Raising ADHD: Real Talk For Parents & Educators

ADHD School Behavior Problems: 3 Moves Parents and Teachers Both Need to Know

• Dr. Brian Bradford & Apryl Bradford • Season 1 • Episode 21

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Your phone buzzes: another behavior report. Learn why punishment fails ADHD kids and get scripts to build a real school-home team.

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It's 2:47 PM. Your phone buzzes. You already know what it is before you look. Behavior update. Today was difficult. Please discuss consequences at home. Your stomach drops—because this isn't information. It's a verdict.

Here's what no one tells you: There are three people drowning in that moment. Your child, who's overwhelmed and has no words for it. The teacher, who's exhausted and out of tools. And you, already hanging on by a thread, now expected to be the enforcer.

This episode is for that moment. Not the Pinterest version of ADHD support—the real one. Apryl breaks down why traditional classroom discipline fails ADHD brains and what actually works, backed by research and her decade of classroom experience.

You'll learn:

  • Why taking away recess is one of the worst things you can do for an ADHD kid
  • The one phrase that changes everything: "Praise the positive opposite"
  • 3 research-aligned moves teachers can use in the moment of meltdown
  • A word-for-word email script to send your child's teacher (without sounding like you're blaming)
  • How to ask for a two-goal plan that both school and home can actually sustain
  • The simple template that replaces behavior crime reports with trust-building communication
  • Why ADHD kids change through in-the-moment support—not 8 PM lectures

After listening, you'll finally have language for what you've been feeling and a concrete plan to share with your child's school.


The Email Script for Parents

Ask for:

  1. Please don't remove recess for behavior—movement helps them regulate
  2. Can we pick two school goals only? (Example: raise hand during math, start work within 2 minutes)
  3. Can we add one positive note daily, even one sentence?

Close with: "I'm not asking for perfection, just a plan we can both sustain."


The Template for Teachers

Replace behavior crime reports with:

  • One win: He came back after a reset / helped a classmate / tried again
  • Today's trigger: Transition from math to library
  • What helped: Movement break / smaller task / private cue


RESOURCES MENTIONED

Apryl Bradford:

