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We put in their 504 plans that they have extra time for assignments.

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And then sometimes they're nervous to turn in something late.

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She's going to be mad at me or she doesn't accept late assignments.

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And I'm like, well, you have a 504 plan for a reason and you need to go and

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turn that in and tell them. And if you turn it in and the teacher still tells you no, then come talk to

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me and I will try to help advocate for you. Hello, I'm your host, Miriam Brown. In addition to my teaching certificate,

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I have a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's in curriculum and instruction.

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I spent the last decade as a public school teacher, and I want to give you insider

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tips on how to help your child do well in a system that might otherwise fail them.

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In this episode of our ADHD series, Erin Koppen and I talk about how to interact

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with teachers to create a classroom environment that will be most helpful for your child with ADHD.

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Music.

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PhD. Erin Coppin and I first got to know each other when I was teaching her children.

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I taught several of them, and I thought that she did a fantastic job of advocating

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for her children in a way that helped me feel supported as a teacher as well.

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I think that's a hard tightrope to walk because sometimes we get all mama bear

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and we want to get our child's needs met, but when you do it in a way that helps

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support the teacher as well, you just have a better outcome.

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Erin, Parent, I always told you that I thought you should teach parenting classes for ADHD.

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Yeah. So even though I'm around ADHD a lot and I treat it, I feel inadequate

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because I struggle and my kids aren't always thriving and I feel a little bit like a failure.

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I think that's completely normal. Thank you for being open with us about that.

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I think it's just really stressful to parent a child who is impulsive and has a hard time listening.

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I read a study that compared moms moms of neurotypical children to moms of children

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with ADHD, and they experience a lot more anxiety.

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Yeah, I think parenting kids with ADHD is stressful.

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It is stressful. And having an ADHD child in your classroom can also be pretty

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stressful, because most of the time, you'll have more than one student in the

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classroom that has ADHD. And then you've got others that have issues that are just as difficult, sometimes even more.

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So when you're trying to teach all of the kids the lessons that you're required

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to teach, It's just impossible to meet everybody's needs.

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I'm the daughter of two teachers. And so when I was growing up,

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if something was wrong, if the teacher reached out to my parents,

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my parents were on the side of the teachers. And I've tried to a little bit have that mentality with my kids.

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Not that I'm trying to have an adversarial relationship with my kids either.

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But when my kids tell me a teacher has done something, I try to be a little

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bit skeptical and see it from the teacher's point of view.

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That was pretty evident to me every time I talked to you about one of your kids.

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And I think that being able to look at things from the teacher's point of view

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is really helpful, not just if you're having a problem, but also when you're

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meeting together with a school to set up a formal plan.

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The school can help you make a plan called a 504 that can ask the teacher to

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make special adjustments to their teaching for your child. These are called accommodations.

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But it's really common for teachers, for whatever reason, to not implement those

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changes in the classroom, even though they're in a meeting and agree to the plan.

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I think that happens because sometimes it's hard for a teacher to speak up and

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say, I realistically don't see how I can do that.

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When we've had meetings talking about the things that would be helpful to my

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kids, I definitely talk about how it would be helpful for me to help them be successful.

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But I also try to keep in mind, how will this affect a teacher?

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Because when you're trying to create an accommodation, really,

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you want it to actually be helpful. And if it's something that just is not going to happen, then I'm constantly

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telling the teacher they're not doing this thing that is really creating a difficulty in their classroom.

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So I try to keep some of those things in perspective. And then when I reach

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out to teachers, I also always try to express gratitude for all that they're

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doing for my child and then leave space for the teacher to explain what's going on.

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And I think that's helped me to have a lot better conversations,

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have a lot more progress and good relationships with teachers that are more helpful to my kids.

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I think that's really important to have empathy because when you're a parent,

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you're focused on your one, maybe two, maybe three, four, five kids, right?

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And they're your world. When you're a teacher, you've got 25 kids in the class.

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And so it can be really difficult to meet everybody's needs because there's too many of them at once.

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And it was always very helpful to feel like the accommodations were always something

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that I could do fairly easily if it was during class or if not after class,

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like allowing them to turn in late work or things like that.

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One thing I appreciated was you would send me emails and communicate with me.

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You would ask, hey, we're concerned about this assignment.

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I know you put the instructions here and there, but she's confused.

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She thinks she's supposed to do this, but it looks like from what I'm reading

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that she's supposed to do that. Could you clarify? And it was nice as a teacher because I felt like you were

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not just excusing them from the work.

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I even remember one email you sent that she was having a hard day.

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It might take a little bit of extra time, but I was completely willing to give extra time to her.

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But it was nice that at home you were helping them to get their work done.

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Yeah, definitely. I think communicating with the teachers is the most helpful

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and trying to balance that. I'm trying not to be the bulldozer parent that's like mowing down all the obstacles.

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I keep telling my kids if they don't know what they're doing,

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OK, go talk to your teacher. Or we did put in their 504 plans that they have extra time for assignments.

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And then sometimes they're nervous to turn in something late.

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She's going to be mad at me or she doesn't accept late assignments.

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And I'm like, well, you have a 504 plan for a reason and you need to go and

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turn that in and tell them. And if you turn it in and the teacher still tells you no, then come talk to

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me and I will try to help advocate for you. But I've really tried to get my kids to work on advocating for themselves.

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And over time, teachers have been commenting like they're doing a really good

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job of advocating for themselves. Most of my kids' teachers, I have their email come up immediately as I start

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typing them because I've emailed them so many times just to make sure that we're

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on the same page and we're all working together to help my kids to be successful

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without mowing down and removing obstacles.

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You know, as a teacher, sometimes it would be frustrating, especially in middle

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school when you have 180 to 200 students to remember everybody's 504 can be

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kind of difficult because if you've got a quarter of your kids that have some type of 504,

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sometimes it's hard to remember all of the accommodations.

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And so sometimes I would get frustrated with the whole 504 thing because I just

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felt like there was so much paperwork and so much to keep in mind as a teacher.

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So I always appreciated when parents would remind me, but in a polite way,

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could you help me with this without making me feel bad that I had maybe missed

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something on the 504 or something like that.

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So if there's one piece of advice I could give, it would be to be like Aaron

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and to have empathy for the teacher.

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Imagine what it would be like if you were trying to teach a classroom of 25

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students and meet everybody's needs.

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And when you do that, it really allows you to communicate with the teacher in

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a way that makes them want to help your child.

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Music.