I think it’s overdiagnosed and over treated with pills.
Which nearly made me the worst mom ever.
My son was having a lot of behavioural problems at school. He never seemed to be able to focus on anything unless he was in an empty room with no other kids (obviously, not possible).
Our pediatrician had us go through the diagnostic procedure and lo and behold, he is ADD. (Not ADHD.) She recommends medication. I refuse (since it’s overprescribed, right?). Okay. I get parenting books and do all the things they say to do. I work with the teachers and administrators at the school. Nothing gets better.
Keep in mind, this is a kid who doesn’t like to hurt anyone. He would come home heartbroken from school because he was mean to the teacher.
Six months later, I give in and decide to ‘try’ the medication. It was a complete turnaround. The kid is happy. He is not misbehaving in class at all. He focusses on his schoolwork. I never would have thought it possible.
I just wish I’d taken the advice earlier and spared the poor little guy some pain.
And my point is exactly this – if you have some people with ADHD, and some mischievous children, more people falling into the latter category are getting wrongfully diagnosed as if they belonged to the former category.
That ADHD on the rise correlates quite well with abandonment of traditional disciplinary methods. Ever since parents stopped being able to spank their children without fear of DSS intervention, and teachers no longer sending children to the principal (in many schools this is true), in the past 10 years, you’ve seen ADHD rates rise when you never heard of the condition like this 30 years ago.
I am autistic, actually. But yes, I do. I think more and more parents nowadays want their child to have a “diagnosis” so as to give them special treatment in schools, or rather attach a label to everything.
My mother did not want to get me diagnosed, actually. It was my teachers and principal in elementary school who encouraged her to take me.
Are you saying that if parents spanked their kids more, they would somehow magically behave in a manner that would not be mistaken for ADHD? I’m assuming that by"parents disciplining like they used to" you mean “spanking”, as that is what people usually mean when they use that phrase, but feel free to clarify.
Do you think there is a correlation between spanking kids and levels of ADHD in a given population? Why?
This is IMHO, so I’m not asking for cites, but would like to hear an opinion that goes beyond anti-ADHD boilerplate.
Yes. And I think parents, knowing that they can get in trouble for spanking, want their kid medicated so that they don’t have to worry about disciplining. Hence, trying to get them diagnosed with ADHD and therefore, higher rates of diagnosis.
What IS on the rise is “special snowflake syndrome”, which may explain food allergies on the rise; everyone wants to have something wrong with them so they can feel special. Oh, I have ADHD. Oh, I have a peanut allergy. Oh, I have this, oh I have that, pity me pity me.
Question has been answered somewhat partially in post #24
To the OP: in light of your answer in post #24, do you have any basis for your apparent belief that a large percentage of children diagnosed with ADHD are not subjected to corporal punishment?
No. But I would like to know if it’s coincidental or causal that since corporal punishment has been considered more and more unacceptable in our society, ADHD rates have risen.
You are right, although I wonder what was wrong with “hand in your homework now” because the only response I’ve ever gotten for a teacher about this problem is “they are responsible for putting their own homework in the basket” - and “Your daughter isn’t alone, almost half the class has problems with turning things into the basket.”
And when the solution for “almost half” the class involves a medical diagnosis to fix, something is wrong.
You know there is more to parental discipline then spanking right? You do know that Ritalin is actually a stimulant? It is not the magic bullet you are making it out to be.
If by “special snowflake syndrome” you mean a narcissistic sense of entitlement, I hate to break it to you, but there have been plenty of those since time immemorial. It is not a recent development.
What is behind your bizarre assertion that people want something wrong with them, even something as mundane as a food allergy? Unless you can provide something other your opinion, it can be dismissed as wholly unfounded.
Are you in high school? This is a serious question, because admitting to almost any mental affliction in the workplace is a surefire way to not get hired for that job or promotion - and i cant see any “special snowflake” doing that.
