Neurodivergence and the School-to-Prison Pipeline with Sarah Templeton | Neurodivergent Spot

Description

Summary:
In this episode of Neurodivergent Spot, Sam Marion is joined by Sarah Templeton, an expert in neurodiversity, to discuss the critical issue of the school-to-prison pipeline and its impact on neurodivergent children, especially those with ADHD and autism. Sarah emphasizes the importance of recognizing early warning signs in schools and the role of teachers in providing the right support to prevent exclusion and negative outcomes. Sarah also explores the systemic lack of neurodiversity training in education and how better understanding can help avoid the stigmatization of neurodivergent students.

Quotes:

"The school-to-prison pipeline is real, and it's full of neurodivergent kids. These children, if we don't get it right early, they could end up in prison."
"Very rarely have the words 'try harder' or 'calm down' made any difference."
"If we just view neurodivergence as a superpower, we ignore the support that so many need to thrive."

Contact Information:

Sarah Templeton’s website: www.sarahtempleson.org.uk
Books:
- How to NOT Murder Your ADHD Kid
- How Not to Damage Your ADHD Adolescent
- Teachers, How Not to Kill the Spirit in ADHD Kids (For educators)
- The Prison Counselor (Coming April 2025)
Keywords (SEO):
Neurodivergent children
ADHD
Autism
School-to-prison pipeline
Neurodiversity in schools
Teacher training
Dyscalculia
Special education
Neurodivergent support
Rejection-sensitive dysphoria
Criminal justice system
Early identification
ADHD in prison

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Transcription

Speaker #0
The school-to-prison pipeline is a real thing, and the prisons are full of ADHD.
Speaker #1
Welcome to Neurodivergent Spot. I'm your host, Sam Marion. My pronouns are he, him, and I am a multiply neurodivergent therapist, speaker, and creator. My work focuses on all things neurodiversity with particular interest in autism, ADHD, learning differences, and learning disabilities. Today's guest is Sarah Templeton. Sarah, please introduce yourself to the listeners.
Speaker #0
Hiya, really good to meet you and hello everybody. My name is Sarah Templeton and I'm in the UK. I am also, like you, a qualified counsellor and CBT therapist and coach, but I don't do that anymore. I write books now because I've realised that I can reach a much bigger audience by writing books. So I've written three books on parenting and teaching ADHD children and my fourth book, The Prison Counsellor, comes out in... April this year.
Speaker #1
Before we continue, I've got a quick disclaimer. This podcast is for information purposes only and should not be seen as a replacement for therapy, healthcare, or legal advice. Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Excited to get started. So let's jump in with the first question. What has your neurodivergent journey looked like? Well,
Speaker #0
it looked like nothing until I was 51. I didn't know at all. And then a counselor said to me, has anybody suggested your adhd and i said no why and she said because i think you are go home and google it so i went home and googled it and three months later was diagnosed with moderate to severe combined adhd which i thought explained my whole life it didn't because at that time i was counseling adhd people and i then realized that some of the conditions they were talking about i had myself so when i was 55 and 56 i then went on to be diagnosed with wait for it's a bit of a recipe you severe dyspraxia with 1% processing and 1% motor skills, sensory processing disorder, dyscalculia, which had completely screwed up my life more than the ADHD, followed by OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. So I'm one of the people with ADHD who has four coexisting conditions.
Speaker #1
All right. Thank you for sharing that. I'm always fascinated to hear people's journey and the timelines of when people come to recognize more and more identities. I'm sure you see this in your work too. It explains so much.
Speaker #0
I've seen it all. Being a counsellor, you know, I've seen people from four to 90. And I've seen every single response as well. I've seen people overjoyed like me. I was thrilled. I felt like I belonged to a new club. I felt like I'd worked myself out. You know, it's brilliant. I've seen people absolutely desperate and suicidal about it. You know, so I've seen every reaction and every age group.
Speaker #1
finding out it's fascinating but it's always very different you know no two are the same that's true my experience is about every third of my life i land a new neurodivergent identity that explains so much more picked up adhd when i was about 19 autism at about 37 38 somewhere in there like and each time's like okay this makes sense yeah yeah there we go it makes sense
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's brilliant. But one of the things I campaign massively about is getting kids to be diagnosed and recognized with these conditions way before. Because finding out, like I did in my 50s, that I got, you know, five pretty big conditions, it's just not right. You know, we should be screening for these and letting people know what they're dealing with way before, way before that.
