He Is Not Being Difficult: Understanding Learners With ADHD
Picture a Primary 3 classroom on a warm afternoon. Thirty learners are copying notes from the board, and one boy, let us call him Tobi, is out of his seat for the fourth time. He has dropped his pencil, borrowed an eraser he didn't need, and answered a question before the teacher finished asking it.
His classwork is half done. His exercise book looks as though it has been through a storm. Yet yesterday, he spent forty minutes building an elaborate model from bottle tops and never looked up once.
"He can do it when he wants to," his teacher sighs. "He is just stubborn." Many of us have said something similar. But what if Tobi is not choosing to be difficult? What if he is struggling with something we cannot see?
What ADHD Is, and What It Is Not
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental condition. It involves a persistent pattern of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, or both, that interferes with a child's learning and daily life (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2022). The difficulties begin in childhood and show up in more than one setting, not just in one teacher's class.
ADHD can look different from one child to another. Some children are mainly inattentive: they drift off, lose things and leave tasks unfinished. Others are mainly hyperactive and impulsive, and many show both patterns together (APA, 2022).
ADHD is not caused by poor discipline, laziness or a lack of home training. It is also not rare in Nigerian classrooms. A study of 1,112 primary school pupils found that 8.7% met the criteria for ADHD, and the inattentive presentation was the most common (Adewuya & Famuyiwa, 2007). In Benin City, researchers found a prevalence of 7.6%, and children with ADHD scored markedly lower in school than their classmates (Amuabunos et al., 2010).
That last point matters. The child we label "troublesome" is often the child who is quietly falling behind. And because inattention is less disruptive than hyperactivity, the dreamy girl at the back of the class may be missed altogether.
"He Can Do It When He Wants To"
This is perhaps the most common misunderstanding about learners with ADHD. Barkley (1997) argued that ADHD is, at its core, a difficulty with self-regulation. It affects the brain's management system, often called executive function: holding instructions in mind, starting tasks, controlling impulses, managing time and regulating emotions.
This explains the puzzle of Tobi's bottle top model. A task that is new, hands-on, and personally interesting supplies its own fuel. Copying notes from the board for thirty minutes does not. The child is not choosing when to pay attention; the task is shaping how much attention the child can summon.
In other words, the problem is rarely that the learner does not know what to do. It is that the learner struggles to do what they know, at the moment it is needed. Greene (2014) puts it simply: children do well if they can. When they are not doing well, our job is to find out what is getting in the way.
The Nigerian Classroom: Labels We Need to Rethink
In many of our schools, a restless child quickly earns a label: stubborn, troublesome, unserious, spoilt. Sometimes the label comes with the cane. Yet punishment rarely builds the skills a learner with ADHD is missing; it mostly teaches them that school is a place where they fail.
Much of this comes from limited training rather than unkindness. In a study of Kaduna primary school teachers, only about a third said their previous training had covered ADHD, despite an average of 14 years in the classroom (Lasisi et al., 2017). The encouraging finding was that a short training programme significantly improved both their knowledge and their attitudes towards affected children.
We should also be honest about the other side. Not every restless child has ADHD. Hunger, poor sleep, undetected hearing or sight problems, stress at home, or lessons pitched far above a child's level can all look like inattention. In a class of fifty learners copying from the board for long stretches, many children will struggle to concentrate. A label applied too quickly can be as harmful as no understanding at all.
What Can We Do in the Classroom?
The good news is that support does not require expensive equipment. A large review of studies found that school-based approaches, especially academic support, reward systems and teaching children to manage themselves, improved behaviour and learning for many learners with ADHD (DuPaul et al., 2012). The same review cautions that effects were smaller in studies with stronger controls, so no single strategy is a magic fix. What works best is consistency.
Begin some of these adjustments tomorrow:
🔶 Rethink the seat. Place the learner near you and away from the door, the window and the heaviest traffic in the room.
🔶 Shorten the runway. Break long tasks into smaller chunks, give one instruction at a time and ask the learner to repeat it back.
🔶 Build in movement. Give legitimate reasons to move, such as distributing books, cleaning the board or carrying a message.
🔶 Make time visible. Use a simple checklist or picture timetable so the learner can see what comes next and what "finished" looks like.
🔶 Catch them doing well. Specific, immediate praise ("You finished the first three sums before looking up. Well done!") works better than general warnings.
🔶 Agree on a private signal. A tap on the desk or a hand gesture can redirect a learner without public embarrassment.
🔶 Connect home and school. A short daily note on one or two agreed targets helps parents reinforce progress at home.
None of these strategies lowers your standards. They simply change the route a child takes to reach them.
Talking to Parents and Knowing When to Refer
Teachers do not diagnose ADHD, but we are often the first to notice the signs. A diagnosis is made by a qualified professional, such as a developmental paediatrician, child psychiatrist or clinical psychologist, using information from both home and school (APA, 2022).
Our role is to observe carefully and record what we see. When does the behaviour happen? During which lessons? How often? What helps? Notes like these are far more useful to a clinician than "he is always disturbing".
How we speak to parents also matters. Parents often take teachers' advice seriously, which places a real responsibility on us (Lasisi et al., 2017). Instead of announcing "I think your child has ADHD", try "I have noticed some patterns, and I would like us to understand them together". Many parents already feel judged. A conversation that begins with partnership rather than blame is more likely to lead to assessment and support.
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Let us return to Tobi. Imagine his teacher seats him nearer the front, gives him the job of handing out exercise books and breaks his classwork into three short parts with a quick check after each. He still fidgets. He still forgets things. But by the end of the week, he has finished more work than he has in a month, and for the first time in a long while, someone has told him he did well.
That is the shift this article invites us to make: from "Why is this child so difficult?" to "What is this child finding difficult, and how can I help?"
Dear Educators,
Have you taught a learner like Tobi? What made the difference for them? Share your experience in the comments, and join our WhatsApp community, where we continue conversations like this every month.
References
Adewuya, A. O., & Famuyiwa, O. O. (2007). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder among Nigerian primary school children: Prevalence and co-morbid conditions. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 16(1), 10–15.
American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787
Amuabunos, A. E., Ofovwe, G. E., & Ibadin, O. M. (2010). Socio-demographic determinants and impact on academic performance of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in school children in Benin City, Nigeria. Sahel Medical Journal, 13(3), 120–127. Source
Barkley, R. A. (1997). Behavioural inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD. Psychological Bulletin, 121(1), 65–94. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.121.1.65
DuPaul, G. J., Eckert, T. L., & Vilardo, B. (2012). The effects of school-based interventions for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A meta-analysis 1996–2010. School Psychology Review, 41(4), 387–412.
Greene, R. W. (2014). Lost at school: Why our kids with behavioural challenges are falling through the cracks and how we can help them (Rev. ed.). Scribner.
Lasisi, D., Ani, C., Lasebikan, V., Sheikh, L., & Omigbodun, O. (2017). Effect of attention-deficit–hyperactivity-disorder training program on the knowledge and attitudes of primary school teachers in Kaduna, North West Nigeria. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 11, Article 15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-017-0153-8
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