Research Recap with Skye: Bullying and ADHD

Welcome to Hacking your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD Brain. Today I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try and find any practical takeaways.

In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called Bullying in Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, analyzing Student Social Status, and Student Teacher Relationship Quality. So, a lot to talk about here, and I'm sure this is going to relate to a lot of people.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at https://HackingYourADHD.com/261

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William Curb: All right. Welcome to Hacking your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD Brain. Today I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try and find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called Bullying in Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, analyzing Student Social Status, and Student Teacher Relationship Quality. So, a lot to talk about here, and I'm sure this is going to relate to a lot of people. Let's get going with it.

Skye Waterson: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think before we get into this, I was curious to know, and I haven't said I'm going to ask you this question on the podcast: What was your experience in school like? Did you find it really easy? Did you struggle?

William Curb: I did pretty well in school, and I thought about this question a bit beforehand where I'm like, was I bullied? There was one person that did try to bully me, and I just didn't respond to them, and so it didn't work. It was like I just, I don't know why that was my response, but it was just like, oh, I'm just going to pretend this person doesn't exist. And it was very effective at deterring them because they're just like, I don't really remember much, other than I'm like, oh yeah, he did try to do things, but I don't remember what they were. And nothing really ever came of it. So I was lucky in the situation that's how that worked out, 'cause I know some people that's not going to be the right solution, but...

Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I definitely did struggle in school, in primary school specifically. This really felt like the primary school conversation. It was better when I was older, but I think that conversation that we'll get into about standing out, but not necessarily for the right reasons, I definitely related to that, and I definitely did struggle to get on the same page as my peers when I was in primary school. So this was an interesting, and I think very important conversation to have because the idea that people with ADHD struggle, which is what this paper has found, is that there appears to be some kind of relationship between people with ADHD struggling with their peers, with their teachers. I didn't struggle with the teachers so much, but definitely with the peers. I think that was something that I related to in this article.

William Curb: Yeah. And I thought it was, yeah, the teacher relationship was also an interesting thing where they're like, yeah, sometimes it's positively correlated. Sometimes it's negatively correlated because like you have this image of the teacher's pet kind of thing, and students being like, oh, I don't like how much attention they're getting.

Skye Waterson: Yeah, exactly. That's what we called it. So this paper, it was a structural equation model, and they looked at whether ADHD predicted students' relationships with teachers and peers, and whether these variables then in turn predicted bullying, victimization, and perpetration. And that was what they were trying to do. They had a sample of 135 students, only 27 of those students, however, had ADHD, and then 108 did not. So that came up. It does come up as a, as a limitation of this paper.

William Curb: Yeah, and I think everyone, if you don't know how papers are written, they include in the end like, Hey, how this research could be improved upon later. And they discuss the limitations of the study and yeah, this is definitely something that they were like, Hey, yeah, we would love to see this be, we did find something, but we want to find, have better data.

Skye Waterson: It's like if you read a novel and then at the end of the novel they were like, these are all the plot holes that you missed.

William Curb: Yeah, exactly.

Skye Waterson: Okay, so let's...

William Curb: Yeah, and it was an interesting, yeah, it was interesting to look at how they kind of, like I was thinking when I was reading through it, I wanted to start up, this was a very dense paper to read through, and I had to go back a number of times and look through things again and be like, oh wait, how did they do this? And especially thinking about, how did they measure bullying? How did they measure what their peers felt about them? How were their relationship with teachers? And so they did have a lot of good ways that they did the, these measurements, I felt.

Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So how did they measure bullying? 'Cause they had a whole conversation about the understanding of it, the most cited definition of it, the pattern of systematic, negative actions by one or more students.

William Curb: So they used this, everything was done through questionnaires for this, and this one they used the Adolescent Peer Relationship Peer Relations Instrument, the A PRI. and it's this self-reported thing of 36 items with like a one to six scale of Hey, does this never happen? Does this happen every day? And it manages bullying behaviors in physical, verbal, and social ways. And then also, are you being targeted in these certain ways as well? And so that is the like three, six thing. How often do these students feel that they're being bullied? And I think this is also an important aspect to understand for bullying too, is that the impacts of bullying don't really matter if someone is doing it on purpose, it matters how the person is being perceiving it happening. So the aspect there being that, okay, yeah, you have different solutions if someone is only perceiving being bullied, but the impact is going to be the same either way.

Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think this is also a subtlety in bullying in general, which is one of the reasons why it was good that they looked at it like this, because if it was teachers' perceptions of kids being bullied, for example, they might not pick up on some of the more like subtle ways that children might be being excluded, for example.

William Curb: Yeah. Or this is, can go if you, and this is the same, this is making me think of like this conversation of like microaggressions too, where just because you don't feel like what you're doing is bullying, doesn't mean that the person doesn't, is being like, this is making me feel not welcome here.

Skye Waterson: Exactly. Exactly. So that was what they were looking at. They were looking at, do students in general, think that they're being bullied, and then also their relationship with their teachers, which was interesting because I had not considered as much. It makes a lot of sense that the relationship with your teacher is obviously gonna be a big one, and it can be antagonistic, which feels like it shouldn't be because we should just get along. But, it is. There's a lot of times when I've worked with teachers and they've had students that they find very frustrating, and I'm sure it goes the other way as well.

William Curb: This was in an Italian study, and so they were saying that their most common, prevalent teacher was either their Italian language teacher or their science teacher. So that's who they were measuring, like which teacher are they spending the most time with, and then what's their relationship with that teacher. And it did another very similar question style of, Hey, how close are you? How, like what is this relationship look like with...

Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah. And then they had this slightly triggering peer nomination technique.

William Curb: I saw that and I was like, oh, I, this is something like, I had to post out all the questions that... So this was like the peer side of it. Like, how do you associate with peers, and it was just like, questions were, who would you want as a table partner, who would you want as a schoolwork partner, who would you want as a field trip buddy? All these, and number of questions like that. And it's just, oh, this is very like, pointing the finger of these are the people we want. These are the people we don't want.

Skye Waterson: Yeah, it brought me right back to not high school, but like I said, the primary school conversations of like, who is your best friend? Who is your best friend? Who are you picking first for sports? Like all of that kind of stuff that we just, it doesn't really feature so much as an adult, but as a kid, that was every day. Get into peers, get into partners, like that was always what you were doing.

William Curb: I feel like some people still experience this as adults, like where they're like, oh yeah, there's, there's people at work I don't wanna work with, and people that...

Skye Waterson: Very true, but we don't usually get asked to pick them for teams.

William Curb: Yeah, that's true. We just get assigned them and we're like, eh.

Skye Waterson: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. We don't get as much freedom in that in some ways. Basically, they did this, they collected parental consent. They, by the way, were looking at people who had ADHD diagnoses. They couldn't really find, they just knew that they'd been diagnosed with ADHD. And then they tried to put it together into a graph of sequences, if this, then that kind of thing with statistics. So what did they find? We've already said this, but what did they find?

William Curb: They found that kids with ADHD did have more conflict with teachers. They were less liked by classmates, and they were more visible or noticeable in the classroom. So all these things where it's, oh yeah, this kid is standing out and they're not getting that same, they're not getting, they're not standing out for good reasons.

Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah, which they mentioned specifically, and I think that's really important, especially if some, if you have ADHD and you're like more on the hyperactive side, it might be harder for you to blend with your peers, and that can create its own difficulty, which they wanted to identify, which I thought was really interesting. High likability, but high visibility may create bullying and amplify vulnerability to bullying in the classroom. So it's more about like just not being somebody who was attention either by the teachers in a negative or positive way or from students.

William Curb: Yeah, and they just discussed this like social ripple effect where these classroom relationships had these unintentionally make the kids more vulnerable, either through the teacher targeting them or being, as we talking, very being the very close relationship where they're like, kids are jealous of them.

Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah, which is really interesting. And I think, it was interesting at the end they did have a little conversation about what this means, like practical things that you could do, which I thought was worthwhile because this is one of those conversations. I think bullying has been always a big conversation, like how do we deal with it? What's the best way to support your kid if they are going through it? Especially if maybe you used to go through it and now your child is also ADHD and they're also struggling with this. I think it can be a really tough, a tough situation.

