Sarah Templeton [00:00:03]: Just start screening kids from a young age for all these conditions. Get them identified, get them diagnosed, get them medicated if they need to be, and change their life trajectory. So, yeah, I think this is a worldwide problem. I don't think it's just, you know, England, America, and Australia, which is not recognizing difficulties, and then behavior develops from those difficulties, and then we punish the behavior without looking at where the difficulties were behind that.

Penny Williams [00:00:30]: Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast, where I share insights and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches. I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author, and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey of raising your atypical kid. Let's get started.

Penny Williams [00:00:52]: Welcome back to Beautifully Complex, everyone. I'm really excited to be talking to Sarah Templeton today, who is an ADHD author and ADHD activist. And we're gonna talk about the criminalization of behavior and, hopefully, how, as parents and educators, we can be proactive to reduce the number of neurodivergent people that end up in the prison pipeline. Do you wanna start, Sarah, by letting everybody know who you are and what you do?

Sarah Templeton [00:01:23]: Okay. Hi, everybody. My name is Sarah Templeton. And when I was 49, I decided to turn to be a counselor. And just after that, I was diagnosed with ADHD in, I was actually 51, nearly 52, before anybody said, you're ADHD. Go and get diagnosed. I was then subsequently diagnosed with severe dyspraxia, which kind of explained a lot of things, a sensory processing disorder, which also explained a lot of things, and dyscalculia, which also explained a lot of things. Mhmm.

Sarah Templeton [00:01:52]: So by the time I was in my mid fifties, I've got all my diagnosis. I knew exactly who I was. There's subsequently OCD as well to add to the mix. But I primarily now I don't counsel. I used to counsel. I used to counsel in the prisons, and young offender institutes, and I absolutely loved it. And I loved every single person I worked with. And then when I was diagnosed with ADHD, I realized why.

Sarah Templeton [00:02:14]: They're all the same as me. Mhmm. So they all hate authority. They all hate being told what to do. They've all done naughty things except that I've I've done naughty things, but they've done a lot naughtier things that have got them into trouble with the law, and that's why I got on so well with them. And when I came out of the prisons in 2016, I began shouting about the amount of ADHD in prisons, and nobody was terribly interested until I had set up a support group for ADHD people and a police officer came. And at the end, he came up to me and said, Sarah, he said, I didn't wanna say this in the meeting because I wasn't sure how popular it would be, but I'm actually a Metropolitan police officer. I'm ADHD, and I agree with you because pretty much everybody I'm arresting, I'm seeing ADHD.

Sarah Templeton [00:03:00]: I'm seeing myself, you know, in these people. Now from that day, which was roughly 2, 3 years ago, that police officer has managed to get me into the police brilliantly into into the, you know, the police in the UK. Amazing. And we're now doing lots and lots of pilots. We're we're what we're trying to do, our ultimate goal here is to make ADHD screening mandatory in police stations. Mhmm. So we catch people when they're young and they first you know, when they're literally, they could be 9, 10, 11. They do something naughty and they get dragged into police stations the first time, that's when they should be screened for ADHD if they're not already diagnosed, which most aren't.

Sarah Templeton [00:03:38]: In the UK, most aren't. So we now are doing screening pilots with lots of police forces, big police forces like Greater Manchester Police, West Midlands Police, Police Scotland, the Hold of Police Scotland are going to start to I'm not sure if they've started yet, but they are going to screen. And then all the police have been brilliant in the UK, absolutely brilliant. You know, there's not one police force we've spoken to who said, oh, that's nonsense. That's absolute rubbish. You know? They've all said, yes. We know. Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:04:07]: We know. Wow. We're arresting a lot of kids with ADHD, ASD. Do you call it autism in America or ASD, ASC? Some people now call yeah. Either one. We're the same. And a lot of them actually have got ADHD and ASD, which is quite interesting. Some have just got ADHD.

Sarah Templeton [00:04:23]: Some are misdiagnosed. You know, some have just been diagnosed with dyspraxia or dyslexia, and nobody's actually identified that the root cause of that is ADHD. So the police have been brilliant. I cannot compliment our police enough, but I also have to compliment police in Australia. I've been approached by 3 different police forces in Australia who've all said, you know, we love what you're doing. We're watching it. We're seeing that this is going on in the UK, and we're loving it. So I'm going to Australia for February March this year to talk to, I hope, as many police forces as I can.

Sarah Templeton [00:04:53]: I'm definitely talking to Melbourne police. I'm definitely talking to Sydney police, and I'm talking to Queensland police because all of those have approached us. But we've also been approached by 2 police forces in America, and this is where it gets really interesting.

Penny Williams [00:05:06]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:05:06]: Because 2 police forces contacted us, and they said, we love what you're doing. We know that our prisons here are full of ADHD. They both independently it is almost identical conversation I have with 2 different police forces in America. And they both said, we totally agree. We know our prisons are full of ADHD, but we are going to have it much tougher here because we are much harder on crime. And we are here in America. This is what they've said, but both of them, literally, it was almost like they they, you know, got a script. They were the same.

