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.