Written by Alex Bey - General Manager of Meet Aandi
The school year has barely begun and already some parents are feeling uneasy.
Your child might be more exhausted than you expected. More emotional. More resistant to school in the mornings, or quietly overwhelmed in ways they don’t yet have words for.
If this is happening in the first week of school, particularly for children aged 10–13 with ADHD, it’s important to say this clearly:
You’re not imagining it and your child isn’t failing.
The move into the middle years brings a sudden increase in demands. Children are expected to manage more subjects, more teachers, more instructions and more independence, often all at once.
For many ADHD learners, this coincides with a developmental mismatch.
Research consistently shows that executive functions, skills such as planning, organisation, task initiation, time management and emotional regulation, tend to develop more slowly in children with ADHD. Yet school expectations often assume these skills are already firmly in place by this age.
Australian organisations such as ADHD Australia and professional bodies like AADPA (Australian ADHD Professionals Association) have repeatedly highlighted this gap. Expectations rise sharply just as ADHD learners most need scaffolding, predictability and support.
In the early weeks of Term 1, children aren’t just learning content. They’re absorbing routines, navigating social dynamics, managing sensory input and working out what each teacher expects. For an ADHD nervous system, that invisible workload can be enormous.
This is why the middle years are often where capable, curious ADHD learners begin to struggle, not because they can’t learn, but because the environment demands skills they are still developing.
Support early in the term doesn’t mean lowering expectations. It means making them clearer, more visible and more achievable.
The goal in Week One is not independence at all costs.
It’s supported independence, built gradually.