It's 2 47 p.m. Your phone buzzes and you already know what it is before you even look. The subject line, behavior update, or today was a difficult day, or the classic, we need to talk, and your stomach drops because you're not walking into information. You're walking into a verdict. You open it and it's a list. Refused work, called out, disrupted peers, kept touching others, angry, yelled, noncompliant, and then the punchline. He missed recess. He will make it up with homework. Please discuss consequences at home. And in that moment, there's three people drowning at once. Your child, who's overwhelmed and doesn't have words for it, the teacher who is exhausted and outnumbered and out of tools, and you who's already hanging on by a thread and now you're supposed to be the enforcer. This episode is for that moment, not the Pinterest version of ADHD support, the real version. And we're going to talk about what actually helps in the classroom and at home when behavior is loud, messy, impulsive, angry, and constant. Because here's the truth: most teachers are not bad people, most parents are not failing, and most kids are not choosing to be chaotic. This is a skills and nervous system problem, and when we treat it like a moral problem, everybody loses. Welcome to Raising ADHD, the podcast for parents and teachers raising ADHD kids. If you've ever felt frustrated, overwhelmed, or just unsure what to do next, you're not alone. I'm April Bradford, a former teacher and ADHD mom, and alongside my husband, Dr. Brian Bradford, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, we're here to give you the clarity, strategies, and support you've been looking for. Every week we break down the misconceptions, answer your biggest questions, and share real tools you can use right away at home and in the classroom. So if you're ready to feel more confident and less overwhelmed, you're in the right place. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. If you're new here, welcome. My name is April Bradford. I'm a former teacher, mom, and I hate to tell you, Brian is not with me today. I am traveling, and so I am doing the podcast on my own today. And so we're diving into classroom stuff. We're doing very specific, we're taking evidence-based classroom supports, the kind that the CDC and research consistently point to, and we're going to pull them out of that ideal classroom fantasy, and we're dropping them straight to that moment where your kid is melting down at school and your teacher is emailing you again. We're going to cover a lot in this episode, and this is an episode that you are going to want to share with your child's teacher. So feel free to share this. Feel free to share it with your school principal. Share this because I promise this is going to help all the kids that are neurodivergent. Okay, before we get started, if you are tired of the daily chaos and meltdowns, I've created a free mini course just for you, Calm the Chaos, the ADHD parent reset. In just a few quick lessons, you'll discover simple science-backed tools to bring more peace, connection, and calm into your home. No super parent skills required. You can grab that at raisingadh.org forward slash calm and start feeling the difference right away. Okay, so let's dive in to this episode about the classroom. And first of all, I want to acknowledge that both people, just like I said in the opening, not just both people, three people are drowning here. Your child, the teacher, and you. Everyone is having a hard time, and no one is the bad guy here. So I want to start with that. So first of all, I want to put you in the classroom. Let's name and look at what the teachers are living right now inside of the classroom. A classroom of 22 to 30 plus kids, increasing needs, less support, more behavior, more admin pressure, more parents, less time, more testing, more pressure, all of the things. And then they have an ADHD kid and it hits their breaking point. And so the teacher is facing these two problems. Number one, they need a classroom to function. And number two, they need this child to stop escalating. So they reach for what they have. So things like work gets moved to homework if it doesn't get done in the classroom, recess gets taken away because that's the one reward that they know is gonna maybe hopefully make this child behave. And behavior charts go home every night covered in red marks and negative comments. This is not because the teacher is cruel. It's because they too are trying to survive. But we know ADHD does not respond to these survival tools. ADHD responds to immediate feedback, consistent reinforcement, and scaffolding at the moment the brain is failing. So not at night, at home, after the parent reads the note. It's right there in that moment the brain needs scaffolding. So when we punish an executive function deficit, because that's what ADHD is, we're not teaching skills. All we're doing is creating shame in these kids. And shame always comes back louder and louder and louder. The behavior gets worse and worse and worse. So I'm going to say this as clearly as I can. Taking away recess is one of the worst things you can do for an ADHD kid. Honestly, any kid. So do not take away recess. Recess is not a reward, especially for our ADHD kids. It's regulation. It's the nervous system getting what it needs so the brain can come back online. There's so much research about this, about how after 20 minutes of good vigorous movement, the ADHD brain can come back online for about 60 minutes. