight away. That might make a difference.

Susan Hughes: 12:15

Really it's. My belief is the first is you have to have a better understanding, I think, of the subtleties of ADHD. Now I think there is greater awareness in our community so we now know it's not just the hyperactive child. So, for example, my son was purely inattention, no hyperactivity at all, no emotional dysregulation at all. He was the typical dreamy boy.

Susan Hughes: 12:36

But as a result he found it really hard to get started on stuff. Really difficult to actually work through stuff, really difficult to complete stuff. Slow processing means they typically work slower, so potentially that can be perceived as somebody who just isn't doing it and so there's so much of it that is not understood deeply enough to see where the child is actually struggling to access the learning is actually struggling to access the learning. So I think the first point is actually back to the whole taking that child aside and actually trying to figure out with that child what's actually stopping them. Now I fully appreciate how incredibly difficult that is if you have a class of 32. But the whole thing about it is if you can solve what the underlying problem is, it goes away. But if you're constantly asking that child to do something and they don't have the ability to do it, then it's just going to continue for the full year.

Jenny Cole: 13:24

Yes, yes. And are the strategies similar for the inattentive child to the hyperactive child?

Susan Hughes: 13:31

Yeah, they really are, because it's essentially the same underlying condition it just presents differently. So they call them subtypes now of ADHD. The hyperactivity and the impulsivity often goes together and the inattention just looks very different. But it's actually the same thing. The brain is seeking stimulation and in the inattention brain there's so much stimulation coming in that it actually can't focus on one thing, so it's being distracted. So as a result, it looks like the child is just not paying attention.

Jenny Cole: 13:58

Yeah, and my guess is that if parents or teachers watch closely, they might notice and what are they watching for? And what might they notice, particularly in the inattentive child who's not acting out?

Susan Hughes: 14:13

Yeah, I think the other real difficulty with the ADHD brain and I again 100% have huge sympathy with teachers on this one because I know how broad the curriculum is, so they have a set amount of curriculum that they need to get through in a set period the problem with it is the ADHD brain literally cannot pay attention if it's not engaging. So if the child has been asked to do something that it doesn't consider to be any way interesting, being forced to do it is nigh impossible for them because it's not like choosing to make that decision to do it because executive functioning actually comes into being able to make that decision. Executive functioning impacts motivation. Executive functioning impacts consequences being able to work out what the consequences are. So in the moment the pain of actually doing it is too much. So it's.

Susan Hughes: 15:01

And I have a distinct memory when I was learning about ADHD of watching my non-dramatic drama queen child lying on the floor crying at the thought of getting up off the floor to do five minutes of homework at the end of a school day, and I remember looking at him going, oh, this is what they're talking about, like he just couldn't bear the thought of doing it. And this is what's happening to our kids in the classroom and as a teacher. Unless you understand that's what it is you can't possibly solve it.

Jenny Cole: 15:27

No, no, wow, and there are. I mean, families have their own demands, but there are so much, many more demands in schools that's just going to make all of that just so much more difficult. And again, they're not choosing to because a choice comes from your executive functioning. And if you don't have executive functioning in that moment, then they're not making a choice. To be difficult or refuse, it's just too much. Did you come across, or have you come across, schools that are really resistant and say, well, we just teach all kids the same, or your boy's just naughty? And if so, how do you encourage parents to work with schools who perhaps aren't working with them?

Susan Hughes: 16:14

So sadly, jenny, it is actually the most common problem that I come across for the parents I work with how to navigate the school system and it breaks my heart because I have never met a teacher who doesn't care deeply. I 100% know that they all care deeply and every teacher is working to their capacity. But if you don't understand what's going on with ADHD, you can't even start to support that child. And the problem is, if that support isn't provided in a primary school system by the time, to get to high school is so much harder because the child is disengaged, lost self-esteem, will give up trying in a lot of cases. Or have you know that fight response where essentially they're triggered and they come out fighting and it you know it's never good. So it's really to me it's about trying to support the children in a primary school environment, creating that a supportive environment so that they can learn what their strengths are. Because you know lots of people believe ADHD is a gift. I believe there are huge strengths to it, but it's not a gift in the school system because there is no ability for them to use their gifts. They are. It's very negative in terms of their expectations, and so I worked so hard with every single teacher that my son had to get them to understand. In some ways it was easy with my son because he didn't have any emotional dysregulation that once he looked beyond you could see he was actually trying really hard. And so it didn't take a lot in a lot of cases for me to work with the teacher and say, can you just try this? And I'd give them a strategy and they'd try it and they'd go, oh, that really worked and that's the thing about it. There are some really small little strategies you can use with these kids. That's really effective. But if you don't understand those, then you actually can't do it. I mean, every teacher needs a toolbox of resources to be able to pull from. But if you don't have that because you weren't given the training, it does make it incredibly difficult.