Sarah Templeton [00:05:40]: They said, we absolutely know that we're the same. We're no different to you. We're no different to Australia. We we are round with ADHD and quite a lot of autism in our prisons. But they both said, we know it's gonna be so much tougher to switch people's thinking.

Penny Williams [00:05:55]: Mhmm.

Sarah Templeton [00:05:56]: And this is what I'm trying desperately to do because, you know, I'm not rare. I'm not the only person, but I'm probably the most vocal person who is ADHD, who has worked in the prisons and has worked with all these people in the prisons. And there's a real variety in the prisons. There are a lot of boys, you know, sort of 18, 19, who were diagnosed ADHD as children and then taken off the meds by their GP when they were told, this is a childhood behavioral disorder. Right. You'll have outgrown it now you're 18. Take them off the meds. Where do I see them? In prison.

Sarah Templeton [00:06:29]: You know? They're in prison within a year or 2. And some of those said to me, I know I need to go back on my meds, Sarah. I know I've realized that, you know, this has all gone wrong since I've come off my medication. So you get those. Then you get people that know they're ADHD, but nothing's ever been done about it. You know, their parents said, yeah. We know you're ADHD, but, you know, we can't afford a diagnosis or we can't go on the waiting list. And then those kids get into trouble, but they will tell you, I know I'm ADHD.

Sarah Templeton [00:06:52]: I've just never been diagnosed. There's a lot of those in prison as well. And then there's people that have no clue. Now it's it's the no clue people that I have a lot of sympathy for. Because when I was diagnosed literally 3 months before my 52nd birthday, I had no clue. Nobody ever once in my life ever said to me, do you think you're ADHD, or do you think you might nobody. Nobody even joking, seriously. Nobody.

Sarah Templeton [00:07:17]: So I had absolutely zero clue, and there's a lot of those zero clues in prison. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of them. There are people in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties. There are people that have been serving 20, 30 year sentences. You know? In the UK, we we we give a lot of short sentences, so they're in out, in out, in out, in out. They're costing probation a fortune. They're costing the police a fortune.

Sarah Templeton [00:07:38]: They're costing the prisoners a fortune. They're costing the taxpayers a fortune. And, actually, what they've got is undiagnosed ADHD, and it can be absolute I mean, it can be heartbreaking, actually. Yeah. I've sat in front of somebody I'll give you just one example of many. Sat in front of somebody who was 55, who'd been in and out of prison all his life and was in again on a very short sentence. And I worked out he was ADHD in the first sorry, the 3rd session because he kept talking about the buzz. When he'd done what he'd done, he got the buzz, the buzz, the buzz.

Sarah Templeton [00:08:11]: But he's done loads of courses in prison trying to find out why he did what he did because he didn't want to do what he did, and he he hated himself for it and beat himself up. And he had really, really low self esteem because he spent most of his life in and out of prison. He also then told me that when he went to school, he was at a special needs school. So he went to a special needs school, but nobody had worked out. He was ADHD. He couldn't read. He couldn't write. And he all he done was because he couldn't read and couldn't write.

Sarah Templeton [00:08:39]: He couldn't get a job. He found it very difficult to to work, you know, because of those those disabilities. And, then he'd ended up just going in and out of prison because all all he knew how to do was nick things, you know, to to live. He had to steal.

Penny Williams [00:08:52]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:08:52]: And when I told him, I said, I think you might have this, and we went through all the you know, he was crying Mhmm. Because everything suddenly made sense why he had committed crime after crime after crime, but it was all very petty crime. And this is what you find with a lot of ADHD in prisons. You know, most of them are in there for very petty stuff. It's fighting. It's stealing. It's criminal damage. It's a fray.

Sarah Templeton [00:09:16]: That's not to say people with ADHD don't commit murder, rape, and because they do. You know, they do they do do those things, but that's a very small percentage. The much bigger percentage is just people that haven't been identified early enough, and a lot of them can't read. You know? And our government has got as far as saying our prisons are full of dyslexia. Mhmm. Yeah. We know that, and we know that they've got dyslexia, but keep digging because they haven't only got dyslexia. They've got something else.

Sarah Templeton [00:09:42]: So I think the last report came out that said something like 50 I think it was 51% in prison have got dyslexia. We're like, mhmm. Keep keep going. Keep going because it's not just dyslexia. So we're all the pilots that we're doing, all the trials, pilots, everything, we're doing loads of them. It's all basically for one reason, and that's that we want mandatory ADHD screening. So we want it in youth offending services. We want it in police stations.

Sarah Templeton [00:10:08]: We're we're a long way ahead with getting it in police stations. And we want it in probation. You know? So when a probation officer meets a new client for the first time, first thing they should do is an ADHD screener. And if it's not ADHD, absolutely fine. Rule it out. You know? But if it is Mhmm. Then there's a reason to do something. And all the probation officers that I've spoken to have been brilliant, you know, because it is probation's job to keep people from reoffending and also to protect the public.

