Why Consequences Don’t Always Stick for Adolescents with ADHD
Is Something Not Working Here?
Recently, my son came home from school and told me he had received 25 concerns.
He didn’t say it casually or proudly. There was a resignation in his voice. A mixture of frustration and a hint of embarrassment.
Before I could even respond, he added:
“But it’s fine, Mum. Another student already has 42.”
And in that moment, I found myself asking:
Is something not working here?
I am definitely not saying my son or his friends are ‘perfect students’ - but when a young person who does care and who does understand the rules keeps collecting consequence after consequence, we have to ask what those consequences are actually teaching.
As an educator, I’ve seen this pattern many times. As a consultant, I’ve heard about it over and over again.
As a parent, hearing it in my own kitchen felt very different.
A conversation that echoed the same story
Not long after, I was speaking with a family I had worked with a few years ago. In the course of conversation, the mother mentioned something very similar happening at her child’s school.
For this particular young person, simply returning to school had been a huge step. There had been anxiety, avoidance, and a long journey back into regular attendance. Walking through the school gates each morning was, in itself, a significant achievement.
And yet, she explained, her child was still collecting concerns regularly.
For example, if she arrived slightly later than expected because of the very arrangements that were helping her attend, she would receive a sanction. If she struggled to settle straight into the lesson after a difficult morning, another sanction might follow.
So the very steps that represented progress were being recorded in the system as failures.
Again, the same question surfaced:
Is something not working here?
Adolescent walking on the street with head in hands
The weight of negative feedback
There is another piece of context that often sits quietly in the background for many young people with ADHD.
Some estimates suggest that by the age of 10–12, children with ADHD may receive up to 20,000 more negative or corrective comments from adults than their neurotypical peers. Over time, that adds up to a very different emotional experience of school and home.
(*This estimate is commonly attributed to psychiatrist Dr. William W. Dodson)
Imagine growing up in an environment where you hear, again and again:
“Sit still.”
“Stop talking.”
“Why can’t you just…?”
“You know better than this.”
“How many times have I told you?”
Even when these comments are well intentioned, repeated correction can slowly shape a young person’s internal working model about themselves and about school.
Instead of seeing school as a place of curiosity, learning, and belonging, the brain may start to predict:
“This is the place where I get things wrong.”
And those predictions matter because learning cannot happen in a threatened state.
The myth: “If the consequences are strong enough, behaviour will change”
Most school behaviour systems are built on a simple assumption:
A student behaves in a certain way
A consequence follows
The student learns from that consequence
Behaviour improves over time
And for many students, this works reasonably well.
But for some adolescents, particularly those with ADHD, the consequences don’t “add up” into learning. The numbers increase, but the behaviour doesn’t shift in the way adults expect.
That’s not because they don’t care.
And it’s not because they don’t understand.
It’s because their brains process time, stress, and prediction differently.
The present-focused brain
One of the most consistent hypotheses in ADHD research is something called delay discounting.
In simple terms, many people with ADHD are more strongly influenced by what is happening right now than by something that will happen later.
So:
A detention tomorrow
A sanction that builds up over weeks
A warning about future consequences
…often carries very little weight in the heat of the moment.
It’s not that the adolescent doesn’t know what might happen.
It’s that their brain isn’t using that future information to guide the present decision.
The “now” is louder than the “later”.
So:
A detention tomorrow
A sanction that builds up over weeks
A warning about future consequences
…often carries very little weight in the heat of the moment.
It’s not that the adolescent doesn’t know what might happen.
It’s that their brain isn’t using that future information to guide the present decision.
The “now” is louder than the “later”.
One marshmallow now or wait for two!
When stress rises, thinking shrinks
There’s another piece to this.
In moments of conflict, embarrassment, or pressure, many adolescents with ADHD experience a rapid rise in arousal. Their nervous system shifts into a more reactive state.
When that happens:
Reflective thinking drops
Language access reduces
Cause-and-effect reasoning becomes harder
This is why so many young people say:
“I don’t know why I did it.”
And they often mean it.
Not because they’re avoiding responsibility, but because the part of the brain that could explain it was temporarily ‘offline’ in the moment.
Later, when they are calm, they often do care. They may feel regret, frustration, or confusion about why the same things keep happening.
The brain as a prediction machine
Modern neuroscience offers another helpful lens.
Rather than seeing the brain as a simple stimulus–response machine, many researchers now describe it as a prediction engine.
Our brains are constantly asking:
What’s about to happen?
Is this safe or threatening?
How should I respond?
And those predictions are shaped by past experiences.
If a young person has experienced:
Repeated sanctions
Public correction
Feelings of shame or failure
Relationships that feel tense or unsafe
…their brain may begin to predict:
“I’m going to get in trouble anyway.”
“This is unfair.”
“I need to react quickly.”
Those predictions sit below conscious awareness, but they shape behaviour powerfully.
So instead of learning:
“If I do X, I’ll get a sanction, so I should stop.”
The brain may learn:
“School is a place where I’m always in trouble.”
And once that prediction is in place, sanctions don’t correct behaviour. They simply confirm it.
Why cumulative sanctions often fail
For consequences to change behaviour, three things usually need to happen:
The student clearly links the behaviour to the consequence
The consequence is emotionally tolerable
The brain uses that information to guide future choices
In ADHD, all three can be disrupted:
Future consequences carry less weight
Stress blocks reflective thinking
Punishment can increase emotional reactivity
So instead of building learning, cumulative sanctions can:
Increase anxiety
Damage relationships
Reinforce negative self-beliefs
Lead to more reactive behaviour
This is why some students seem to collect sanction after sanction, even when they care deeply and want things to be different.
As an Educational Psychologist recently explained through this analogy …some children learn right away from the outcome e.g., touching a hot pan. But for the ADHD young person, it could take 3, 4, 5 goes before the consequence is understood!
So what does help?
None of this means we abandon boundaries or expectations. Adolescents need structure, clarity, and adult guidance.
But the mechanism of change may need to look different.
Research and practice both suggest that students with ADHD benefit most from:
1. Immediate, calm feedback
Short, neutral, predictable responses in the moment.
2. Regulation before reflection
Helping the nervous system settle before asking for explanations.
3. Relational repair
Making sure that mistakes do not equal rejection.
4. Guided reflection afterwards
Exploring patterns, body signals, and triggers when the student is calm.
This helps the brain build a new prediction:
“Even when things go wrong, someone helps me understand and try again.”
And that is where real learning begins.
A different question
Instead of asking:
“Why hasn’t this student learned from the consequences?”
We might ask:
“What is this student’s brain predicting in these moments, and how can we help update that prediction?”
Because when a young person who cares keeps collecting sanctions, it may not be a problem of motivation or attitude.
It may be a problem of fit between the system and the way their brain learns.
And that is something we can understand and design for differently.
Lisa Low
Educational consultant
Working at the intersection of neuroscience, relationships, and belonging
