Reply to Structured/traditional vs Progressive school for adhd/anxiety

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hi op, though I don’t have a ton of experience yet I will share my recent experience in case it is helpful. My daughter attended a very progressive preschool, mostly outdoors, the most wonderful, inclusive place, super wonderful place to be for a neurodivergent kid in many ways. I so believe in their philosophy in theory and was so grateful for the opportunity to go there. But she really struggled there. Their approach had structure, of course, it was a well run program not a free for all but it was incredibly child led. Which I loved! But again, lots of struggles with emotion regulation and peers. We were often hearing about the difficulty.

But she has started kindergarten at a public school, classroom is super structured and teacher led and is thriving. First IEP meeting they said basically all great things. We were kind of astounded.

My current theory is that while I want that free flowing child led environment for her, the super structured environment is actually easier and less stressful for her. Preschool teacher had actually commented on how things are better for teacher led things. Having the routine be so certain and the tasks so clear seems to be really doing wonders.

This all being said I have to admit if paying for private I would have trouble not choosing the more progressive school and I think a lot was gained from that experience, but I just wanted to share because it’s been pretty eye opening for me. But my kid’s ADHD symptoms show themselves in emotional regulation issues pretty prominently which doesn’t sound like your issue so they may have very different symptom presentation so please take with a grain of salt! [/quote]

We had a similar experience switching from Montessori to more structured. The Montessori child-led 3-hour time blocks were really tough for our gifted kid with combined ADHD and high functioning ASD. We didn't have official diagnoses at the time, just knew "high energy." They did better in a more teacher-led traditional school, which was surprising to me because the are so independent and creative.

So much depends on the teachers, though, so I imagine good experiences could be had in both types of schooling with the right teachers. Even in structured classes, there's a huge difference on days when there are substitute teachers. That's when we see behavior dysregulation and fatiguing, enough so that I can tell at pick up before even hearing from my child that they have a sub because they appear exhausted.[/quote]

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