Sarah Templeton [00:10:34]: Mhmm. So when I've gone to them and said, actually, you know, he scored really high on an EHT screener, and I've been through all the traits with him and everything is resonating. Every probation I've spoken to has been brilliant. Thank you. Thank you so much. So what do we do now? I'm like, you get them diagnosed and you get them on the medication, and you'll probably never see them again. Because all the boys that I've worked with who are medicated, that's it. They don't offend again because they're not looking for the buzz.

Sarah Templeton [00:11:01]: They're not getting drunk. They're not doing drugs. They're not having to steal to pay for drugs. Mhmm. You know? And and they don't offend. It's a it's very, very simple. And, also, when you talk about the school to prison pipeline, this is something I'm massively passionate about because in the UK, we get a lot of school exclusions. You know? So people are thrown out.

Sarah Templeton [00:11:18]: Thrown out for natural ADHD, you know, telling a teacher to f off or punching somebody in the playground, just natural sort of ADHD, you know, anger, frustration, whatever.

Penny Williams [00:11:32]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:11:33]: And they get they get excluded from school for that. Now there's a big campaign actually going on at the moment in the UK, and that's to just ban school exclusions. Because when when you exclude a child, what you should have done is actually work out what was going on for that child.

Penny Williams [00:11:47]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:11:47]: You know? Was it ADHD? Was it autism? Was it because they couldn't read and write and they were embarrassed and humiliated and didn't wanna sit in the school because that was embarrassed? Dig. You know? My my big words are always dig, dig, dig, dig, and find out what's going on. Because Yeah. If you just exclude a child, you are almost definitely sending them off into the world of homelessness, drugs, prison, police. What are they going to do if they're not at school? Stop throwing them out of school and instead find out what's going on for them Help them. And help them learn. Because so many of these kids, when they're older, we're seeing people in their forties and fifties going back and doing degrees. Mhmm.

Sarah Templeton [00:12:24]: Because, actually, they're quite bright. Yeah. You know? But because when they were at school, somebody didn't understand that, well, they are quite bright, but they've got dyslexia, so they need adjustments. So there's a lot of people in this country who are diagnosed ADHD who are in their literally forties, fifties. I'm seeing one tonight who's in her fifties. She's doing a masters, and it's she went she was in care. You know, she was in care because her mother couldn't cope with her.

Sarah Templeton [00:12:46]: She was undiagnosed ADHD and ASD. She was homeless. She was in homeless hostels. You know, she had a really tough childhood and and teenage years all because she wasn't diagnosed. Now she's diagnosed, she's to find out she's actually quite bright. She's actually got 2 or 3 degrees, this lady, and she's doing a master's. You know, she's very, very bright, but nobody picked that up.

Penny Williams [00:13:07]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:13:07]: Because I think she hold on, but I think she might have dyslexia. She's got some of the, you know, the coexisting conditions. Mhmm. And there she was homeless on the streets. Mother kicked her out in care, you know, because nobody understood what was going on. She was actually extremely bright. So she's a classic case of somebody who should not have been excluded from school at 15 as she was. They should have done the found out what was going on.

Sarah Templeton [00:13:29]: She'd have stayed at school, done a levels, probably gone to university then instead of 30 years later, you know Yeah. When they had a really traumatic past because nobody understood what was going on. Sorry. I'm I'm terrible going off, but, you know, I'm so passionate about it.

Penny Williams [00:13:43]: Isn't it?

Sarah Templeton [00:13:44]: I'm so passionate about this. It's not hard to change. It's not hard to empty our prisons, You know? But it doesn't start in the prisons. It starts in the schools.

Penny Williams [00:13:52]: Way before it.

Sarah Templeton [00:13:53]: It starts in the schools with and and parents have a part to play in this as well. You know, parents have a right to get not angry. What's the word? Assertive. Assertive about yeah. If a child is struggling, especially if they're terrific in 8 subjects, but massively struggling in maths or massively struggling with writing. Yeah. There's a reason for that. And Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:14:12]: Whereas at my school, when I wasn't good at maths, I was told that I wasn't trying. Mhmm. And that because I was good in history, English, drama, all the things that were writing, I was fantastic. Then anything with numbers, oh, you know, in that class, I was disobedient. I was distracted. I was mucking around. I was writing, sending notes, you know, because Yeah. I didn't get maths, and it brought me to tears.

Sarah Templeton [00:14:34]: Well, why didn't somebody look into that rather than telling me, you can do this. You get A's in everything else. You know, if you just focus, if you just concentrated, if you just made more effort, you would be just as good in maths. Nah. I was never gonna be good in maths, but nobody bothered. You know, nobody bothered to find out. And the tragic thing in this country is I was 12 in 1975 when I failed my 12 plus exam to go to a grammar school because of undiagnosed dyscalculia. So that was 1975.