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics has pushed back on withholding recess as a punishment because kids need physical activity for health and learning, not something to earn. So if your kid is impulsive, loud, fidgety, disruptive, and we remove movement, we remove the very thing that's helping them do better the next part of the day. It's like saying you're struggling to see the board, so you know what? I'm gonna take away your glasses until you try harder. That's not discipline. That's literally mismatch. It doesn't even make sense. So if you're a parent, this part is going to feel relieving, hopefully. ADHD kids, as you know, don't change because we explain consequences at 8 p.m. They change because support shows up in the moment their brain is failing. This is why the CDC points to behavioral classroom management, systems that reinforce the behaviors you want when they happen in real time. So if you're a teacher listening to this, those behavior notes coming home saying all the bad things, and then please talk to your kid at home, that's not helping. That scaffolding has to happen at school at the time of behavior. And it's not more lectures, not more delayed punishment, and no more clip charts that broadcast failure all day long. This is real-time reinforcement. So, as a teacher, this is the most important shift that you can make. Instead of paying attention and saying, oh, this kid is they're doing this wrong, they're doing this wrong, doing this wrong, start asking yourself, what do I want to catch this kid doing right? What's that behavior that is driving me absolutely crazy? And I'm gonna start noticing the positive opposite. If you only remember one phrase from this podcast episode, remember this one. Praise the positive opposite. This comes from Behavior Science Approaches, which was popularized by Alan Kasden. He is over, I'm gonna butcher the name of it, but it's at Yale, and it's like he works with very defiant kids. It's like the um child behavior, and he's done years and years of research on this. And when you stop feeding attention to the behavior you hate, you start reinforcing the behavior you want instead. Now, I hate to compare this to our kids to dogs, but I'm going to. So I apologize. Think about when you're doing dog training. If you ever have watched anyone do dog training, they do not even respond to the bad behavior. They only respond to the good behavior. They're paying attention, the dog gets loves, pats, treats when the dog does the behavior that the trainer's looking for. Our kids are the same way. So instead of living in this, stop furting out, raise your hand, stop touching, stop doing this, get to work, we want to shift to I see you raised your hand. I see you kept your hands to yourself for that whole minute. I see you started, even though you didn't want to. Paying attention to the positive opposite. Because the behavior that gets reinforced, whether it's negative or positive reinforcement, is the one that gets repeated. This also rewires our brains as the adult. Teachers and parents get trained into this negativity loop, right? You start scanning for danger or problems that are gonna happen or for what's gonna go wrong, and then you only see what confirms what your brain is looking for. So when we practice noticing this positive opposite on purpose, we start to break that loop. And this isn't because we're delusional, it's because our attention is like a flashlight, and we can choose where we aim it. And then our brain is going to start noticing that. And just like with gratitude or anything, the more you start to notice the positive, the better you start to feel about life. Same with this child. The more you start to notice the good things about this child, because even if you are so just in desperation right now, and you're like, there's not a good thing about this kid, there is. Every human has good in them, and every kid has good in them, and no kid is trying to be a bad kid. There are no bad kids, just bad behaviors, right? So look, even if it's the tiniest thing, I promise I have had some very hard kids in my classroom, and you know, now that I'm not in the classroom with them, I look back and I'm like, my gosh, they were so kind and polite, or they were funny, and maybe in the moment I wasn't finding it funny, but they're a funny kid, like, notice those things, notice those good things, okay? So let's drop into that moment in the classroom for just a second. Your child or the student is angry, they're refusing work, they've pushed the paper off the table, they've shoved their desk out of the way, they're shouting, you know, they're like maybe getting violent or you they're bugging someone. You know what I'm talking about. And you are at your wit's end as a teacher. Here are three moves that are research aligned and real life doable. And parents, you are going to be saying, Amen, thank you so much for saying this. Move number one: don't add work. Don't add more work to this child. Add structure. If the work isn't getting done, the solution isn't, then it becomes homework. Because let me tell you what an ADHD also looks like when this child gets home. When the child gets home, if they are medicated, medication is totally wore off. Do you know how hard it is to get a kid with homework to do their homework when they don't have any medication in them? It's extremely hard. And the kid is totally exhausted, and it ends up being a family fight all night long. If you want to be able to support this kid, also support their family. Support what happens at night, and that's not by adding more work. So instead of saying, okay, this is homework, reduce, reduce the task to prove mastery. This is not lowering the standard. This is not saying, oh, it's okay that they didn't get this. This is lowering the load. Because let's be honest for just a second, and I want you to really think about this. If a child, you give them a worksheet of 10 problems, right? If they can do the first three, they probably have mastered it. They're probably doing just fine. And they can prove that in three or five problems. If they can't do the first three, is doing 10 more problems the wrong way, really, what you want them to do? You want them to sit and practice this the wrong way. No. So reduce the task. Give them three to five problems. And, you know, you can say, show me five problems that prove you get it. So just give them five problems or three problems. Sometimes, depending on how dysregulated this kid, it may be one problem. One to two problems you can see pretty dang quick if the child knows what they're doing or not. Do not add more, do not expect them to do this whole thing. Move