ebook_ADHD2019

74 Rohde, Buitelaar, Gerlach & Faraone PARENT SUPPORT FOR STUDENTS IN ELEMENTARY AND MIDDLE SCHOOL Parental support for education of their children with ADHD is important. One means of support is for the parent to provide the child’s teacher with factual in- formation about ADHD and about their specific child. Some teachers have a very good general understanding of ADHD in children at the grade level they are te- aching, but most have been provided very little education about ADHD and how they can provide a supportive learning environment for children with ADHD. Even if the teacher has some general information about ADHD, it can still be helpful to the parent to provide more specific information about their particular child with ADHD. Early in each academic year a parent can talk briefly with their child’s new te- acher to describe how that student’s ADHD tends to affect their work in school. This might include mention of specific interests, strengths and difficulties as well as techniques that parents or previous teachers have found helpful in working with that student. The parent might also ask the teacher to suggest any particular strategies that might help to maintain efficient communication between parent and teacher. In addition, the parent might share with that teacher a few selected pieces of printed information from the CHADD National Resource Center website or from the Understood.org website. Another resource is an article “ADHD: From Ste- reotype to Science” written by Thomas Brown specifically to update teachers on how new understandings of ADHD can be helpful to teachers in their classroom. This article is free and available in the articles section of www.BrownADHDCli- nic.com . 18 A few pieces of such literature could be especially helpful if the teacher is interested in getting more updated information about ADHD. However, it is im- portant for the parent to offer this information as “something I found interesting and helpful” and not as though the parent is assuming the teacher to be completely uninformed about ADHD. Communicating with teachers in middle school or high school may be more difficult because in most schools at those grade levels each student has not just one primary teacher, but a number of different teachers each for a different subject area. Parents who want to talk with each teacher who works with their student may need to make several different visits to the school. Sometimes those teachers may be willing to write a few brief comments on a weekly form which asks each teacher to note whether this student with ADHD has handed in all assigned work over the past week and whether the student has been coming to class each day adequately prepared. Getting such a report from each teacher can allow the parent to reward their student for good performance and to provide incentives to improve work over the coming week. This approach is called daily/weekly behavior report card. Re-