Sarah Templeton [00:15:07]: We're now in 2025, and nothing has changed in England. Nothing. We are not screening kids in school. We are not. If a child's lucky, you know, their their mom or their dad or somebody will recognize the dyslexia and go and get them diagnosed, but we're not screening in schools. So these kids are still going under the radar, and they are still getting kicked out. They're still being sent to special schools. Their their self esteem is in their boots because they think they're rubbish, and they think they're not as good as other people.

Sarah Templeton [00:15:35]: It needs to change, and it's so simple for change. Just start screening kids from a young age for all these conditions. Get them identified. Get them diagnosed. Get them medicated if they need to be, and change their life trajectory.

Penny Williams [00:15:46]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:15:47]: And save us a fortune, everybody, every country. I've just been told this is rife in Southeast Asia. I don't know anything about Southeast Asia, but apparently, ADHD is rife there, and the prisons are full of ADHD, I've just been told. Yeah. So, yeah, I think this is a worldwide problem. I don't think it's it's just, you know, England, America, and Australia. It's a worldwide problem that we're just not recognizing difficulties, and then behavior develops from those difficulties, and then we punish the behavior without looking at where the difficulties were behind that.

Penny Williams [00:16:19]: Yeah. Yeah. I think we have a lot of cultural inflexibility. So we want to other people who don't fit in the box. Right? And so, at school, especially here in the US, traditionally, you separate the kids who don't learn the same, right, or who can't easily perform and succeed. We were separating them for so long, and I think we're still a lot of people are hanging on to that mentality still.

Sarah Templeton [00:16:48]: Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:16:48]: And the other thing that you were talking about, too, that really resonated with me with kids who are really great in some subjects and not in other subjects, and then we we assume that they're lazy in that subject or they don't care, kids care. Like, let's make the assumption that they're doing their best in the first place, Because then that will help us to dig, as you're talking about. Absolutely. It will help us to see why is this behavior happening.

Sarah Templeton [00:17:15]: Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:17:15]: Yeah. I call it crime and punishment, like parenting. Yeah. Crime and punishment education, then we put them in the crime and punishment system. Right? If we can look at behavior as something other than this intentional.

Sarah Templeton [00:17:29]: I was gonna say that was I was just gonna say intentional behavior. Yes. Yeah. Yes. It's not. Because like you say, most kids, the vast majority do want to learn. I did. I I was like a sponge.

Sarah Templeton [00:17:41]: I loved information. You know? I loved history. I loved learning. I was a good student, but not in maths. So somebody should have wondered why. She's a good student. She wants to learn. I was always way ahead with my homework.

Sarah Templeton [00:17:55]: You know, I was a real sponge, loved learning, but not in maths. So why didn't somebody look at that? In fact, I'm a classic example. I'm sure this is the same in America. They say that wildly differing grades is an indication of ADHD or undiagnosed learning disorders. Mhmm. Well, I got a for my English and ungraded for my maths. You know? Why didn't somebody go, well, hang on a minute. Wait a minute.

Sarah Templeton [00:18:22]: What's going on there? You know? Because your average neurotypical person will get all b's or all c's or, you know, they'll they'll be Mhmm. Very, very similar with their grades. But when you've got this and this, you you think. Why? Yeah. Why?

Penny Williams [00:18:37]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:18:37]: For me, it's so logical. You know? Just maybe I'm mad. Maybe it's because I've got these conditions. But to me, it's so logical. If somebody's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, and trying really hard in lots of subjects and struggling something, There's got to be a reason, hasn't there? Isn't that logical?

Penny Williams [00:18:53]: Yeah. To me, it is. Yeah. To me,

Sarah Templeton [00:18:55]: it is. Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:19:05]: My son, who is super brilliant and couldn't really perform well in school, and so most of the educators in his life over those 13 years assumed that he just didn't wanna try. He was just lazy. And because if you talk to him, he's verbally fluent, like, extremely verbally fluent and really smart. And so those assumptions were made that he just didn't care, instead of maybe saying, oh, well, why? Why would a really bright kid not care about any of this? Right? Is that really the situation?

Sarah Templeton [00:19:47]: It's certainly the situation here. Well, I do go into a lot of schools now and train, which I love. I love training teachers because on the whole, they are sponges, you know, and a lot of them don't know this stuff. They're not trained in it. No. I'll give you a classic example. I went to train 3 junior schools, infant and junior schools in North London, so that's age 5 to 12. And at the end of it, I was selling some of my because I've written a book for teachers, and I was selling oh, teachers were queuing up to buy my teacher's book.

Sarah Templeton [00:20:16]: The very last lady in the queue, she said, I've waited to see you, she said, because I've got to tell you something. She said, I'm the same I was very much I was training 3 at 3 schools. She said, I'm the same co at this school, the one you've just trained in. And she said, number 1, me and my 2 daughters have got dyslexia, and I've now just realized we're all ADHD. So thank you for that. So I said, you don't just have dyslexia. It's come from somewhere. And she said, but secondly, more importantly, she said, I've had SENCO, so special educational needs coordinator, training for 20 years, and she said, all the stuff you've just taught us in the last two and a half hours, I've never ever been trained in any of that in 20 years.