number two, replace punishment with a reset and return. So instead of okay, you're gonna have to stay in five minutes from the recess. Okay, you're gonna have to stay in ten minutes from recess. Okay, you've lost your whole recess now. And I say this guilty as can be. And I look back now and I'm like, oh my gosh, I wish I would have known better. That's why I'm doing this, is so you don't repeat the mistakes that I made. So instead, try a two-minute reset, then return with a micro goal goal. So, for example, go get a drink in the hallway, go walk to Miss McDonald's class and back, go do go out in the hall and do 10 wall push-ups, go to the quiet corner and draw a picture, read your favorite book, whatever it is that they they like to do, something that will settle them, or a movement job. They these kids really love to be helpful. Hey, I need you to take this over to Mrs. Manning's class. Can you take this over to her, please? And I know this as a teacher, you have your teaching besties, right? And you can when you can set up like a system when they see, like, here's this stack of worksheets that's coming to your classroom, just know it was to get him out of the class or her out of the class to get that movement break. And you just take it, you say, Oh, thank you. And you just work that out with your teaching bestie, right? So give them a job. Then when they come back, they have the micro goal. So take a two-minute reset and then come back and do the first problem only. I just want you to do the first problem. Sometimes that's too much. Write your name, write the first letter of your name. That task initiation can sometimes be the hardest part. And especially if they're looking at the whole worksheet of 25 problems. So write one sentence only, open the book only. See how simple that can be? ADHD brains restart through momentum, not lectures. And then move number three is reinforce the start. For ADHD kids, starting is the boss battle. So reward the start, not the perfect finish. They may not ever finish. But thank them for opening the book. Thank you for writing your name. Thank you for opening your book. Thank you for trying that first problem. Doesn't even matter if they got it right or not, just recognizing that they started is huge. This is not lowering expectations. It's teaching, you're literally teaching these kids' brains how to start engaging. And that if you want to start seeing progress over time, this is what's going to give you progress. Guarantee those notes home every single night haven't given you any progress yet. So now, parents, you may be listening to this and you're like, well, that sounds lovely. I wish my kids' teacher would do this, right? So, how do you tell teachers what your kids need without sounding like you're blaming? That's a really good question. And how do you say, I can't take another day of this negative report? I'm drowning. I literally, when my son was in kindergarten, I would go to my teaching bestie's classroom after school and cry to her because every single day his teacher was coming to my classroom telling me all the things he did wrong that day. And I was like, I can't take this anymore. What like I just wanted to say, and I was I was very young then, and so I didn't say things like this, which I should have, but I just wanted to say if you wouldn't call home to tell me. This don't come to my classroom and tell me this just because it's convenient that I'm down the hall, don't do it. It doesn't help to hear those, right? And especially when you're like, I don't know what to do, like you're drowning as a parent. So here's something that you can literally like word for word, copy paste this. So here is an email or a text or however you communicate with your teacher. Hey there, or hi, Mrs. Mr. So and so. I can tell things have been really hard lately, and I appreciate how much you're trying. We're struggling at home too, and I want us to be on the same team. Can we try a simple plan for the next two weeks? Number one, please don't remove recess for behavior. Movement helps him or her regulate. Number two, if possible, can we pick two school goals only? Example, raise hand and start work within two minutes. And for some of our kiddos, like raising the hand, it's not even like all day. We want to start so small. Like raising the hand during the math lesson only, or at carpet time in the morning only. Like if we can just start very small and get small successes, these are gonna stack up over time. I promise you. It may feel like it's gonna take forever, but think about think about what you've been doing. Is it working? I'm guessing probably not. You wouldn't be work listening to this if it was working. So very small steps, and it's gonna work over time. And then number three, sorry, I that was don't copy and paste all that. Number three to copy and paste here. Can we add one positive note daily, even one sentence? So home isn't only consequences. If I know it's working at school, I can reinforce the same skills at home. Notice how we're reinforcing positive skills what's working at school instead of punishing our kids when they get home. There you go. Don't copy and paste that either. Here's your next copy and paste. I'm not asking for perfection, just a plan we can both sustain. That's it. Not a TED talk, not a defense case, not a team plan. And if the teacher needs something from you, you can also add. I always do this. I try to like let my teachers know when I go in the first of the year, like, hey, if you ever need anything, please let me know. Please, you know, if you need tissues. Tissues are always like classrooms, always need tissues. Send in a box of tissues. Um, but tell me what would make your day easier. I want to support you too. Because guess what? Teachers rarely hear that. Teachers, especially nowadays, I mean, we can see it. Look across the nation. We're losing teachers left and right. They need our support just like we need their support, right? So we are a team on this. So that is what I suggest for elementary school. And I want to touch base here really quick with elementary