Statistics show that by the age of 12, individuals with ADHD have received on average about 20,000 more critical comments directed towards them from peers, teachers, and family.

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In middle school students often shift from playing on a playground, to having long conversations in groups or one-on-one during their breaks. Imagine that a teenager with ADHD and a neurotypical teenager are hanging out at lunch time. The neurotypical student is telling the neurodivergent student something. The neurodivergent student’s brain suddenly remembers something that happened to them a week ago, that is similar to what their friend is talking about. The neurodivergent student is processing this memory, when they are sharply extracted from their memory by the neurotypical student going

“Hey! Hello? Are you even listing to me? Hellooooooo?!?”

while waving their hand in the neurodivergent student’s face. The neurodivergent student spaced out while the neurotypical student was telling their story, and now the neurotypical student is mad at being ignored.

The neurodivergent student is flustered. Criticism from teacher and peers like that which was described for a 5 years old in 1st grade (here) teaches neurodivergent students that nobody wants to hear their thoughts, or wants an explanation of why they “spaced out”. So the neurodivergent student stared at their neurotypical friend, scared and frozen, because they don’t know whether they can explain themselves or not.

If the neurodivergent student felt that they could explain themselves and their friend would want to listen, then the explanation might clarify to the neurotypical student that they weren’t being ignored – their neurodivergent friend was paying attention and even had a follow-up comment mentally prepared that would indicate empathy. But the neurodivergent student, unsure what to do because they don’t think their friend wants to hear their random thoughts, just stands there terrified. And the neurotypical student just gets more and more angry and starts to feel resentful. The friendship dissolves.

The way that U.S. schools expect teachers to behave, robs neurotypical and neurodivergent students of the ability to maintain healthy relationships. This developmental instability begins around middle school and escalates into adulthood. Often times, neurodivergent students (especially girls) have not received a diagnosis yet and do now understand what went wrong in the conversation with their friend. In an ideal world the onus would be on adults to fix the educational system to encourage neurodivergent thinking rather than brutally suppress it.

When neurodivergent students are stripped of the incentive and confidence to communicate their own thoughts, everybody suffers.

MIDDLE SCHOOL PACKAGES

ADHD Coaching Package

Students learn about dopamine deficit and how it regulates ADHD neurochemistry. Students learn to list sensory experiences that help us feel dopamine influx in our body and our brain. Students learn how to embed dopamine-lifting sensory experiences into our daily wake-up and sleep routines, to regulate their nervous system. Students learn how to embed dopamine-lifting sensory experiences into study habits, to make schoolwork less boring. For detailed examples of this process – see here.

ADHD Math Coaching Package

Students learn how to practice math in a way that is not only neurodivergent-friendly, but is also applicable for neurotypical days filled with exhaustion, distraction, or boredom. Students learn how to embed dopamine-lifting sensory experiences into study strategies, to make schoolwork less boring and enable long-term retention. Students learn to leverage neurodivergent brain tendencies (e.g. nonlinear thinking, tenacity, dopamine hunting) to their advantage when learning mathematics. For detailed examples of this process – see here.

Early-Riser Physics Coaching Package

In the U.S. physics is typically taught only in high school. But in many other countries, the foundations of physics are taught much earlier on, starting at age 11. Students in those countries therefore learn physics over the course of ~9 years before university – here in the U.S. students get ~1 to 2 years discontinuously before college. The disparity is frustrating.

To solve this problem, I am developing an elementary/middle school physics curriculum. It is entirely non-math based because a LOT of physics deals with visualization, illustration, and description. As a physicist I can quite confidently say that I think math is just a language that we use to describe how nature works. But so is English, or Spanish, or any mother tongue. And so is drawing out what is happening in a physical situation, or creating an animation to show what’s happening.

Each physics problem involves drawing the scenario, explaining what is going on in the drawing, and then identifying which equations are needed to translate the explanation into math language. Only then do you perform steps of algebra or calculus to solve the problem. My aim is to help middle-school students confidence and comfort with the first two steps (drawing and describing) that come before the math. These two steps are never explicitly taught to students in high school or even college physics courses, but they are necessary skills in order to do physics. Then, when they take their first physics class in high school they will have seen all of those physical situations before and it’s not nearly as scary.

Examples of the types of problems that will encompass an elementary/middle school physics curriculum will be uploaded to this website soon.