Sarah Templeton [00:20:57]: Mhmm. And afterwards, when I got home, I was thinking, I I missed a trip there because I should have actually said to her, what have they been training you then for 20 years, you know, about ADHD? What what have they been I didn't think. I was so exhausted, and she was the last of a very long view. Yeah. You know? But I when I got home, I thought, why have they been training her then? Have they been training her that's just hyperactivity and distraction? That's what a lot a lot of teachers know. You know, they know the hyperactivity and they know the distraction. They possibly know about inattention. They don't know about the rest.

Sarah Templeton [00:21:31]: And in in my training, I massively include all the different ways ADHD brains think. You know? So it's the thing if they don't understand how we think, that we want everything our own way, but we always think we're best. We might might might have tons and tons of issues, like me and my severe dyspraxia. Doesn't stop me thinking I know best, you know, wanting everything in my own way. The way you talk to an ADHD person, for example, questions rather than do that, you know, would you like to do that now? Would you like to do it in 10 minutes? You'll get a much better response if you ask a question. Teachers haven't been trained how to interact with an ADHD brain. And actually, tomorrow, I'm going to train a school who've already been trained in ADHD, but they want me to train them in classroom management, how to run a classroom so that it works for neurotypical kids as well as it does for neurodiverse. And I'm thrilled.

Sarah Templeton [00:22:18]: I've got a whole 2 hours to tell them Yeah. You know, how to make classes accessible. When you've been that child in a class like I was, bored out of my brains a lot of the time. If it wasn't of interest to me, you know, bored stupid. Even if it was of interest to me, by 3 quarters of an hour, you know, I was looking at the clock, watching it literally go from every minute to every minute, desperate to move and do something. Mhmm. Even though I knew the next class was gonna be exactly the same, I needed to get up. I need to do something.

Sarah Templeton [00:22:46]: When I train teachers, I say the easiest thing to do if I if I give teachers one piece of advice, it's this, and it's chop your 1 hour session up into 3 lots of 20 minutes. Do 20 minutes of learning, 20 minutes of watching a video on the subject, and 20 minutes of a quiz at the end because with a with a prize. Even if that prize is only getting out the door first so you're in the first in the queue for lunch. It doesn't have to cost anything.

Penny Williams [00:23:10]: Right.

Sarah Templeton [00:23:11]: But, you know, if you if you do sort of 20 minutes of of teaching and then a video or something stimulating that they can watch, you know, YouTube, whatever of it of it, and then a quiz, that those ADHD kids are gonna be on that because they want to win. Yeah? So automatically, you know, if there's a quiz at the end of it, okay, I'll concentrate on this because I might get something for free, they'll concentrate. And, also, if it chops and change every 20 minutes, they're much less likely to get bored, especially if they know that at the beginning. You know? Right. Today's session chopped into 3 sections. 1st of all, we're gonna do this, then we're gonna do it. Straight away, the ADHD brain calms down because it's like, oh, I've only got to do this for 20 minutes, then we're changing. Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:23:48]: You know? And, also, put a quiz at the end. No ADHD child wants to lose the quiz. You know, they are going to concentrate much more and take in much more of that information if they know there's a reason for it. That's the other thing teachers don't understand. We need a reason.

Penny Williams [00:24:02]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:24:03]: So if you say there's gonna be a quiz and there is a prize, it's any small one, but there is a prize, Watch every ADHD kid suddenly be attentive. Mhmm. And the neurotypicals doesn't damage them at all, doesn't damage anybody.

Penny Williams [00:24:18]: That It's fun for them too. Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:24:19]: Yeah. It's gone for them too. Yeah. They'll enjoy it too. So it's very easy to change classes into neurodiverse friendly classes Yeah. If you just know how the ADHD brain thinks and what it needs. The other thing I would say to teach is my second best bit of advice is get them up and moving. So if you need any handouts given or you need homework handing out or you need somebody to run to the headmaster's office to pick up a brochure, use the ADHD kid.

Sarah Templeton [00:24:46]: You know? Get them up. Get them moving. Get them helping also because we have extra compassion. So ADHD kids love helping, you know, helping a teacher. Oh, I really, really need you to do this. I'm so sorry. I forgot to get this from the staff room. Can you run up to level 2? ADHD kid will love to do that.

Sarah Templeton [00:25:02]: Yes, miss. They'll be off. You know? It's just you get you get helping teachers understand how ADHD brains work and also how ASD brains work, which is slightly different, but and also a lot of them have got both. Obviously, that's where we that gets really interesting. But once teachers know this, they're like, oh, I get it. And and a lot of teachers say, oh, I'd already worked that out. I'd already worked it out. You know? I've worked out how to talk to him, her.

