Our daughter with A.D.D. was in 4th grade when Covid sent kids home in March 2020 & school went 100% remote & provided most kids with chromebooks. It took her 3 weeks to acclimate to the virtual environment. We mistakenly thought she would NOT need her A.D.D. medication as she wouldn’t have other students around to distract her, but we were wrong: she was even MORE distracted learning remotely as the lack of teacher-student engagement let her attention wander. And the lack-of-accountability insofar as submitting schoolwork essentially allowed her to fail to submit work for almost the 1st 3 weeks…finally her teacher reached out to us saying she was behind 3 wks..and that’s when she realized there WAS accountability. And we learned she NEEDED her A.D.D. Medicine even MORE virtually. She eventually experienced SCREEN FATIGUE: when she had ELECTIVE options, i.e. attending her 4-H Club’s online meetings, she had LITTLE to NO interest. The GOOD thing is we got her out on her bicycle a LOT more, deliberately. That physical engagement was a welcome change for her MORE than she realized. Now that she’s in 5th grade, the school district has improved: their hybrid learning schedule allows 2 days in-school and 3 days remote. Her teachers STILL say she’s much better in-school -VS- remote, and we’ve continued her on the A.D.D. medicine. Her familiarity with the google classroom environment has improved, but she still gets distracted and frequently submits incomplete work. They were allowing them to take a 2nd pass on incomplete assignments but I don’t want her to depend on her A.D.D. medicine 100%…, I want her to employ other tools, other strategies regularly, i.e. double-checking herself, especially since REAL LIFE won’t let her do sloppy work…i.e. at a job, she would NOT succeed if she failed to complete her work, and she would not continually be allowed a 2nd chance at completing her job duties. So I have asked the teachers NOT to return incomplete assignments, instead to mark blank submissions as WRONG, and instructed our daughter to fill in EVERY blank, and if she DOESN’T KNOW an answer or has a question about it and doesn’t know how to answer, she’s to fill in the blank with the words I DONT KNOW or I HAVE A QUESTION so that her teacher can distinguish between MISSED questions -VS- questions she didn’t miss but on which she needs their help. Schools should be equipping kids for real life. Granted, kids with A.D.D. need more frequent engagement and need their focus redirected, but by the same token, they need to see the consequences of their actions and learn during school how vital it is to do your best and employ all whatever tools they need to give them the best outcome…and even when life throws a curve like COVID, life still matches on, no one gets a pass, we all have to learn workarounds and apply ourselves to them!
