Helping a child with ADHD discover his unique gifts
Today I had a 10 yo student join my Robotics workshop, who’s been struggling a fair bit with ADHD. I’d been speaking with his mother for the past 8 months, and she had hesitated to send him in the past, as he’d been having difficulties making it through long sessions. Our workshop is 7-hours long. She’d share how even when accompanied by her, he’d have breakdowns midway through a 5-hr woodworking workshop. He was also struggling a lot with the mainstream academic system, a lot of school refusal, tantrums, meltdowns etc, and so she had finally decided some months back to pull him out of regular school, and homeschool him. A bold move, especially in academics-obssessed Singapore.
Recently, somewhat frustrated, she finally felt ready to send him to our workshop and give it a go. By the end of the 7-hours, I was blown away by his creativity and depth of thought, and what I saw was lots and lots of potential. The story below, of how we worked together, is about connection, empowerment and empathy.
For privacy reasons, let’s refer to him as Jay. And for reference, this 7-hour workshop involves kids learning the basics of coding and wiring circuits with Arduino, and then applying that newfound knowledge to design and build their own wearable tech device, from scratch. Fairly intense.
I was keen to make the experience one where Jay feels a sense of empowerment, and so first off, I planned the session as a small group, was just 3 kids total, so I could give him enough attention. I also checked in with Hsiao Bond⁰ (a child-development specialist whom we share the space with, and who has years of experience supporting neurodivergent children) before the workshop, and she said she’d be around in case we needed support.
Quickly into the session, I could see that Jay was very sharp and a deep thinker (and no, ADHD is not a ‘blessing in disguise’. Being smart is not a hidden gift of ADHD. But it is true that kids who are more sensitive are more likely to develop ADHD, as they can be more easily affected by certain stressors early on in their brain’s development¹). The way he’d comment on things during my introductory presentation, told me that he had depth of thought, his own voice, and opinions about the world. And he’s just 10 years old.
Once we started on the coding/wiring exercises, I noticed that he often might not be looking at me, he might be absorbed in his own screen. In the past I’d take this as a failing on my part to engage the child. But when I looked at his screen I noticed that he actually was taking in all the things I was saying, with great detail. In fact, he breezed through the wiring and coding exercises, even faster than the older kids in the room. Just because a child doesn’t seem to be listening, doesn’t mean he/she actually isn’t. Sometimes they actually need to be able to be in their own space/zone, to be present.
An hour or so into the workshop, he casually mentioned, almost in passing, that he was having a headache. Sometimes we might not take such things seriously but kids don’t just say things for no good reason. I figured he might be getting a bit cognitively overloaded, even though he was doing well, and that his brain/body might need a bit of a reset. And so I gave the class a 2 min break, and took him outside to bounce on some big exercise balls for a bit.
We have these around the space to help kids to destress, release restlessness, reconnect with their bodies etc. And since he was new to the space, to help him get comfortable, I bounced around with him! (Kids love it when adults play with them, for real). Very quickly you could feel the tightness in his system ease and we went back in to continue the lesson.
The rest of the morning passed by pretty quickly, and he made it through all the coding/electronics challenges I gave the class.
Now, as I mentioned, this is a full day workshop, and the second half involves kids each building their own wearable tech device to assist people with visual impairments, from scratch. The part after lunch usually starts off with the kids experiencing the challenges of being blind first-hand, walking around blindfolded using a conventional guide cane. After this, they reflect on the experience and list out some of the challenges faced by the blind, and brainstorm solutions they can come up with to assist them.
Usually the problems that kids highlight are more obvious ones like, “oh they might hit their head against an obstacle”, “they might bump into or hurt other people with their stick” etc.
But this child listed out a different set of issues. He wrote things like, “They might have anxiety, they might feel constantly annoyed, they could possibly even have suicidal thoughts.” And then he kind of stopped there. He didn’t have much else to say. And in my mind I was thinking, “Wow, this child really has a certain depth of thought, and empathy.” Even if it’s not apparent from his external demeanour. He might not have much more steam right now to think of the more practical, tangible problems, but no worries.
When I asked him to think of solutions he could come up with to help these people, he listed things like, “They can get a $6000 surgery; they can get the opposite of deodorant so that they smell so bad that no one will come near them, so they won’t bump into anyone, just that then they won’t be able to have friends.” He again wasn’t in the space to connect his solutions to robotics-related ideas, but what I did notice was, “This child is really comfortable thinking out of the box, and his imagination has both breadth and depth.”
So rather than forcing him to connect his ideas to robotics, I just told him that, hey, well we have an hour or so to prototype something today, so what would you like to build? He said he doesn’t know what he can build. I said, well, I can’t really help you out with the smelly deodorant idea, but I can see you’re keen to build something that repels other people away. I have some BBQ skewer sticks, that can be pointy and scary, wondering if those give you any ideas?