Susan Hughes: 18:01

And from the hundreds of schools that I've worked indirectly to the hundreds of families I've worked with, it often does come from the leader. If the leader believes that the ADHD is a real issue and it needs to be reviewed separately and the recognition that the teachers need the support, then it can be really effective. And then the schools I've worked with. But I will always wait for the leader to come to me. I'm not interested in working for a school if there's that resistance to it, because I am literally wasting my breath In that case. What I do is I give the parents, I work with the parents one-on-one and I get them to actually work individually with teachers Because, honestly, once you create that partnership, it can be so much more effective. It really can, and I'm a real believer in it's a parent-teacher partnership. There's no other way of doing it. Parents can't do it on their own, teachers can't do it on their own. If we work together, you get that student environment.

Jenny Cole: 18:50

There's so much in there. One is in my 30 years in education, including special ed, I have not done any training in either dyslexia or ADHD, general over-the-top stuff. So if I, you know, I considered myself a specialist back in the day and so you know it's just not included. And the other thing is, I absolutely agree with you that if a leader doesn't value it, it's not going to permeate, and so we can get cross or we can just go. No, I'm just going to work with the person who's going to work with me. And so, teacher-parent, I think as teachers we really underestimate what parents bring and that they are the first educators of our children and to listen to them. They might not always have the fancy words that educators use, but they know their child and if they've been trained trained it makes sense to listen to what they're, um, what they're sharing with you and work together in a partnership it really does, doesn't it?

Susan Hughes: 19:49

because, at the end of the day, um, often parents will have worked out strategies that work at home, and often those strategies can be transferred into the classroom and vice versa. So it's, it's, again, it's. You know, some teachers obviously have their own experience of ADHD. We know that many parents who have children with ADHD may have ADHD themselves. So one of the things I teach parents is to tap into what you're already doing. If you have ADHD, you already have lots of magnificent strategies, but you may not realize they were ADHD. So we tap into those. Okay, now what's working and what can you do to actually support your child? Because, at the end of the day, we want children, by the end of high school, to be able to advocate for themselves. They need to be able to say to the teacher your way of teaching is not working for me. This is what I need. You know we really do, but unless we give them that language and work with them, they can't do it.

Susan Hughes: 20:46

Again, I was very lucky. I knew exactly how to support my son. But, jenny, I absolutely, 100% know if I hadn't gone on the journey I would he wouldn't be full-time employed in a drafting, residential drafting job, which he absolutely adores. He would be sitting at home in his bedroom with the door closed, gaming all day, not communicating, and I absolutely know that for a fact, because his self-esteem really was damaged in those first few years. It probably took me eight years to get it back to where it needed to be, which is a long time, and that's working with somebody who actually had an idea of what we're doing and, by the way, I have a wonderful husband too. I didn't do it all on my own, you did not.

Jenny Cole: 21:16

But it was deliberate and intentional support because you knew that it was needed. And also, we're raising adults. We want our babies to grow up into fully functioning adults who can eat and shop, and work and all of those sorts of things, be independent and be content. Yeah, yeah, talk to me about this program that you've written for teachers. What does that look like? What does it include?

Susan Hughes: 21:43

So I have often been contacted by schools and done PD face-to-face PD but, as I said, you know I've been delivering sporadically since 2021. I put an awful lot of effort in the last year in putting my parenting course online, because I'm now running with group coaching and I find it incredibly successful because parents working together, meeting other parents who are on the same path, is really, really supportive, empowering even, and they're recognizing I'm not the only one struggling here. So that's really beneficial. And, of course, teacher coaching is a big thing. We know that. We know peer-to-peer coaching is incredibly a support. The research backs that.

