Teachers have so many roles to play and balls to juggle that life can seem overwhelming for much of the time. Added to their load is the expectation that they have to be able to meet the needs of children with a wide variety of abilities and challenges. No wonder they feel unraveled by the end of term!
But is there something they can do to perhaps better understand the causes of the frustrating behaviours they have to deal with in classrooms every day? When children continually daydream, fail to listen, seem to be unable to follow simple instructions and are incapable of completing any work, it is understandable that their thoughts turn to ‘ADHD’. Social media also continues to emphasise the number of children diagnosed with ADHD in various countries so it seems logical to conclude that the child in their class is yet another with the disorder. But perhaps they’re making a mistake.
South Africa has one of the highest rates in the world of prescribing medication for ADHD – even higher than the USA. Parents are lamenting that sometimes a third of their child’s class is on some or other psychostimulant or other brain-altering drug to control difficult behaviour.
It is easy to believe that ADHD is a widespread mental disorder but that is a fallacy. In our work, Integrated Learning Therapy practitioners and teachers who have studied with us see how other underlying causes can be ignored in favour of an ‘easy’ diagnosis, with a seemingly quick fix of a drug to quieten children down and calm the classroom. When we take the time and the trouble to investigate more closely, we have found there are many other causes for children’s inability to behave appropriately and learn efficiently.
Our approach finds support around the world, where there is far greater emphasis on finding out why a child behaves in certain ways or fails to learn rather than accepting the symptoms. So many underlying causes can cause identical symptoms – and the actual incidence of ‘real’ ADHD is far, far lower than commonly believed
Some of these causes are due to neurodevelopmental problems, meaning that brain development did not proceed optimally. These we can identify and correct. Other causes are linked to nutrition intolerances and poor diets. Others may be due to lifestyle, anxiety and so on.
My fervent wish is that teachers could be better equipped with the knowledge and skills to understand what lies beneath the surface. We see the iceberg, but have no understanding of what is invisible to us below the level of the water.
This is why Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) offers in-service courses designed to help teachers gain this knowledge. Our eco-systemic approach has been helping children for nearly twenty years now to shed the label of ADHD and other incorrect diagnoses. Teachers who train with us stop insisting that children have a mental condition and pushing parents towards medications. Schools have made changes to tuck shops and lunch boxes too and even added brief periods of movement to help children’s behaviour improve. This is the natural, sensible and intelligent approach to the torrent of behavioural challenges we experience in the classrooms.
Our courses are accredited with SACE so in addition to valuable, add-on knowledge, you gain CPTD points. ILT 1 will earn you 14 points.
In the words of a fellow teacher: “Integrated Learning Therapy should be compulsory for all teacher training courses. I’m really seeing children with new eyes these days!”
Image supplied by Freepik.