Sarah Templeton [00:25:28]: I've worked out. I can't tell him what to do. But if I I've had teachers say this to me genuinely. You know? I've worked out. If I ask them what to do, it goes down a lot better than telling.

Penny Williams [00:25:38]: Absolutely.

Sarah Templeton [00:25:38]: So I ask. I give options. You know, some teachers have got that already. A lot haven't. And when you tell them, they're like, oh, thank god. Thank god. Because, again, teachers, like you said, most children want to learn, most teachers are absolutely lovely. They've gone into that industry not for the money.

Sarah Templeton [00:25:56]: They've gone in it to help people. They want to help people learn. And when you give them these tools, very little tools, just how to speak to an ADHD person, how to keep them, you know, attentive, how to not get them distracted, all the little things about where they sit in the classroom and all that sort of stuff, teachers are thrilled because suddenly they've got the tools to help these kids. And for me, that's where it starts. It doesn't start with parents because a lot of the parents have got these conditions themselves. Mhmm. So they think that the child is completely normal because they talk incessantly. They interrupt all the time.

Sarah Templeton [00:26:28]: You know, they're overweight. They're this, they're that. So often the parents can't see it because that it's mass massively hereditary. So often the parents cannot see it. It's up to the teachers to see it because the teachers can see in a class of 30 which 3 are the ones that never sit down, always talking, always doodling. Teacher can spot that because they will stand out amongst the neurotypicals. So I always say to parents, a lot of their parents beat themselves up for not having noticed their child, and I always say don't because, you know, you're not trained in anything to do this, and you've just dealt with what you what was born, and you've you've brought this child up the best way you can. You're not really trained to spot it, but teachers should be.

Sarah Templeton [00:27:05]: And teaching assistants, everybody working in school should be trained to spot these conditions in kids, I firmly believe.

Penny Williams [00:27:11]: Yeah. At least to flag them and say, you know, I think we need to look closer at this student and how they learn. Right? At least just to be able to say, there must be something going on here. Yeah. Recognizing that there's something going on is a great first step in getting there.

Sarah Templeton [00:27:30]: Can I just give you one example a Yeah? Yeah. Tragic example of that Yeah. Of 29 year old boy who'd been in prison 15 times. And when this this is cutting an exceptionally long story into bullet points. And he'd been in prison 15 times. When he was arrested again, I managed to get hold of him, got him diagnosed ADHD. And then when we were talking about it with his mother, it turned out he'd got dysgraphia. So when he was younger, his mom said to me, she said, oh my god.

Sarah Templeton [00:27:58]: She said, is this why when he was doing his homework, he would walk round and round and round the dining table and wouldn't sit still, and he would tell me all the answers, and I'd have to write them down.

Penny Williams [00:28:10]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:28:10]: And I said, yes. That's dysgraphia. You know? And that boy, actually, when we went took him to the psychiatrist, and he'd been in prison 15 times, he'd been arrested 500 times, convicted 53 times, and imprisoned 15 times. We got him diagnosed and medicated. He's not committed to crime since. Must have been out now about 5 years. You know, works full time, family, all the rest of it. But nobody had picked up.

Sarah Templeton [00:28:34]: And it as I said, bless his mom's heart, she had known that he'd got all the information in his head, but he couldn't write it down. So she'd almost written it down for him while he, very hyperactive, had done circles of the dining table because he couldn't sit still. And yet nobody picked that up. Classically, even his brother wait for this. His brother, when I managed to get him diagnosed as well, he'd only ever been to school in the mornings. And I said, why did you only ever go to school in the mornings? He said, because I couldn't sit down. I couldn't sit down. I could only sit down for a morning.

Sarah Templeton [00:29:03]: Yeah. And nobody worked out in all those years why he could only sit down in the you know, for a morning, and after that, he was gone. He exploded. He had to get out of there. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Nobody thought nobody thought to wonder why until he was arrested with his brother. And I was like, I wanna see your brother.

Sarah Templeton [00:29:17]: When I've met the 15 times in prison, when I was like, please, I wanna see your brother. Mhmm. And we got the brother diagnosed with ADHD as well. Crazy. Yeah. Why did nobody dig? Why didn't they dig and find out why? Mhmm. Mad. Absolute madness.

Sarah Templeton [00:29:30]: Yeah. And it's it's costing us in England a fortune to keep all these people in prison. I'm absolutely sure it's the same in America, and it's absolutely the same in Australia. You know? It's crazy. These people don't need to be in prison. What they need to be is assessed and diagnosed and medicated. It's it's so simple.

Penny Williams [00:29:47]: And accepted and seen and understood. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:29:50]: A 100%. Yeah. It and it takes a long time sometimes to didn't me? You know, I was I was on it. I was googling it. I knew everything about ADHD. But by about week 1, I I read everything I could. But some people, especially people who've been in prison 15 times, took him a very long time to forgive himself. You know, he he kept saying, I'm not looking for an excuse.