Susan Hughes: 22:23

So my idea is basically to put my teacher training program online as well and support that with group coaching, because my idea is that you know you learn so much from your peers and wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to do some problem solving in a case study you've got in your classroom with that knowledge of ADHD and have other people input and actually work it out and see does this work? And then maybe come back a week later and go it did work or didn't work. I just think that would be so incredibly awesome for teachers.

Jenny Cole: 22:48

You're right, that coaching approach, which is learn something, go away and try it, come back and share with your peers in a nice, safe place. You're absolutely right. The research supports that as well.

Susan Hughes: 22:58

We know that training on its own is very ineffectual because with the best will in the world, you do the training on friday, you go back on monday, you get caught up in that and you've forgotten all your best intentions gone out the window, because it's just really hard to actually put it into practice, whereas if you know that you've something to check in with in a week's time about trying this one strategy, um, and then you know, even it works't work Unpacking that is obviously where the huge learning comes.

Jenny Cole: 23:23

So what's the knowledge part of the program? What sorts of things would teachers know or learn about?

Susan Hughes: 23:30

The first bit is that psychoeducation about ADHD. What does it look like? How does it impact? We really deep dive into executive functioning, because executive functioning is one of those things you take it for granted until you don't have it.

Susan Hughes: 23:44

But even a simple thing like writing requires so much executive functioning. You know, like, say, upper primary school they're expected to do. You know a page of an essay or something. You need to remember vocabulary, you need to remember punctuation, you need to have the paragraph structure, you need to start it, remember where you're going, and there's just so much executive functioning even in that small task.

Susan Hughes: 24:02

So, really breaking that down and understanding that we need to explicitly teach so many tasks you don't necessarily have to teach that to neurotypical kids, but mostly, if you teach it, everybody benefits from it. At the end of the day, we're not doing anything that everybody wouldn't benefit from. And the other aspect is, yeah, strategies and tools, evidence based strategies and tools that evidence-based strategies and tools that I've pulled out of the research that work in the classroom. So Dr Russell Barkley is my ADHD guru. He's now 77, he's retired and I've taken a lot of stuff from him because he is just such a wonderful advocate for ADHD, and so that's basically what my and then the coaching part is obviously the part I layer on top in terms of that support and actually working through and tapping into the educators and the parents' strengths, because that's the important part.

Jenny Cole: 24:49

Yes absolutely. It's almost impossible to do something that's not a strength that you're not motivated by, whereas if you can take your strengths and put it to work, it feels easy. It doesn't feel like work. And put it to work, it feels easy, it doesn't feel like work. What are some of the common challenges and problems that teachers will come to you with? You know in your PD sessions when they start to have a grizzle and a complaint. What are they about?

Susan Hughes: 25:14

Yeah, Um, getting kids to get started on stuff is a big thing.

Susan Hughes: 25:18

Um, getting recognizing that time blindness is a massive aspect of ADHD brain, so you have to make time visible.

Susan Hughes: 25:25

Um, recognizing that tasks need to be broken down to quite small levels, um, even at. You know, I often use that book report as a typical example that we often give in year five. You know that's kind of the first project they get to do, typical example that we often give in year five. You know that's kind of the first project they get to do and the child with ADHD will be running out of the night before, like with an hour before bedtime. So it's about understanding that, a teacher, you actually need to break it down into really specific chunks. If you're giving them two weeks, they have to choose a book, they have to pick what they're going to write about, they have to break it all down. But also that accountability and accountability can be done with a peer, it doesn't even have to be done with a teacher and also communication to the parents, so the parents can support as well if they want to. So it's all that kind of stuff which again will work for all children but particularly useful for ADHD children.

Jenny Cole: 26:13

I'm smiling as you talk about that, because I have an adult that I coach. She's a teacher, her school has paid for coaching for a number of teachers and she is ADHD. She told me that straight out and she was going off on leave to have a baby. And I said so, you've got five weeks left. What's coming up for you? And she said, oh, I've got reports. And I said, right, have you thought about reports yet? And she's oh, no, and she said a few other things and I said, right, and I'm not a planner, but all I could think on the inside was, in order to get reports done before you go and leave, they need to be submitted to the deputy, which means by now you should have collected some data. And I mapped it out for her and she said, oh, I'd never thought of it like that. On the inside, I'm thinking, oh, for goodness sake, that's easy.

