Clinicians – Help parents get the school year off to a good start by building a partnership with their child’s teacher
In support of ILAT’s mission of giving clinician’s useful tools to help their clients, we are introducing Dr. David Rabiner’s free, easy-to-use ADHD School Monitoring program to facilitate effective parent-teacher communication and get the school year off to a good start.
For parents of elementary-school children with ADHD, one of the most useful things they can do at the beginning of the school year has nothing to do with buying school supplies or setting up the perfect homework area.
Get to know their child’s teacher—and create a simple way to stay in touch throughout the year.
The child may have a carefully written 504 Plan, and of course that plan matters. But consider the reality of an elementary-school teacher’s day. They may have 20 or 25 children, lesson plans, meetings, emails, testing, behavior issues, and several students with accommodations. Simply asking them to read a child’s 504 Plan and remember everything in it is only part of a plan for success.
A brief, regular communication system can accomplish something a document alone cannot: it creates an ongoing partnership around a child with ADHD.
One excellent tool comes from David Rabiner, PhD, who has been a highly respected figure in the ADHD field for decades. We are very honored that Dr. Rabiner is a member of the ILAT Professional Advisory Board. He is Research Professor Emeritus in Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, where his research has focused on ADHD, attention difficulties, academic performance, and improving the quality of care children with ADHD receive.
Many parents and professionals also know David through his longstanding Attention Research Update, in which he translates new ADHD research into practical, understandable information for parents, educators, and clinicians. (click here to subscribe to this excellent free resource).
His research helps explain why regular teacher feedback is so valuable. In one longitudinal study, Rabiner and colleagues found that attention problems during first grade predicted reading difficulties at the end of both first and fifth grade, even after controlling for IQ. Another study found that children with persistent attention difficulties during the early elementary years showed declines in reading and math achievement relative to their peers.
Perhaps most relevant to parents, Rabiner and colleagues found considerable year-to-year variation in teachers’ ratings of children’s inattentive symptoms. Elevated teacher ratings persisted from one year to the next in fewer than half of the children studied. In other words, we need current information from the teacher who is actually seeing the child this year.
Make Communication Easy for the Teacher
This doesn’t need to mean another lengthy email for the teacher to write every Friday.
Rabiner has developed a simple system – the ADHD School Monitoring Program – in which teachers regularly complete a brief online rating form that covers core ADHD symptoms, classroom behavior, and schoolwork. The program generates a clear, concise report that is emailed to parents and that provides a comprehensive overview of how their child is doing in the classroom. This helps parents know when their child’s treatment is working well at school and when they should reach out to their child’s clinician to discuss whether adjustments are needed. Clinicians treating children with ADHD should keep this tool at their fingertips, letting parents know of this free and very useful tool to build a strong parent/teacher partnership.
The questionnaire can be completed weekly at first and perhaps monthly once things are going well.
Think about how different this is from asking, “How is Sam doing?”
Instead, the clinician and parent begin to see a pattern – the program even generates trend graphs to make behavior patterns easier to identify. Maybe Sam is doing quite well socially but still rarely completes independent work. Perhaps following directions improves dramatically but organization remains a problem. Or maybe everything is going beautifully—and the parent gets to send the teacher a quick note saying, “Thank you. It sounds as though he’s off to a great start.”
That kind of communication builds relationships.
And there is research behind this approach. Rabiner and colleagues studied a parent-teacher consultation intervention using a daily report card for elementary-school children with ADHD. Parents and teachers were able to maintain the system over four months, rated it very favorably, and children receiving the intervention showed significant improvements in academic skills and productivity compared with controls.
Is the Medication Actually Working?
Regular teacher feedback is also extremely valuable when a child takes ADHD medication.
Parents see their child before school and after school. But the teacher sees the child during the very hours when medication is often intended to help most—and while the child is being asked to listen, resist distractions, remember instructions, sit through lessons, organize materials, and complete work.
Rather than asking the teacher, “Do you think the medication is working?”, a series of brief ratings gives the child’s prescriber information over time.
That can be particularly useful when medication is started, the dosage changes, or parents wonder whether its effectiveness is wearing off. With appropriate parental permission, the teacher’s ratings can be shared with the prescriber. Now treatment decisions can be informed by observations of how the child is actually functioning in the classroom—not simply by impressions gathered during a brief office visit.
A 504 Plan Is Important—but It Isn’t a Relationship
None of this replaces a 504 Plan or IEP. Children with ADHD need appropriate accommodations and educational supports.
But a document is not a relationship.
At the beginning of the school year, the parent should introduce themself to their child’s teacher. Let them know that you understand how busy teachers are and that you want communication to be easy rather than burdensome. Ask whether they would be willing to complete a very brief rating regularly. Find out what frequency works for them.
And don’t communicate only when something goes wrong.
When a child has a good week, parents should say so. When the teacher finds an approach that works, parents should thank them and ask what they can reinforce at home.
A good school year for a child with ADHD rarely results from one perfect accommodation, one medication, or one particularly gifted teacher. It happens when the adults surrounding that child notice what is working, catch problems early, communicate with one another, and adjust course together.
So as the school year begins, parents should not just send in the 504 Plan, clinicians should let all parents of elementary school children that they are working with to use the ADHD School Monitoring Program to get the year off to a great start. You can learn more about the program here and will be able to see the rating form teachers complete, sample reports, and the trend graphs the program generates.
And a message to all clinicians working with elementary school age children with ADHD, strengthen your relationship with the child’s parents by sending them this article, allowing them to register for Dr. Rabiner’s parent/teacher communication tool, the ADHD School Monitoring Program
The goal isn’t simply better attention. It is helping the child function more successfully throughout the school day—academically, behaviorally, and socially.
Build the parent/teacher partnership.
Selected research by David Rabiner
Rabiner, D. L., Coie, J. D., & Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. (2000). Early attention problems and children’s reading achievement: A longitudinal investigation. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 39, 859–867.
Murray, D. W., Rabiner, D. L., Schulte, A., & Newitt, K. (2008). Feasibility and integrity of a parent-teacher consultation intervention for ADHD students. Child & Youth Care Forum.
Rabiner, D. L., Murray, D. W., Rosen, L., Hardy, K., Skinner, A., & Underwood, M. (2010). Instability in teacher ratings of children’s inattentive symptoms: Implications for the assessment of ADHD. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 31, 175–180.
Rabiner, D. L., Carrig, M. M., & Dodge, K. A. (2016). Attention problems and academic achievement: Do persistent and earlier-emerging problems have more adverse long-term effects? Journal of Attention Disorders, 20, 946–957.