Sarah Templeton [00:30:07]: I'm not looking for an excuse. We said it's not an excuse. It's the reason why you did this. You, you know, kept kept doing the same thing over and over again. He kept the rest of it. He beat himself up spectacular. I always say, don't beat people up in prison. Don't put them down because they beat themselves up spectacularly well themselves.

Sarah Templeton [00:30:25]: Most people in prison hate themselves, you know, because they don't know why they do what they do. They've got undiagnosed conditions, and they've despaired of themselves. A lot have despaired. Yeah. So when I was working in the prison as a counselor, a lot of it was about building up self esteem, you know, saying you're not a bad person. You've done some daft, stupid things that have got you in here. That doesn't make you a bad person. It actually makes you a person who's been let down by the education system.

Sarah Templeton [00:30:49]: Who hasn't picked up that you've got all these conditions, which is just it's sad, and it makes me angry at the same time.

Penny Williams [00:30:55]: Mhmm.

Sarah Templeton [00:30:56]: You know, it's such a simple thing to change and do, but there are too many people who think, oh, they're bad. You know, lock them up, throw away the key. Yeah. They don't deserve to be out in society, and it's so wrong. My next book coming out is called the prison counselor, and it's all about my time counseling in the prisons, which, of course, was counseling ADHD person after ADHD person after ADHD person. So I'm hoping it will blow this wider part and that we can start to stop this school to prison pipeline because it's chockablock with neurodiversity. Yeah. Chockablock.

Penny Williams [00:31:27]: Yeah. I agree with all of it, 100%. It drives me crazy when I I I enjoy consuming true crime and and documentaries like that and stuff. And every time, I'm like, we failed this person. We failed them. They didn't fail us. We failed them. If we could have just helped.

Sarah Templeton [00:31:48]: That's so true. I'm I'm the same. I watch every crime documentary, anything about prisons, anything about probation, and nearly every time, I'm like, oh my god. You're screaming ADHD. Why has nobody picked this up? Mhmm. And I have to say it's the same with women. I don't know what your percentages are, but in England, only 4% of our prison population is female. Very, very small.

Penny Williams [00:32:09]: Wow.

Sarah Templeton [00:32:09]: But the females I've met out of prison and the females that I've seen on television, in documentaries, there's just as much ADHD there. In fact, one of my therapists who works for me, she was a prison officer in a female prison for 20 years, and she says to me, it's exactly the same percentages in in female prison, Sarah. It's nearly all of them. Mhmm. You know? It's nearly all of them. And our pilots are showing well in excess of 80%, somewhere between 80 90%. Wow. In prison, probation, yos, police, it's all showing over 80% and neurodiverse, and that's not acceptable.

Sarah Templeton [00:32:46]: Mhmm. I always say, you know, in the Victorian times, we put these people in lunatic asylums and called them lunatics. Now we put them in prisons and call them prisoners. It's no different. Mhmm. There's a saying I don't know whether the saying's the same in America, but there's a saying in the UK that the prison system is our biggest psychiatric hospital, and that's true. It's totally true here too. There is so much mental health issues in the prison.

Sarah Templeton [00:33:10]: It's it's it's outrageous.

Penny Williams [00:33:12]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:33:12]: When I was working there, you know, I would see some people that I would call sort of seriously disturbed, you know, people that were hallucinating, people that were having, literally seeing things, being told to cut their own heads off, you know, very, very seriously mentally unwell people. And I think, what in god's name are you doing in here? You know, you need to be Yeah. In in a in some sort of psychiatric care. But, no, they're in prison because they've done something stupid. Therefore, lock them up, throw away the key, and all that does is make their mental health much worse.

Penny Williams [00:33:44]: Exactly.

Sarah Templeton [00:33:44]: And we have a terrible problem in this country with suicides in prison. We have a big problem with it. And I would lay a pound to a penny that nearly all, if not all, of those people are ADHD.

Penny Williams [00:33:55]: Yeah. It's so prevalent.

Sarah Templeton [00:33:56]: It's it's tragic. I don't know if you have it as well, but we definitely have a massive self harm problem and a massive suicide problem in prisons. And the answer to that, ADHD. Assess, diagnose, medicate those that need it. And those that aren't, you know, yep, they need different sort of care. Right. But the ADHD ones, it's very easy. Mhmm.

Sarah Templeton [00:34:15]: So I've been shouting since 2016. I'm getting a bit hoarse. But the good the good thing is in this country, people are listening Yeah. And the people that are listening, most are the police, which is wonderful. Amazing. We're focusing on the police because if they can catch them very young when they first go into a police station, job done. You know? Mhmm. We don't need to worry about the prisons because they've been caught when they were 9 and and diagnosed and medicated.

Penny Williams [00:34:38]: Mhmm. That helped.

Sarah Templeton [00:34:39]: So yeah. So that's what I mainly do. That's my introduction to who I am. That's what I do. Yeah. I do it all day long every day long. I'm passionate about it.