Susan Hughes: 27:07

That's exactly the kind of thing. It seems so easy, but it isn't. To the ADHD brain. That's the thing the ADHD brain finds. Just you know there's so many elements to that. There's time blindness, there's chunking, there's procrastination. Often comes from being overwhelmed. You don't even know where to start. You know there's so many elements to it. And then the other aspect of ADHD it's very common that it has comorbidities. I think it's 80% of ADHD. So anxiety is a huge part of it. So obviously in the moment, as a caregiver, you need to think is this the anxiety or is this the ADHD? Because if it's the anxiety, then there's a different solution for that. But again, that's why it's so important to actually be able to have knowledge on both, and I talk about that a lot with parents. At the end of the day, if the ADHD is actually causing the problem, that's what we need to look at and not the ADHD part.

Jenny Cole: 27:59

Yes, and they're cyclical, you know.

Susan Hughes: 28:01

You get anxious because you can't do it with your.

Jenny Cole: 28:04

ADHD and then around and around we go, and I know schools the number of kids who are anxious these days in schools has blown out. Some of those kids were always there and they always had ADHD and, as you say, some of the strategies will be very similar adhd or autism or just somebody who just takes a little longer to learn. Um, nobody's going to be hurt by some of those strategies that you talked about planning and chunking and and visual timetables and those sorts of things.

Susan Hughes: 28:38

Yeah, so I mean there's certain tasks that are just taken for granted in the primary school, like timetables taken for granted that you'll just learn them. And I always relate it back to my own story. I became an accountant. I don't know my timetables because that's not how my brain works and trying to explain that to my son's teacher was actually really difficult for her to comprehend. That times tables is road learning. It doesn't mean he understands maths and in fact so that was kind of the start of his maths journey. My instinct was he was good at maths and when he went to high school it took me till the end of year 10 to convince him to actually have a go at doing upper maths the more advanced maths. So he went. He set off in year 11 maths, the more advanced maths. So he went, he set up, set off in year 11 to do the more advanced maths, and I had a meeting with the teacher two weeks into the course and she basically said looked at me, she said he just needs to try a bit harder.

Susan Hughes: 29:30

And I looked at her and I went you've never had a neurodiverse child in your classroom before. That's what's wrong, because they'd all have fallen off by then. They wouldn't have got that far. She literally had no clue how to teach him because she'd never met him before. Did he make it through? He did year 11 and then he dropped down and he did really well in year 12. I did it. I was trying to do it because I was trying to show him that he was and he actually learned. I know the stuff. I just can't do the pace of the tests and the curriculum so fast. You know the topics moving so quickly for him and because the adhd brain needs to hear something 10 times versus maybe three times for a neurotypical brain. Because of that short-term memory um, we know that's very weak. Long-term memory tends to be very good.

Jenny Cole: 30:12

Short-term memory tends to be quite poor yes, and these days there are so many technologies that can help teachers with that they can record themselves. The child can listen over and over and over again, not just on video, but on voice recorders, on phones, the whole.

Susan Hughes: 30:28

You know there's ways around that, but if you don't know, you don't know, that's exactly right, I'm loving the work that you're doing and you know, note-taking, jenny, taking notes down from a board incredibly challenging for a child with adhd. They have to look up, they have to read it, they have to process, they look back down. I've no idea what that was about. Look back up again, find where they were and if you, unless you understand that's what's going on, as a teacher, you may not recognizing. Allowing them to take a photograph is so much more effective. Yes, yes.

Jenny Cole: 30:59

And again, I don't know why I hadn't thought about this earlier. I had a fabulous lady in one of my workshops the other day and she came in and set up quite early and she said I'm neurodiverse and I take lots of notes and that includes taking photos of your slides. Is that okay? And I said yes because you asked me. And when I went back and had a look later, she had the most amazing visual notes. She'd written some things, photographed some things. I said that's phenomenal.

Susan Hughes: 31:28

And she said oh, so that's somebody who's really learned strategies.

Jenny Cole: 31:30

Really.

Susan Hughes: 31:31

Not even possibly recognizing that they are brilliant strengths. For somebody who's neurodiverse, you know. She's just learned a way of doing it. That's very common for adults with ADHD who are successful. They have all these amazing strategies in place, but they don't even know that they're different. What's a better word to what somebody else might do?

