Masking Part 2
We hit a brick wall when first seeking help for Cora. The net effect of this was to sow doubt in my mind about whether she had ADHD. Maybe they were right? Maybe it was us as parents. I could find endless faults if I started looking at us as a family. Perhaps she was just responding to these.
More often, though, I wondered if she had a level of ADHD which would impact her – but not significantly enough to be recognised by anyone that wasn’t close.
A close family member urged us to get a private diagnosis, having raised an ADHD child themselves and recognising it in Cora. But I didn’t want to borrow money and go through a lengthy process only to not receive a diagnosis, due to there being no ‘evidence’ except our self-reports. I continued to wait to see how things were going at school.
The cycles
We carried on through KS1 and onto year 3 in various cycles: sometimes things were so dire that Cora started school-refusing. Doing normal activities felt beyond us as a family due to her behaviour. A few months later though, things would ease, and people would say she was maturing out of these behaviours.
I realised later that these up/down cycles were a critical part of the ADHD. Cora was capable of meeting expectations at school and having good friendships, with only reasonably mild emotional dysregulation at home. But only for a few months. Then suddenly everything got harder, and the outbursts more prolonged and frequent. Fundamentally at these times she just seemed unhappy and angry.
I say this to point out it’s the consistency that’s impossible with ADHD: if you have a child who can appear mainstream for extended periods, it can take longer to identify. You (or indeed, professionals) may keep ascribing the ‘bad patches’ to various external reasons (I know I did, at times.) But you’ll soon recognise they are like seasons, and will always return – particularly until the ADHD is recognised and supported.
Anxiety
Fairly typically for a neurodiverse girl, the first symptoms Cora started exhibiting at school were not lack of focus, or disruptive behaviour, but anxiety and low self-esteem.
She was moved to lower ability groups to build up her confidence: teachers felt the capability was there, but she got too anxious to focus properly on the work at a certain level. Cora also started showing physical manifestations of anxiety: this prompted her very kind, observant teacher to refer her to a mental health well-being service who had sessions with pupils in school. (This is fantastic service I will mention later – it is now being rolled out across the UK.)
She began writing her letters to teachers at this point, about the butterflies in her head and her ‘worry brain’. At times I would say ‘does Ms X need another letter?’ (ever-conscious of the huge workload teachers have!) But Cora will rarely listen to me when she decides on a course of action 🙂 And I’m proud of her for trying to tackle her issues and get people to listen.
There was still almost a year to go before we worked with school to get a diagnosis and not have her viewed as ‘just’ anxious. It’s largely down to the wonderful luck of having brilliant counsellor and teacher – which of course can be a lottery.
In the next post, however, I wanted to explore recommendations for getting a diagnosis if your child is a masker, based on our experience