Speaker #1
Sure. I'm going to use this as a segue. Question number two. You have worked with countless ADHD adolescents and their families. What are... What are the biggest misconceptions that parents and teachers have about ADHD?
Speaker #0
Okay, there's quite a few. I would say the biggest, though, the real biggie-biggie is that you can't be intelligent and have ADHD. There are still a lot of teachers and parents who think, but my child's great, they're doing brilliantly, they've got a degree, they've got A-levels. They can't have ADHD. Well, they absolutely can. So the biggest misconception is that you can't be very intelligent with ADHD. Absolute nonsense. is um is dyslexia i'll use that one people who are diagnosed with dyslexia i think they've just got dyslexia and they haven't i've yet to meet one who hasn't also got adhd so a lot of people diagnosed with dyslexia um they think all their issues problems struggles differences are due to the dyslexia and actually no i always say dig deeper dig deeper i think you'll find there's adhd going on and i haven't yet met one person who is diagnosed with dyslexia who isn't also adhd i'm prepared to i'm waiting but i've not met one So that's another misconception that you can have dyslexia without ADHD. Never seen it.
Speaker #1
You know, I've never thought about that. I have to think through people I've worked with now, but absolutely. I mean, we see this, right? That with neurodiverse identities, where there's one, there are frequently more.
Speaker #0
um 100 100 i mean i'm a classic example you know when i was i really did think when i was diagnosed with adhd that explains everything but actually it was the severe dyspraxia and the dyscalculia that explained everything you know that that was the icing on the cake when i got those but i literally didn't work myself out until i was about 56 well that's outrageous you know people should be screened way earlier than that to get the help and the support and the understanding and also to stop beating themselves up Because you do beat yourself up spectacularly well when you've got these conditions and you don't know. I mean, I was incredibly clumsy, always dropped food down my top, always break things, break zips, rip buttons off, all that sort of thing. And I got angry with myself every single time I did it. I don't now because I know that's severe dyspraxia. And we should be helping kids work that out very early so that they can be understood and not judged for their natural neurodivergence, in my opinion.
Speaker #1
Absolutely. That part of... thinking this identity explains so much and then realizing nope nope there's more that really explains it uh i i don't quite qualify as like dyslexic but i do have a tracking uh disability with with reading okay i never like my eyes just bounce around the page constantly and i i never understood that at all i was in this you know another share that we have here is we were both therapists working with people as clinicians and not understand it's about ourselves but i was working with an adolescent who was explaining to me his reading disability and I was just sitting here, my mind just blown because that's me. I don't, I stayed up half the night not reading about this online thinking what this is a thing? I had never found the language for it and this this speaks to I think not just the lack of screening for young people but it speaks to the training that therapists don't receive. that we need to receive.
Speaker #0
When you say that, we've been contacting a lot of the coaching and counselling training organisations in the UK trying to get them to include neurodivergence in their training. And we've had some brilliant conversations. Every single one of them we've spoken to has said 100%, we know we've got to do this because who's going to turn up in a therapy room more than anybody else? Somebody with anxiety, depression, somebody who doesn't understand themselves, somebody who's getting criticised for things constantly and they don't know why. But we've had terrific response from our coaching and counselling bodies. And they've all said as well, this hasn't got to be like one week or one evening. This has got to be a whole module. There needs to be a whole module. And we've said, yes, it does. And we're going to help them write it. Because, you know, like you, qualified counsellor, psychotherapist, accredited, whatever that means. But, you know, we've got the skills and the knowledge of what counsellors need to learn. And we also know neurodiversity inside out. So we've said, you know, not blowing our own trumpets here, but actually we're the perfect people to do this for you. And they've all said, yes, please. We want to work with somebody that really understands counselors and counseling, but also understands exactly what they need to know about the neurodiversities.
Speaker #1
That's amazing. You've made that progress. I think that's phenomenal.
Speaker #0
Yeah. At the start of it, but all the ones we've spoken to have said yes. So, yeah.
Speaker #1
Next question. Your books focus on helping parents and educators support ADHD? Yeah. What's one simple shift in mindset? And maybe let's include for therapists that are supporting folks too, because you're talking about that. But what's one simple shift in mindset or approach that can make the biggest difference in supporting ADHD?