Jenny Cole: 31:48

And what I loved was that the person next door to her didn't even realise that's what she was doing, because she was so subtle and practised at it, and that's what we want for our kids in our classroom to look like they're doing what everyone else is doing, but subtly changing the way that we, as teachers, are working. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, yeah. Um, as this is a podcast for leaders, do you have any advice for leaders, particularly when working with parents, parents who are perhaps stressed or distressed about their child and their progress?

Susan Hughes: 32:22

I guess the first thing we need to be aware of within the education system is the directory for students who don't get support is really poor, and Russell Barkley did a piece of work a few years ago.

Susan Hughes: 32:36

It's a really depressing thing to read, but the research trajectory for all kinds of you know, drug and alcohol abuse, relationship, breaking down, early pregnancies, not having jobs, death, even like their lifespan is 13 years less than it is for somebody who doesn't have ADHD, but that's for people who are not supported because they create negative pathways and they're drawn to peers who are doing the wrong thing.

Susan Hughes: 33:03

I mean, you see it in high schools, you know, the kids who are disengaged all get together and they're all vaping behind the bike shed or wherever they bake these days, toilets, wherever Like, they're drawn to each other and the ADHD brain is always drawn to somebody who's more stimulating, more interesting, so they're going to be drawn to the naughty child, and so for me, we really need to start taking this seriously.

Susan Hughes: 33:24

We really need to recognize and start recognizing that our children need support in primary school so they don't get to that place in high school, because really in high school, all you need to do is direct them into an area where their strengths will be beneficial. And my son is a perfect example where he discovered through in high school that he was interested in technology kind of stuff and I knew he was really good at drawing Like he was always drawing house plans, like freehand. He was always drawing them so I kind of directed him to TAFE. He did two years in TAFE and now he's working full-time and he could not be happier and it's because he's found an area where his strengths are 100% needed.

Jenny Cole: 34:02

Yes.

Susan Hughes: 34:03

And that's what it's about. They have amazing brains. We need to find spaces for them to be directed where they can use their strengths.

Jenny Cole: 34:10

Susan, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. Your passion and enthusiasm for ADHD is unrivaled, and I am going to make sure that in the show notes, everyone has access to your social links and your LinkedIn and also links to the courses that you produce, because they sound like they are just what a lot of teachers and leaders need. Before we wrap up, is there any final thing that we've not talked about that you'd like to mention?

Susan Hughes: 34:43

Oh, there is one thing I'd like to talk about. It's just the impact on teachers.

Susan Hughes: 34:48

We haven't really talked about that but, I am really conscious how burnout is such a big issue for the moment. The ABC did an article a week or two ago about it and I do think some of it is this ADHD rack of knowledge. It's not all of it, of course it is, but I think there's a huge portion of it. If you're a teacher at the top of the classroom and you've got five children with ADHD they all present differently and you don't know how to support them I can only imagine how incredibly stressful that is to be heading in day after day after day. So I think there's that aspect the actual mental health of our teachers. Our education system is in trouble and I do think this is one of the solutions for it.

Jenny Cole: 35:25

And I would agree, because the only analogy that I can think of is that teachers know how to swim, but if you don't have a good stroke and you don't know how to finesse things, you can make swimming look really difficult. And by taking on some of the strategies that you're teaching and then being supported to put them into practice just like we coach swimmers to improve their stroke hopefully it will feel more fluid and more natural for teachers. And you're right, because they've got the five kids with ADHD, they've got the children with autism, they've got the kids with disabilities and all of a sudden they're drowning, literally my ideal world would be one teacher in every school who's an expert on ADHD and they could be the go-to person.

Susan Hughes: 36:11

That would just be because then they could be the interface between home and school, so they can meet the parents and they can meet the school. And I think that would be just so wonderful, that if teachers had somebody they could go and work through a case study with, because it can be confusing sometimes you try this, that didn't work, what do I do now? So having somebody to talk through as that knowledge, that to me would be the holy grail At the very minimum schools.

Jenny Cole: 36:33

if you're listening, your learning support coordinators and your inclusive ed. People need to be getting onto Susan's work and checking it out so that they can be the experts and support the teachers in your school. Again, thank you very much, susan. Thank you very much for your time and your expertise and I'll repeat, her details will be in the show notes and you can connect with Susan and she will be as helpful to you as she always is to me. So thank you very much. Thank you, jenny, it's been a pleasure.

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