Mistaken Assumptions (Learning Aids part two)

Today I would like to talk about assumptions… especially assumptions about stereotypes in education.

Similarly to women being assertive and called “aggressive,” or women being ambitious and called “bitchy,” we have a similar issue with neurodivergence. 

An example of this is me and often other adults thinking that any undesirable behavior on Lizzy‘s part is because of ASD, ADHD, or both. It came up because her math teacher noted that she was slow to start her in class work one day last week, and called her IEP coordinator in to assist. In and of itself, this is great because it shows that the teacher understands the supports outlined in the IEP and gets Lizzy the support she may need without calling all sorts of attention to it and/or pissing Lizzy off because she’s being condescended to.

The thing is though, that Lizzy was in fact doing the work, she was just slow to start it because she already knows this lesson and she knew she could finish it by the end of the class period even if she started late. She just hadn’t gotten started yet… which means that the teacher jumped the gun.

This is, of course, very common. And it is especially common among those teachers who read and understand the IEP. But it was absolutely unnecessary in this case and I think that’s a matter of societal expectations and assumptions based on stereotypes.

The stereotype here is that if your autistic or ADHD student is not working right away, it’s because they’re struggling with the material or the situation or some sort of sensory issue or whatever. Great, that means you understood the IEP! But, as in this case, there can be plenty of other reasons.

Reasons like, say, not wanting to jump right in and do an assignment that you already know the material for, because you’ve taken the first quarter of algebra one at least twice before this. Or, as is sometimes the case but not here, Lizzy is just being 15, or feeling tired, or simply in a bad mood, or distracted by something but able to finish the work.

I feel like we tend to assume that if anything does not go to our (usually) neurotypical expectations, it is because of the neurodivergence. 

But sometimes it’s not.

Or it’s more than one thing.

In our hyper-capitalist, rugged-individualist society, we seem to want to place blame rather than our go-to being supportive. Lizzy can’t concentrate? It must be the ADHD. Couldn’t be, say, that she was coming down with a cold. Or that she was just not into it that day. Or PMS or problems with her friends or worrying about her next therapy appointment or whatever.

People who are perceived as “not normal” are often assumed that every single thing is about their differences. It’s similar to LGBTQIA+ people perceived as having no identity other than their sexuality or gender.

And frankly, this sucks. In the case above it wasn’t a terribly big deal. In some cases it’s much much worse. Neruodivergent people or LGBT people or disabled people or people of color or whomever… They - WE -have a lot more going on than whatever it is that makes us different from the person doing the perceiving.

A long time ago, over 10 years, I wrote a paper for my communications degree on the topic of whether gay couples should be allowed to adopt (I’m for it). I’m going to quote my paper here rather than making you read the whole thing again, and hope that you understand the analogy I’m making:

There are countless examples in the world all around that homosexuals have the same parenting skills and talents (and faults) as any other adult human being. They are doctors, soldiers, lawyers, line cooks, retail clerks, artists, software programmers, engineers, musicians, taxpayers, and most importantly people… just like everyone else. Defining them solely by whether they sleep with people with the same sexual equipment as they have – this does everyone a disservice – parents, children, teachers, world leaders. Would the world judge a heterosexual white married lady as a bad parent simply because of her straight status? No. So why does the world judge a gay white married lady as a bad parent simply because her spouse is also a woman?

Learning Aids

Good news! Lizzy likes high school more than she did middle school. Or, at least, she hates it less. It helps that our IEP coordinator is just as awesome as the one we had in middle school, and that we are not starting with a deficit due to the crapshoot that was 2020 and all that entailed. 

There are still some issues of course. She’s struggling a bit with topics she finds boring or teachers she perceives as “having bad vibes.” The weird little quirky things that are part of her autism/ADHD are still in play (wooden pencils feel wrong and notebook paper must have 32 lines for math homework, for example), but we have methods in place to assist with those. These are the learning aids of which I speak in the title.

The first of these is people; she has a counselor/therapist who has experience with ADHD, teenagers, and just about everything else on Lizzy‘s list except the autism itself. And the therapist is willing to learn about the autism from Lizzy herself which is super helpful in making a connection between the two of them. And her IEP coordinator is also her academic lab (study hall with extra social/emotional supports) teacher; she’s awesome!

The second is ADHD medication. I have a number of people in my circle who think that medicating for mental health or educational reasons is the wrong thing to do regardless of context. So I tend to put it this way: the ADHD medication does the same thing for her brain that reading glasses do for my eyes. 

Example: I can keep my eyes from crossing, or I can focus on things that are close up. I can’t do both without getting a headache. The reading glasses take over one of those tasks for me. Similarly, Lizzy can focus on schoolwork, or she can focus on socially acceptable behavior/controlling impulsivity, but she can’t do both (for long) without having a meltdown. Her ADHD medication makes it easier to do these other two tasks so she doesn’t have to have the meltdown by the end of the day/week/month/whatever.

It really is that simple.