Speaker #0
Okay, a nice simple one here. And that is understand that you are not going to turn a neurodivergent child into a neurotypical one. There are teachers who are lovely and doing their very best, but their goal with an ADHD child seems to be to make them behave like the neurotypical one. Now, that's wrong because you're a counsellor, so you understand this. When an ADHD person is born, they're born with that brain. Why do they not have the same right to be their authentic self as any neurotypical child? They absolutely do. Neurodivergent children shouldn't have to change to be neurotypical. you know copy neurotypicals no you need to accept that that is their brain that is how they were born and unless you want to make them quite mentally unwell and give them severe low self-esteem accept it accept it and work with it don't try and change it that's my biggest message both to parents and teachers uh i love that yeah except except people for who they are yeah um
Speaker #1
Let's get right to the final question before we kind of deep dive. Many ADHD teens struggle with self-esteem and feeling misunderstood. So we talked about kind of a simple mindset shift, but what are some practical ways parents and teachers can help them build confidence and resilience?
Speaker #0
I think the main way is by remembering that ADHD people receive an awful lot of negative messages just for their natural behaviour. So if we use mine as a child, it was stop fiddling, stop biting your nails, sit still, concentrate, focus, stop playing with your hair, stop sucking your hair. So we're constantly being sort of negative, negative. So the biggest shift I think people can make that's very simple is to always work things positively. So, for example, for teachers, I always advise that they get ADHD kids up. as much as possible get them moving get them dropping things in get them giving out homework get them writing on the board and but do that in a positive way so not oh little johnny you're driving me insane because you can't sit still for god's sake you know no forget that get up and say johnny we need you up here you're brilliant you're fast you're quick get up here and do the writing on the board you know always frame things positively and play into their traits by saying you're brilliant you're the quickest in the class come on you know you'll be brilliant at this writing up here Always play in and try and remember that people with ADHD have low self-esteem. So try and work things as positively always as you can build them up. Don't knock them down. They will knock themselves down well enough without your input, you know, build them up. That's the important thing.
Speaker #1
Yeah. I love that. Thank you. Build them up, lean into their strengths. Um, yeah,
Speaker #0
uh,
Speaker #1
so I, I could go. So many directions from what you've shared. Is there a direction you'd like to go for a few more minutes, kind of a deep dive on any one of those?
Speaker #0
Yeah, my deep dive would be that it's absolutely critical that parents and teachers get this right, because I know this is in America as well. I know it's in Australia, and it's definitely in the UK, and I suspect it's worldwide. The school-to-prison pipeline is a real thing, and the prisons are full of ADHD. I've heard from several police forces in America who've all said the same thing to me. We know we've got as much ADHD in our prisons and also a lot of autism as you in the UK. But they know in America it's going to be a tougher job because we're tougher on crime here. And that is going to be seen as an excuse, not a reason. Yeah. So what I would like teachers and parents to really get is that it's critical we stop excluding these kids because excluded kids turn into angry, low self-esteem kids. Those angry, low self-esteem kids often think, well, the teacher thinks I've heard this from clients. I've been called naughty all my life. I'm going to do it. I'm being called naughty. I'm being told off. I don't care anymore. I'm just going to do whatever. I'm going to go and steal, rob, kick, fight, whatever. So it's critical we understand these kids from a very young age, critical we accept them for who they are, and critical that we don't exclude them from school. Because I'm quite sure you've got a school to prison pipeline in America. We've certainly got a huge one here. And I'll give you a very quick example. I was contacted literally in the last month by a school for excluded kids in the Midlands, right in the heart of England. And they just worked out that their daughter was ADHD. But because they've been filling all the forms in about their daughter, they then realised that they think all 30 of the excluded kids they've got in their school are ADHD. But they hadn't realised that. Lovely, lovely team. I met the whole team of teachers, about eight of them. And I said, OK, well, I'm going to go ahead and do this. But they hadn't realised that until one of them's child was diagnosed and they had to fill in all the paperwork. And then they went, hang on, people who can't sit still, people who are interrupting all the time, people who are on the go, people who don't sleep well, all of this. And I had a meeting with them and they said, Sarah, we think it's all 30. And I said, well, I wouldn't be surprised. And they also said, and we know if we don't do something about this now, a good chunk of these are