Judgement is kept to a minimum in my class. Anything can be an entry point, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. My goal with this child was to help him feel a sense of flow and engagement, to have fun doing things, feel that he can actually build things without it always getting too overwhelming for his nervous system. Did it really matter so much in the moment if he actually took the original problem statement seriously? This is a child who, the same morning, was having a panic attack before coming over to the class, worried he might not be able to make through a 7hr workshop. The best thing we could do for him was to help him feel that “I not only made it through the 7 hrs without a meltdown, but I actually felt good in my body through those hours, and learnt something new in the process.” Children can always have antagonistic thoughts and feelings, and they exist for a reason. And feelings always need an outlet for expression, so you can move through them. If you don’t express, you suppress, and that just leads to a whole worse set of health problems and behaviours. And children might not have the skills or tools to process their strong feelings, but if we as adults can teach them how, it can be incredibly liberating and healing to them.
When he saw the skewer sticks and still didn’t feel much inspiration, I said OK, looks like I’m trying to talk to his head too much. Let’s help him think more with his hands instead. And so I gave him a bit of material, taught him how to use a hot glue gun, some ice cream sticks, BBQ skewers, toilet roll cores, a scissor… And said, Hey, don’t worry about the idea. Why don’t you just start playing with this stuff, follow your instincts, and see what emerges. He very quickly took to it, and I kid you not, within a minute, he had cut this cardboard roll into a neat glove (photo below), augmented with mini ice cream sticks, and was in the process of completing a set of wolverine claws. I was blown away by the attention to detail. He was very intuitive about how he shaped the cardboard roll, flatter at the palm and rounder at the wrist. Seeing this really drilled home for me how, every child has their unique gifts. The question is just, can we help them discover it?
And so, as his Wolverine claws came together, the others in the class (who were still diligently working on their wearable tech devices) got excited and started suggesting to him that, “Hey you know, maybe your creation can be a device to help blind people defend themselves from strangers, kidnappers, or for blind people in the army.” And I think hearing that, gave the child the affirmation (from his peers!) that he was actually creating something of value.
He still couldn’t fully connect with the blind devices problem statement, but decided to try and go with it a bit. He finally thought of adding some electronics in, and while he didn’t add a sensor like we had hoped, he came up with his own story and said, “I’m going to add a buzzer that plays an obnoxious sound to intimidate the enemy before we attack them.” And so I said, OK! Let’s figure out how to create that kind of sound. Some people might be reading this and wondering, why am I encouraging violence? I’m not. Rather, I’m creating an outlet for these seemingly violent feelings to be expressed in a safe way. The feelings are there for a reason to begin with.
And sure enough, after he got his whole setup working, with the obnoxious sounding buzzer and the Wolverine claws, his energy relaxed a bit and he said, “Mmm, I’m kinda wishing I used the sensor instead, then at least I could have actually helped the blind people detect strangers around them.”
🤯 🥳 🥹
This to me was the embodiment of what Dr Haim Ginnot means by, “Kids behave right when they feel right.²” Having been able to fully express and release the seemingly ‘violent feelings’, and finally feeling a sense of accomplishment at making it through the day and building something of his own design, the child was in a better state of mind and finally able to connect with feelings of empathy and kindness towards other people!
Unfortunately we were out of time that day, but I could feel that something had shifted inside for Jay. And he went home with a big smile on his face. In fact, he didn’t really want to stop, haha.
By no means does this post mean to speak about all children or adults living with ADHD, but I hope that my sharing might be of help or hope to other parents, educators and kids journeying through similar challenges. Not all kids with ADHD will respond the same way, and that’s also the point. If we’re curious, open and patient, we can likely often find an entry point to meet and support them where they’re at.
Moreover, kids who need to take a break from school often face this ever-mounting stress of falling behind on their academics, of falling behind their peers. And I hope that through such experiences, they can reconnect with their sense of self-worth, and actually even learn valuable skills and gain knowledge that (1) they might not learn at school, and (2) helps them better absorb, appreciate and apply what they will eventually learn at school.
Why am I able to see all this? I’m realising that a big part of it is the hell lot of inner work I have done myself, firsthand, especially around cultivating deeper self awareness around my own inner state and emotions. We can only meet others as deeply as we’ve met ourselves, and actually I’m only getting started.
I also have a really great community of respectful/mindful parents, educators and therapists, who have taught and given me more courage than I ever hoped to find :)
About the Author: Aditya Kapoor is the co-founder of Whyte Labs, a young robotics education startup based in Singapore, trying to create a holistic learning experience for kids to (1) discover their interests, (2) cultivate empathy, kindness, creativity and (3) bring their own ideas to life. From having spent years doing research on disaster response robotics, he is now passionate about providing kids a safe space where they can find their authentic voice, bolster their sense of self, and help support their mental and emotional wellbeing.
If this article resonated with you, would love to hear from you in the comments, or via email at aditya@whytelabs.com!