Spanking (rather, the lack thereof) has been used to explain almost anything a child would do, from stopping Columbine-style shooting sprees to failing to consistently getting As. The current day is invariably compared to rosy tinted view of halcyon days gone by which is utter bullshit.
I find your assertion no more compelling then any other and suggest changes in daignostic criteria would be a more compelling candidate, together with increased awareness of the condition.
Every time my son got in trouble at school (which was often), it really HURT him. He said many, many times, “I don’t WANT to be bad!” And he WASN’T bad, at least not in the sense of being malicious. He’s always been a very kind little boy, a very empathetic little boy, the first one to sense another kid was sad and to try to cheer him up.
But my son was also way out of control, in many instances. His teachers were NOT wrong to say he was a major distraction for other kids. And his teachers were not milquetoasts or doormats who couldn’t impose rules and limits. They did, and he really did TRY to obey them. He just COULDN’T. He was HATING school, because it felt as if teachers and classmates were always mad at him (and they often WERE, for valid reasons).
Meds are no panacea, and they’re not for every kid. But they HAVE made an unmistakeable difference. My son is not stupid- he’s very smart, particularly in Math. But before meds, he would regularly struggle for a few periods to do a page of easy math problems that he can now usually do in minutes. That means he has far less work to bring home, which is ANOTHER reason he’s no longer dreading school so much.
Final word on the subject: I am not qualified to diagnose ANYONE as having ADHD. I will never look at ANY child and tell his parents “Your kid needs to be tested for ADHD,” and no parent should take me seriously if I do.
But to Rhiannon… the fact that a child CAN focus on things (like chess) that interest him or her is NOT proof that there’s no ADHD. In some ways “attention deficit” is an unfortunate misnomer, because the problem really is NOT that a kid can’t focus on anything. It would be more accurate to say an ADHD kid has almost no control over his levels of concentration.
That is, MOST of us “normal” people can and will force ourselves to turn away from things we enjoy and focus our attention on boring things we know have to be done. I can force myself to turn off a TV show I’m loving and go work on my tax return. I can force myself to put down a book I’m engrossed in and go upstairs to pay bills.
But ADHD kids can flit easily between complete lack of focus and absurd HYPERfocus. My son, who regularly couldn’t focus on easy tasks could and DID spend hours doing intricate work on his Legos, and would go into a meltdown if anyone tried to distract him from his Lego work to do something like eat or go to the bathroom. Getting him to concentrate on anything could be extremely difficult, but getting him to STOP concentrating on others was harder.
It’s hard, even silly to diagnose historical figures with ADHD, but I wonder about a guy like Thomas Edison, who was kicked out of school for good as a child, by teachers who regarded him (not without reason) as too dumb to learn anything. If he had heavy duty ADHD (and I suspect he may have), that would explain BOTH his learning difficulties in school AND his almost insane ability to hyperfocus on lab tasks. A “normal” person doesn’t spend hundreds of lab hours trying to find just the right substance to make a light bulb filament. An ADHD kid would, though, if he found the task sufficiently fascinating.
I have a niece who was diagnosed a few years ago. While her mother–my sister–is by no means the type of old school parent that ours are, she is not a lax, overly permissive, molly-coddling mother.
I’m curious why you think the current diagnosis rate is indicative of poorer versus improved parenting. Back in the day, a kid who started developing tics would get his ass kicked by mommy, daddy, teacher, and priest. Heaven forbid if he had vocal tics and started randomly cursing. Nowadays, just about everyone has heard of “Tourette’s”. Yelling at a kid with tics would be grounds for abuse…as it bloody hell should be. This is absolutely a GOOD thing. And guess what? Such improvements in child-rearing result in increased incidences of Tourette’s diagnosis.
