The Art of Listening With an ADHD Brain

"Look at me when I'm talking to you."

I've never understood this sentence, yet I've heard it directed at many children with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), myself included. Nonverbal communication can communicate mood and feelings, but not the words of the conversation (unless you are capable of lip reading).

Most people-especially teachers-do not understand what listening truly is. They think they can recognize it, but they are wrong. For most people, listening is defined as having the person look at you without doing anything else. For people without ADHD, this is generally true. For people with ADHD, this is not true. Allow me to give you some insight into the ADHD brain, from someone who has dealt with the issue first hand-as a student and a teacher with ADHD.

I'll never forget the time I had my class interrupted by another teacher. She had dragged a student on my caseload because he had been drawing in her class. In her opinion, he obviously wasn't listening because he was drawing during class. The teacher was too upset for me to reason with her, so I asked her to leave the student with me and I would talk to him. As soon as she left, I asked him why he couldn't have hid his drawing from her. He explained that usually he did, but this time she had caught him.

I wanted to ask that teacher if she ever doodled while on the phone with a friend or if she had a grandmother or mother who knit while talking to her. Those are two situations where listening is accepted although it might appear that the person was not.

I was diagnosed with ADHD in college to become a teacher, and this prompted me to learn as much as I could about ADHD, especially ADHD in the classroom. Understanding ADHD helped me improve my grades and taught me what I needed to do to stay focused in the classroom.