going to end up in prison. Some of them have already been arrested. You know, they're only 13 or 14. but they've already been arrested. So that's my big passion, is waking people up to the school-to-prison pipeline. It exists. It is chock-a-block with neurodiversity. It's chock-a-block with people who have got dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, can't do certain subjects. They get humiliated. They can't stand the humiliation because of rejection-sensitive dysphoria, which we have. And they think, well, I'm not going to sit there looking like a banana. I'm going to go off into town. I don't want to be humiliated and be last again. I'm going to do something different. So it's understanding really is my big message to everybody. Everybody, you know, people at work, people who are teachers, parents, kids themselves. If you're struggling, don't hide it. Tell somebody, say, look, I'm brilliant in English. I cannot do maths. Could we have a look at why that might be? You know, start to ask questions rather than just assuming a child isn't trying. That's what I got. You know, you're brilliant in English and history. You just need to make more effort in maths. no i had dyscalculia but nobody worked that out you know so i think it's understanding and managing adhd autism dyslexia dyspraxia all of these in the classroom knowing how to manage and i always say i do not blame teachers right teachers themselves i've worked with thousands of them and the vast majority are absolutely lovely and desperate to do the right thing the problem goes way back further than that they're not trained in neurodiversity and it's very very unfair to put a teacher in a classroom where she might have three ADHD kids and two autistic kids, and she's had no training or very little training in it. That is not fair. This is what needs to change. We need to include all this in teacher training so that they go into the classrooms and they're ready. When I've done training in schools, which I do a lot of, the teachers afterwards come up to me and say, oh my God, thank you so much. One of them actually said to me, I've been a SENCO, Special Educational Needs Coordinator teacher, for 20 years. And she said, first of all, I'm dyslexic. And so are my two daughters. And thank you for saying it, because I've now just realised we're all ADHD. So God love you for that. But secondly, she said, I'm a SENCO teacher at this school. I've been having SENCO training for 20 years. And nobody has just told me all that you've just told me in that classroom. So thank you. I now feel I can go back and do my job properly. Now, what's scary about that lovely woman that she was, she'd had 20 years special education needs training. And in my two and a half hour presentation, she'd not heard any of it. That is scary. And this is why I say we never, ever blame teachers for this. The teachers I've met, most of them are absolutely wonderful, but they've not had the training. And they're desperate for the information because they want to help these kids, but they just don't know how.
Speaker #1
You know, oh, gosh, my mind went in so many directions as you're saying that. So I'm going to recap a few points here that stood out to me. Yes, the school to prison pipeline. This is. to me, the danger when people talk about neurodivergence as a superpower, because there are a disproportionate number of entrepreneurs who are neurodivergent. Yes, absolutely. But also the prison population. If we nurture in the right ways, then we can use some real strengths. However, if we just view the superpower, then we ignore so many people who need support. So I think that's such an important piece that I appreciate you saying that. I think you're saying about the educators and educators who are in the classrooms, work with these kids, they get the special trainings. And I stood at an educators conference last spring in a room of probably 50 people in that presentation. I presented several times and I made a comment about some foundational laws in America about a student having rights under both at the same time. And I had people saying, I. I've never heard that. Same deal. One person said, I've been doing this for 20 years. I didn't, I've never heard that a kid can have an IEP and be on air 6 at 5.04. There are different laws. Yes, they can. They may not need them, but they can. And it's just so many, you know, yes. And the latest in the United States is, you know, we're recording this towards the end of January. It won't air for a month or so. But. I got an email, and this went out to a lot of schools yesterday, different email to parents from school systems saying, with the customs and immigration stuff happening, deportations, here's how our school is going to handle it should the customs and immigration enforcement show up at the school. So now educators have to understand the laws around border protection as well. They have to understand kids in the United States that... It's almost been normalized to have active shooter drills. When I was growing up, we had bad weather drills and we had fire drills. Now there's so many more and it's normalized to kids. They don't know when it's real, when it's just a drill. And one more thing. And so, yeah, as much as I think neurodiversity is so important and I want them to get the training, at some point we have to acknowledge we are asking so much of teachers.