William Curb: Yeah. This study also really made me think of the book, Carolyn McGuire's book, Why Will No One Play With Me?

Skye Waterson: Mm-hmm.

William Curb: Which also discussed this like social aspect of ADHD, where because of ADHD, it's not that we're like trying to be, we're just not noticing these other social aspects, these, things that are going on with body language or other things. It's something that we miss because of, that's just not the thing we're paying attention to when we, that should have been what we were paying attention to. And we can have these miscues on social interactions that can have that like long reaching effects where like people are like, yeah, that's the kid I don't want to be in a table with or in a group with or talk to on the playground.

Skye Waterson: Yeah, because they might interrupt or not wanna play or not get the social nuances of things that are going on, and that can be the case with ADHD, and that is uncomfortable. Reality of, yeah, of the ADHD experience.

William Curb: Yeah, because I've definitely seen that interaction too with either with my kids or other kids around them where it is just one kid has this like really high spike of energy and they are really like just not realizing that they're not matching the energy of the entire group. And people are like, what are they doing?

Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah. So what advice could we give to somebody who maybe is is either, Ooh, that was me, or they're experiencing this with their own kids. I'm not, my kids are two and three. They're not exactly at this point yet. I know your kids are a little bit older. Do we have any advice or direction for people besides that book, which I think is a really great one.

William Curb: Yeah, this is, this is something that we've talked about before too, of needing to slow down and what's going on with everyone. I'm failing to think of the word here, but very mindfulness practice is here, it's 'cause often it's not that these kids don't know how to behave, it's just that they're not noticing in the minute. So having mindfulness practices can really help you. Oh, you know what? Steve's really mad right now. Maybe I shouldn't do a tackle hug on him right now. Oh.

Skye Waterson: Specific.

William Curb: Yeah. The, seeing kids tackle, hug each other, I'm just like, man, that is. Yeah, because this can also happen with parents and teachers where, you know, someone's like really focusing on something and the kid comes in and is like really wanting to engage in, it's this is not the moment to do this particular thing. And it's that mindfulness skill that can really build in to being like, oh, I can see what they want. I've taken, I'm, it's because it's the impulsivity that's really what's driving this.

Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And I think it's really helpful to think about it like that. I think that's really helpful in social situations, even as an adult, just reminding myself to take a breath and look around. And, but also I would say if this is something that has been part of your experience and, maybe there's some shame around that, maybe you didn't understand, you had ADHD at the time. Like, I said, I also struggled with this in primary school, and it is, it's normal. It's apparently reasonably common. And it doesn't have to be this idea of something that you take with you. It's just we work in different ways. We notice different things. We have different strengths, and sometimes that makes it hard to relate to others, especially when you're younger and you're learning that skill. It can take a little bit more time.

William Curb: Yeah. And if you're still feeling some of these issues, yeah, it can be helpful to go back and heal your inner child. It leaves a lasting impression on you when you don't, aren't holding onto some of these things that honestly shouldn't be things holding you back anymore.

Skye Waterson: Yeah, and if you still get nervous about the idea of being put into pairs, then now we know why.

William Curb: School can be both amazing and awful and it's hard to figure out which way it's gonna go because like I had some really bad experiences at school, but I also look back at some of my school days and go, man, I really missed that time of my life as well.

Skye Waterson: Yeah. Yeah, that was what I got like from this paper was so interesting. It kind of put me back in that school environment where you're like, this is what you have to do and you do not have control over your environment. And I think that is a really tough part of school. But also, like you said, it doesn't make us engage with other situations and other people we wouldn't otherwise do now.

William Curb: I just feel like it's something that, yeah, it's important to know that yeah, this is something that happens in, hey, maybe, if you have kids yourself, you can think about how you can, try and, help them learn those skills to better work with friends. If you're a teacher, you can look at how, watch for the hidden dynamics that are happening in the classroom because of ADHD. Oh, it's this kid. Like always not only labeled like the class clown here, but also labeled the kid that you don't wanna be grouped in and thinking about how you can do that without singling them out and making a horse at the same time.

Skye Waterson: Yeah, don't do that. We have this paper. If you want this paper, you can just ask us and we'll send it to you.