Penny Williams [00:34:49]: Yeah. Clearly passionate about it, but we need that so much. We need people Yeah. Who are willing to slog through the resistance to accepting and understanding this and doing something about it. Will you tell everybody where they can find you, where they can learn more from you, maybe where they can jump on the bandwagon and help with this.

Sarah Templeton [00:35:10]: And help. Absolutely. Pause. Yeah. Yeah. The easiest way to do it is to go on to my website, which is sarah templeton.org.uk. That's the easiest one. Okay.

Sarah Templeton [00:35:19]: That will then lead you to the 2 other websites. One is where all our therapists are, and one is about all the charitable work we're doing. So the charity is called ADHD Liberty. It's all about pea keeping people free from the criminal justice system and also free from addiction. You know? We're very, very hot on the connection with addiction and ADHD. Mhmm. Because we we've got rehabs over here who still don't believe in ADHD. So people with ADHD are going into rehabs and being told ADHD is a childhood behavioral disorder.

Sarah Templeton [00:35:49]: You're 25. You're just a bad person who's an addict. You know? Hello? Why aren't these people trained? You know, some are, but it's helped. You know, some some are great, but a lot are not.

Penny Williams [00:35:59]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:36:00]: So, yes, my websites and then I've written 3 books. And my my 4th one, as I say, is coming out in April, which is called the prison counselor. So that is pleased by that because I want that one to be the one that blows the lid off all of this. Mhmm. But my other three books are on Amazon and eBay. So if you just look for my name on Amazon, you'll find I've written one for parenting young young children, one for parenting teenagers, and one for teachers. They're all on Amazon or eBay, or or you can actually order them in bookshops as well if they're not in a bookshop.

Penny Williams [00:36:27]: Yeah. I'll link all of that up for people too in the show notes.

Sarah Templeton [00:36:30]: Bless you. Yeah. Anybody who wants to get involved, I must say, you know, in America, please, if you're if you're working in the criminal justice system in any any arena, any part of it, please get in touch with us. Because in in England, we've got individual probations doing pilots, and it's that sort of information that we can then use to lever, you know, governments into to saying, look, this is unacceptable. So if there's anybody working in any of those areas, probation, police, youth, offending, homelessness, or addiction in America Yep. Please get in touch with me because I would love you to do pilots, and let's start changing it in America as well. Yes.

Penny Williams [00:37:06]: Yeah. Absolutely.

Sarah Templeton [00:37:07]: Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:37:08]: So if you wanna connect with Sarah, you can go to the show notes, and I will have all of those links there for you. It is parentingadhdinautism.com/298 for episode 298. Thank you for the work that you're doing. I'm so happy that the criminal justice system is starting to be open to having these conversations, looking at this. I think huge sweeping change is what we need, but it has to start with little bits, little steps. Right? And you're succeeding at

Sarah Templeton [00:37:40]: that, and that's amazing. Evidence is what people want, and so, hence, we're doing all the pilots with the, you know, their figures and saying, this is what the figures are. Come on. Wake up.

Penny Williams [00:37:48]: Yeah.

Sarah Templeton [00:37:48]: But they are waking but then we're we're waking up in the UK. Not not everywhere, but we're pushing so hard. There are so many people, not just me, pushing to get this, you know, changed. Mhmm. But, yes, it's a worldwide problem, a a real worldwide problem. And and I don't believe it's any different in any country. I'm sure there's the same amount of PhD everywhere.

Penny Williams [00:38:06]: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Well, thank you again for sharing some of your time and the work that you're doing and your passion with us.

Sarah Templeton [00:38:13]: Great pleasure.

Penny Williams [00:38:14]: I know that it will change some hearts and minds and make an impact, and that's that's why we do what we do. Right? Make an impact.

Sarah Templeton [00:38:23]: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. If I can change people's minds, people who think that ADHD is just, you know, a behavioral thing and you just need to behave yourself and and act like a neurotypical, That's my main thing. You know? It's it's not a behavioral thing. We are born with a different brain, and we have just as right to be our all centered selves as everybody else. Yep. So this trying to knock the the ADHD out of people really annoys me.

Sarah Templeton [00:38:45]: Yeah. You know, there are some people who think, oh, well, we'll just we we don't want it in our family, so we're not gonna get them diagnosed. It doesn't go away. You know? You you you just have to accept that this is the way this person is, and and that's okay. Mhmm. We're no different. You know, we're not less than. We're not more than.

Sarah Templeton [00:39:00]: We're exactly the same. We're just all wired a bit differently. You know? Yep. And we've got the right to be ourselves as much as everybody else. Absolutely. And that's what I'm very passionate about, people understanding. We shouldn't have to change to suit other people. No.

Penny Williams [00:39:13]: Love that. No. And on that, I think that's a great place to end, and I will see everybody on the next episode. Take good care.

Penny Williams [00:39:22]: Thanks for joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share, and don't forget to check out my online courses and parent coaching at parentingADHDandautism.com and at thebehaviorrevolution.com.