versus teens, because teens will absolutely revolt if we treat them like a second grader. We all know this. So elementary kids need that visual structure, they need immediate reinforcement, they need frequent, frequent resets, short tasks and clear wins, and lots of caught you doing it right moments. And parents can use that at home, shrinking homework into chunks, using a timer and break up the rhythm, rewarding the start and the return, not the perfection, and emailing the teacher asking for those two goals in one positive note. That's that's what we're gonna do for our elementary kids. And I want you to know, parents and teachers listening to this. I would say, even at home, well, number one, I'm not a believer of homework in the elementary school years, just reading aloud math facts. I do believe in math facts because I've seen the struggle from teaching young elementary to old elementary and just being a math teacher, how much struggle they struggle with if they don't know the math facts, so quick. And there's so many games. I mean, so many apps and games, like make it a game, make it fun. They can totally do that. Math facts, reading, and then spelling if they have spelling. That's it. We're not doing worksheets, we're not doing any of that. And if your kid can't sit and read, read to them, get audiobooks, turn on the TV, turn off the volume, and only have captions. Sometimes we have to do what we have to do. You know what I'm saying, right? So that's what we're gonna do for our elementary school kiddos. So for our teens, what they need is they need dignity and privacy and autonomy with structure and then collaboration with them, not control. So, what should that look like at school? We need private cueing for them, never public call-outs. Even with our elementary school kiddos, public call out count, public call outs are not good, especially if they're negative. Um, a reset path. So a quick break without drama, like, hey, you can have a signal or like hey, I'm just gonna raise my hand, you know that I need to go out, whatever. Reduced workload to demonstrate mastery, same thing. Our teenage kids still need that reduced workload because they still go home and they still have that restraint collapse after school. So if we can lower their load, super helpful. And then coaching language, use coaching language with them. Things like what's the smallest first step? Um, do you want music or silence? Which class is hardest and why? And parents can say to the our upper grade teachers, if you're correcting him in front of peers, it will escalate. Can you cue him privately? That one change can save the entire semester. So if you're a teacher listening to this, here's the tip that will change everything for you. Stop sending home a list of what went wrong. Send home a win and then a pattern that maybe you noticed, okay? This is not shouting out blah blah blah. No. Because guess what? Parents don't need a crime report about the kids. So try this template, okay? One win. Always start with the win. He came back after a reset. He helped a classmate, he tried again, he told a funny joke. Anything, something positive, right? He held the door open for Mrs. So and so. And then you can write about today's trigger. And I would say it's only on those beh the behaviors that you're working on. So we're working on raising our hand, right? What helped? Or if you are looking at triggers, like, hey, we're noticing lots of meltdowns, what's happening? Don't write about every single one. Today's trigger was transition to from uh math to library. What helped? Was it a movement break? Was it a smaller task? Was it a private cue? Was it, you know, sending them over to Mrs. So and so's class with a delivery, right? What was it that that worked? That's it. So the win, the trigger, what helped? That builds trust. And trust is what keeps parents going into fight or flight every time their phone buzzes. Because parents aren't trying to be the bad guy either and trying to attack teachers. They're just so worn out. I promise you, they're so worn out because the battle that you see at school doesn't go away at home either. They're living with it day in and day out as well. So if school feels like a battlefield for you right now, it doesn't mean your child's doomed. It doesn't mean the teacher is a villain, and it doesn't mean you're failing. It means that the supports are aimed at the wrong target. ADHD kids don't need more fear. They need more structure at the moment of failure, not consequences when they get home because of all the bad notes, right? And they need more reinforcement when they do something right, the positive, right? And parents, as you know, you don't need more bad news. You need a team. You need someone who's on the same team as you with the same plan, the same goal, and a way to see your kid clearly again beyond just the behavior. Because underneath all that chaos is a kid. Look at him in the eyes again. It's a kid who they're not trying to be like this. Like I said at the beginning, there's not bad kids, just bad behaviors. If your teacher share this with a a colleague who's at their limits. Because guess what? You're not alone. You're not alone in this. You are on a team, and we've got your back. Alright. Don't forget to share this with your kids' teacher, your kids' principal. Hopefully they share it out to their schools. Share, share, share. Because these things are what's going to move the needle. Because, like I said earlier in the episode, what you're doing isn't making a difference. Try these out. I'll see you next week.

Brian Bradford:

Thanks so much for joining us for today's conversation on raising ADHD. Remember, raising ADHD kids doesn't have to feel overwhelming. Small shifts can make a big difference. If you found this episode helpful, it would mean the world if you would hit subscribe, if you'd leave a review, or if you shared it with another parent or teacher who needs this support. And don't forget to join us next week for more real talk, practical tips, and encouragement. Until then, you've got this, and we've got your back.