Speaker #0
I totally agree. I totally agree. The only thing I would say about that is that when teachers say exactly that, and I completely agree, it's not their job. to diagnose people or whatever but i think because children are in school six seven eight hours a day whatever um it's much more likely going to be the teacher that spots that somebody is really struggling with writing not with numbers but definitely with writing whereas if they've only got half an hour's homework you know the mum or dad doesn't get that much much time to spot these things whereas a teacher can spot i will say even if you only spot the red flags you know if you just spot the red flags and say to the mum okay i've seen i've seen carrier you know she's absolutely brilliant anything with words but she's not great with the numbers do you want to just look into that i think if the teachers just know that the red flags you know and not and not to put things down to not trying um and and um i was told off for so many things to do with numbers you know that i was obviously wasn't concentrating in those classes well actually i wasn't concentrating but i couldn't take the information in so if they'd have looked back behind why wasn't i concentrating when i was concentrating beautiful in english history brahma anything to do with words but no in maths i was distracted i was naughty i was i was all over the place but rather than just going oh she's naughty let's give her detention let's send her out whatever look behind it this is what i always say to everybody you know look behind any teachers totally agree with you we're asking an awful lot of them we're asking to worry about mental health to worry about friendship groups to worry about all sorts of things If you only spot the red flags for some of these conditions, and you might be wrong, and that's fine. You know, if you flag up, if somebody's flagged up that I was not concentrating in maths, yeah, eventually they'd have got to the fact I'd got dyscalculia. If it wasn't that, let's say I wasn't concentrating in maths because I didn't like the teacher, and it was the question of being moved to another group, that's good too, you know. But don't ignore these things and assume it's the child being naughty, because it most often isn't, it most often is flagging something up. We just need to be better at looking at red flags. I would say.
Speaker #1
Very rarely have the words try harder or calm down made any difference,
Speaker #0
right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. You can't. There'll be a reason why you're not trying harder. Yeah. Especially if you are in other classes. So it doesn't need to be just fudged over with, oh, just try harder in maths. No, you can't try harder. So, yeah, it's red flags, I think, as far as teachers really need to go. in this country don't know if it's the same in america it may well be but um teachers are not asked to sort of keep records or make notes or whatever they would they would pass any concerns over to the senko we would have a special education needs person um and they would just need to say to them okay i think harriet has got i don't know what but there might be something going with harriet do you mind screening her for certain things and that gets passed over to the senko the senko can't possibly know when you've got schools of a thousand, you know, which of the kids that are struggling in certain subjects or not handing their homework in, in certain subjects, but the teacher can notice that, you know, they can notice that flag it up to the SENCO and then leave it in the hands of the SENCO. That's, that's kind of all we're expecting teachers to do. We're not expecting them to become mental health experts or neurodivergency experts. No, but they will spot why kids are struggling. Definitely.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Yep. That makes sense. Sarah, I I appreciate your time. I appreciate your insight today. So thank you for agreeing to this and being here with me. For listeners who are going, okay, I need to learn more from Sarah. How can they do that? Where can they find you, your books? Share that with us, please.
Speaker #0
Okay, I totally will. The two books I've written for parents, one is for younger children and one is for teenagers. So the easy thing to do is go on Amazon or literally Google. You'll find it. If you Google Sarah Templeton, you will then find one book for younger children and one. that is definitely for teenagers. For teachers, I've written a very different book because not only do they need to understand ADHD, autism or the coexisting conditions, but they need to know how to manage it in the classroom so they don't have a breakdown. So there's a teacher's book called Teachers, How Not to Peel the Spirit in ADHD Kids. So that one is very easy to find. My next book is called The Prison Counselor and that is coming out at the beginning of April and that's all about the amount of ADHD behind bars, which I'm very passionate about. That's going to be called the prison counselor. So that'll be an easy one to find. And the easiest place to direct people is to my main website, which is sarahtempleson.org.uk. And that will lead you to the other websites. So we have one that's all about raising awareness in the criminal justice system and addiction. And then we have our therapy website, which is where we got a hundred ADHD diagnosed therapists, but go to sarahtempleson.org.uk. That leads you to everything else.
Speaker #1
Perfect. Thank you. And all of those will be linked in the show notes. So for listeners, just check it out there. You'll find all those links will make it easy for you. So you can learn more from Sarah. So again, Sarah, thank you so much for being here with me.
Speaker #0
My absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Speaker #1
And thanks for listening to Nerd Avergent Spot. Again, I'm Sam Arian. You can check me out on Instagram at Nerd Avergent Spot. From there, you can find all my other places online. I hope you will like, share, subscribe. Thank you so much.