Download Your Own Behaviour Plan

Some of you have asked me on my Facebook page whether I like school.  It’s really hard to like school when you have ADHD. I’m no different – I used to really hate it.

Because of my ADHD, I’ve had years of being bullied by other kids. (I have some brutal stories to tell, and I’ll tell them on this blog and in the forum.) It was worse when we didn’t have a diagnosis and didn’t even know I had ADHD.

The teachers weren’t any better than the kids as they didn’t understand where my distracting behaviour was coming from and usually got really mad at me. I always struggled in class and tried lots of “solutions” that only made things worse.  I thought I was stupid for the longest time and wanted to give up.  It drove me crazy that I understood a lot of concepts really well but still barely made it through each grade.

Sound familiar?

Lately, I’ve had some big improvements that I want to share with you.

What’s Helped me at School

The key the reasons school has begun to improve for me since last year have been:

1. My parents advocating for me and helping arrange my classes so I have the teachers that work best with me.  This wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t understand ADHD as well as they do, so they know how to help me.
2. Taking some time in the summer to get ahead on courses on my own time. (I’ll tell you more about that in a future post!)
3. Beginning to understand what I need in order to deal with ADHD at school. This includes the meds I have, as well as thingies to fiddle with in class, and help keeping everything organized. AND
4. The biggie: my Behaviour Plan.

Get a Behaviour Plan

I mentioned my Behaviour Plan a while back in a post on handling bad days. It’s helped me get through some of the worst days you could imagine.

This document will help you stand up for yourself, and make sure your school is ready to work with you instead of against you.

I promised to put up a copy of it for you to see and I’ve managed to do one better. I was able to get some help from my graphic designer who put together a blank PDF that you can fill in, download and print. So, you can see my real Behaviour Plan and download an empty plan for you to use with your school.

Download your own fillable PDF Behaviour Plan here: Jeff’s behaviour plan template. (This is made so that you can fill it out on your computer, then print it out.)

If you need inspiration, here’s what my plan looks like: Jeff’s behaviour plan example.

The behaviour plan idea really caught the attention of Jeff Copper, an amazing coach in the ADHD & ADD world. Jeff hosts an internet-radio talk show called Attention Talk Radio and invited me in for an interview on his show.  You can listen to the show by clicking the link below.

You can also listen to the radio show on their page at www.attentiontalkradio.com, www.facebook.com/attentiontalkradio,and on iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id323390528.

Meanwhile, I hope you take a look at the behaviour plan and see whether it could help you at your school.

-Jeff