A large number of Tourette’s sufferers also have ADHD. The comorbidity suggests that what causes one, causes the other. The number of Tourette’s diagnoses has also increased over the past decades–what was once considered a rare disorder is now considered “not uncommon”. I’m curious: Do you think Tourette’s is misdiagnosed too? Do you think tics are the manifestation of poor parenting and lax educational policies? Or is it possible for you to entertain a less sinister hypothesis: That people are simply far less likely to ignore aberrent behavior in their children than they used to.
What did your mother not wanting to get you diagnosed have to do with it? She was obviously wrong if you have autism.
My child has autism, and I know it took two years of observation and therapy strictly for developmental delays before they gave me a positive diagnosis for autism spectrum. I do not know how it could possibly be over-diagnosed when it’s that difficult to get a diagnosis in the first place.
I do know it seems to be fashionable to claim you have autism these days, especially for those who need an excuse for social awkwardness.
I think the diagnoses are not wrong. I think there is a likelihood that there are more children who actually HAVE ADHD/ADD and autism than there used to be, and it has zero to do with spanking or otherwise physically disciplining children. Correlation does not equal causation.
I think ADHD is often a result of poor sleep habits. We know that kids (and Americans as a whole) are getting less sleep than in the past. The symptoms of sleep deprivation have quite a few similarities with ADHD. Sleep deprivation is also linked with being overweight, which is also increasingly observed in children.
The amount of sleep kids get is largely dependent on parental discipline… so I did vote yes on the poll. However, if my theory is correct, then not all parental discipline will reduce ADHD diagnosis. Spanking a sleep-deprived kid does not correct the lack of sleep unless you’re using the spanking to make them stop texting all night long.
I got plenty of sleep as a child – it didn’t have anything to do with my being ADHD.
I don’t know if it runs in the family, but at least three of my cousins have it as well. And trust me, the apples fell, I only WISH it could be cured by a spanking – I went through hell in first grade until I was finally diagnosed.
ADHD and autism both are thought to lead to sleep difficulties, not the other way around.
As for me, my parents primarily got my diagnosis when I was really young (5) due to my sleep issues, which were on-going since birth - it was when the doctor observed me as they asked about how to get me to sleep that he decided that they needed to talk about how I was way more active than most little girls that age. Anyway… I slept less than 8 hours a day from day one, and it only got worse from there as I got older. Now, as an adult in my mid-30s, I still only sleep 6 hours a night.
Of course, I’m amongst the oldest of people who grew up with doctors realizing that people don’t simply grow out of it. Now a days a lot of adults are diagnosed when their own children are, because someone finally realized that these people in their 40s, 50s and 60s have always had it but no one thought about it when they were young. I’m guessing a lot of these older folks got regular spankings just like my mom did - and it sure didn’t keep her from having ADHD and passing it along to both her kids.
I voted yes only because of the very silly binary choice provided.
My kid, as it turns out, has ASD and the commonly co-morbid ADHD. And yes, he was medicated. The difference between his behaviour and the behaviour of other children in his early years of school was stark and unmistakeable. Our homelife with him was pretty wrecked.
He, with assistance from his doctor and the support of his parents and school, took himself off his medication when he was just turning 16. This was after about 12 years of therapy to teach him alternate behaviours, at an age where he could recognise the ways in which his brain was not operating like other people. His therapy focused on recognition and self-redirection, and when and where it was appropriate to just relax this diligence and indulge in behaviour that was not usually socially acceptable but was vital to his mental health.
The deal with him going off his medication was that he had no excuses then. He could not blame anything on his conditions, he was expected to try his best at school and at home, and to participate in things that interested him. That really worked out. He’s just finished high school, he has a certificate in fitness training, he plays rugby and as just finished his uni entrance exams.
But yeah, I’m an awful parent who couldn’t be fucked to discipline my child. Bonus points because my child is a boy, and all I wanted to do was squelch his youthful exuberance. It would, of course, have been better if I could have beaten him into submission, but DSS gets their knickers in a knot if you do that, as everyone knows. :rolleyes: