Reflections
The mental health issue that my group had identified is attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
It is a neurodevelopmental disorder where a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity interferes with a person’s academic, occupational and social functioning. Its symptoms present prior to 12 years of age and are present in two or more settings, for example, work, school and home (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013).
On the day of the first session, before we met the group of children we were assigned to, there was some miscommunication and thus, we mistook our classmates’ charges as our own and since we had personalised bookmarks, our classmates were forced to exchange with us. Therefore, the topic and activities that we had planned were not really relevant for the group we ended up working with during the service-learning project.
Consequently, we were unaware about whether any of our current charges have ADHD, but we were prepared for it nonetheless.
To work with possible behaviour that may be present due to ADHD, namely having difficulty waiting for their turns, not listening to instructions (Ryan-Krause, 2017) and walking around excessively, we would provide the child with more supervision than their peers, inform the child of the next activity to reduce uncertainty and anxiety, eliminate potential distractions and use positive peer models.
From what I have seen in the sessions and celebration however, I do not think ADHD is present within our charges. However, I did observe some symptoms in one of the children, Parker (not real name), particularly during the first and second sessions.
In the first session, Parker would often walk away in the middle of the session unprovoked while his peers were sitting down and/or engaged in the activities.
Similarly, in the second session when my groupmates and I were asking the children questions about the rules that we had set as well as the “Stop-Think-Do” framework to recapitulate what was taught, Parker also displayed disruptive behaviour, albeit in a different form.
Parker was rather uncooperative in the previous session, seeing as he often leaves the group out of nowhere, so you can imagine how pleasantly surprised we were when he raised his hand to answer a question. However, we were not expecting “photosynthesis” as an answer to our question about what he had learnt from our previous session.
We laughed at the absurdity at first and thought perhaps he misunderstood the question or was just joking around, so we asked him to answer again but properly this time. He pretended to be serious and seemed to be in deep thought for a while, but his answer was still the same and there was a smug grin on his face. That was when we realised that he was doing it on purpose and wanted to see how far he could push our buttons, and thus we decided not to call on him again.
However, he was clearly dissatisfied with our decision and started to interrupt his peers when they were answering our questions, by making irrelevant comments and mocking the framework. We were exasperated but fortunately, one of our groupmates reminded us to stay calm and we decided to try the strategies that we had proposed. We eventually managed to curb his disruptive behaviour by pairing him up with one of his quieter and more obedient peers and having one of us monitor him at all times to prevent him from walking around or disturbing his peers during activities.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; APA, 2013), often leaving seat in situations when remaining seated is expected, being uncomfortable staying still for extended time, blurting out answers before a question has been completed and interrupting or intruding on others are symptoms of ADHD.
On the other hand, I believe our topic of impulse control is applicable to a person with ADHD, especially so if they are predominantly hyperactive/impulsive since impulsivity is one of the categories of symptoms for ADHD as seen in DSM-5 (APA, 2013) and high levels of impulsivity are associated with ADHD.
My group targets a different skill in our 3 sessions: managing impulses during conflicts, listening to instructions and patience. (695 words)
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and
statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington,
DC: Author.
Ryan-Krause, P. (2017). Preschoolers with ADHD and disruptive
behaviour disorder. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 13(4),
284-290. doi:10.1016/j.nurpra.2016.11.010