Posted on 05/25/2013 7:35:47 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
After teaching in a private school for 33 years I have learned to recognize children that need special help. This condition is rare but it does exist. Call it what you will but don’t ignore it.
Agree with your analysis of “disinterested” parents creating problem children. Parenting skills are at an all-time low. Also, processed food has resulted in half-sick kids (who come to school tired out from staying up late to watch inappropriate TV).
And don’t forget lack of instruction in basic civilized behavior. If you study school books from a century ago you are struck by the constant emphasis on ethics and morals.
Our society is in serious decline.
The way to make money is to identify (or create) a problem, then sell a cure or fix for it. The psych business has that down to a science. So do the anti-virus companies (I’ll bet they hire wonks to create the virus that they can conveniently “cure”).
We had our grandson living with us for years. He was with us for reasons I will not relay. Health reasons for me dictated he return to his family ( things were better) . It was not long before the 11 yr old was diagnosed with this
ADHD and placed on a drug called Strattera. I had the child from K-1 to 4th grade. He was work. He was a great kid and full of energy. I had him in every sports program around.
I asked my son about his change in expression. The usual broad impish smile was gone. He told me they did not want me to know he was placed on this drug. I read up on it. It is an ugly drug with so many bad side effects. He is being followed. I know this child inside and out. He was in a bad situation as a babe and that is why we went to court to get him. I am saddened he is on this but I am not his parent.
I hate these drugs.
I’m sure there are plenty of children who are misdiagnosed, and I’m also sure that the diagnosis and medication of kids is driven partly by the incentives offered to school systems for doing so. I’m sure that in some cases bad parenting or food additives or allergies or extreme intelligence or too much time spent in front of a screen are alternative explanations.
But some people really do have ADD or ADHD. It’s not an imaginary problem; it can be a flaw in brain circuitry. If you accept that it’s possible to be born with a flaw in the liver or kidneys or eyes, why is it hard to believe that the far more complex organ, the brain, could sometimes fail to run perfectly?
I have ADD. My children—both now grown, healthy, productive adults who are achieving real success—have it. I inherited it from my late father, who (believe me!) was raised in a time and place where lax discipline, food additives, and online stimulation were not possible. Though I was a good little girl and got excellent marks right through grad school, I spent my whole life wondering what was wrong with me and why I couldn’t focus. I tried so hard but I was always confused and couldn’t grasp any information that came in through my ears. And I assure you, there was no lack of time, attention, or traditional discipline in our household that you could blame for my perpetual confusion.
Medication changed my life. I wish they had this stuff when my father was a boy and when I was a girl. How different things would have been, how much less frustration and confusion and failure there would have been for us!
I have a son diagnosed with ADHD.
It isn’t fictitious. Maybe the name is wrong.
When you can hear the difference in his ability to read before and after medication, it isn’t a fantasy.
Pre-med, he would skip entire words, reading in a halting, “train-wreck” fashion.
30 minutes after medication, he stopped skipping words, reading smoothly.
He wasn’t a behavioral problem. He has a problem getting his mind to slow down to process words.
Call it ADHD, call it whatever you want. But it isn’t a myth.
Look at this thing closely, it is not like the swing sets of today and that slide is not the slide we think of today, it seems designed to kill, and look at the heights that they were at.
Straight out of the Addams Family.
“This condition is rare but it does exist.”
Although the real data seems to indicate that it is not that rare and vast numbers of kids have this “affliction”. What a crock!!! Waaaay over diagnosed!!!
“Teacher said nix nix”
I’m kind of puzzled. I’ve never had any trouble intimidating teachers and principals into doing what I wanted them to do.
I don’t mean by threatening them. Just by standing fast, refusing to budge, and going as far up the chain as I had to.
Most of them seem to be arrant cowards who curl up like a spider on a hot stove at the first hint of real opposition.
“I am also very concerned about the consequences of big pharma and modern medicine treating these kids with drugs that may permanently change the chemistry of the brain during development. I dont anyone understands the true consequences of this.”
Oh, maybe a piece of worthless trash like Saddam Hussein Obama gets elected president twice?
“Call it ADHD, call it whatever you want. But it isnt a myth.”
Maybe what your son has isn’t a myth, but maybe your son doesn’t have ADHD—which I believe is a malicious myth.
I knew a boy who was getting in all kinds of trouble in the sixth grade. After Christmas break he started college, and did very well.
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