I’m not talking about sleep difficulties. I’m talking about parents who let under-10-year-olds stay up until midnight and then get them up around 6 am so they can get to school on time. When those kids have attention deficit, I’m gonna see if healthy sleep patterns fix the problem before I start them on pills.
It depends on what you mean by “diagnosed”. Very few kids get ADHD medications without actually having the disease. But there are a great many parents who are convinced that their children have ADHD despite not having an actual medical diagnosis of it, and who may in fact pressure their doctor to give such a diagnosis.
The thing is, though, usually the behavior that prompts this “diagnosis” isn’t that the kid is acting like an undisciplined brat. Usually, the behavior that prompts it is just perfectly ordinary child behavior. If your kid prefers to play video games instead of doing his homework, that doesn’t make him ADD; that makes him normal. A true ADD case won’t be able to focus on the video games, either.
I hate when people talk so confidently about something they clearly don’t understand. How hard is it to educate yourself and THEN form an opinion?
There’s no excuse for such wrongness when the internet is teeming with information, and this is an old topic that has been hashed out a million times already.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after it, therefore because of it)
You say you’re autistic? Do you know how many kids on the autistic spectrum had to deal with often well-meaning parents, teachers, and other authority figures who thought they could beat it out of them?
The parents I can think of who were afraid to enforce rules, even things like time-outs, had very good reasons to be afraid of CPS and in one case was already on their radar for other reasons.
Not true, actually. Stimulants prescribed in a therapeutic dose for ADHD increase the ability of all people to focus on mundane tasks for greater periods of time, which is one of the reasons college students use it for all grueling study sessions.
I agree that there should be more option, one of which would be “Yes, many kids are diagnosed with ADHD for exhibiting normal childhood behavior.”
Purely anecdotal, but my son’s kindergarten teacher pushed us VERY hard to have my son tested for ADD. We began the paperwork and also began visiting a family therapist. Both our pediatrician and therapist strongly believed that he was a fairly bright but normal kid who was bored out of his gourd.
The year after that, the school counselor told us that even though they had done observation and come up with nothing, there was just “something” there. She didn’t know what, but her words were, “I want to identify how he’s deficient.” Then she suggested that he had Aspergers. You know what? Every kid is deficient some way - that’s human nature. But to have an educator tell me that she wanted to demonstrate that my kid was deficient pissed me off. It didn’t help that 60% of the kids in my son’s class had been identified as “potentially disabled.”
Shockingly, this year, my son has found a teacher he works well with, who challenges him, who allows him to do more difficult work when he’s done with the easy stuff and who gives all the kids in his room extra recess whenever possible. I haven’t gotten a call from school at all this year; in fact, very few of the other parents have, either.
I honestly believe that, although disabilities like ADD/ADHD and autism exist and are very concerning and need to be treated, so many schools attempt to use them as a way to “treat” normal childhood behaviors.
Some educators I know, often express that much could be addressed by disipline, not of the children but by the parents! As in provide a structured enviroment where family sits down to dinner, every night, kid goes to bed same time every night, gets a solid 8hrs, and the biggie, shut off the tv/computer till the kids are in bed. To hear them tell it, that’s too much for some parents and it’s actually easier to medicate the kid, than change their lifestyle.
Maybe the parents should be medicated? 
Yes, I’m kidding. I’ve heard the same thing from several friends who are educated. They’ve also said that some districts in our area have stronger pushes to classify kids as potentially disabled if they’re not strictly in line with the school cirriculum. We were recently awarded the title of best public school in the state or some such, so the cynical side of me feels like they’d rather classify kids as disabled so their perceived failure to meet aggressive state testing goals won’t throw the curve. What’s ridiculous is that my son is in elementary school.
Not to mention if the parents would stop drinking, or using drugs, or spending all their time on the computer and neglecting their children, or beating each other and/or the kids up, etc.
I couldn’t vote because my choice wasn’t offered.
I know very little about ADHD but I know some about over-diagnosis.
Yes, I think it’s over-diagnosed. A number of conditions are over-diagnosed because something is wrong and having the label enables the people involved to get to the crux of the problem.
So it’s not necessarily a negative thing.
Wow, just wow. Not only are we the strictest parents we know but we sit down for dinner, have a consistent bedtime and the kid gets at least 10 hours of sleep (since 8 hours is not enough for children).
Amazingly, the kid is still ADD.
ETA: the TV is on when the kids are awake for maybe an hour total. That’s all video games and television watching.
I call bullshit. Virtually every ADHD kid I knew/know of was spanked regularly, prior to diagnosis. It happens a lot to disruptive kids. I won’t believe your hypothesis without some kind of supporting data.
Love it.
A doctor or psychiatrist’s office is a new location for a child, and the novelty can keep them focused when they wouldn’t be in a more familiar location.
ADHD is just the way ADD is labeled in the new manual. Which means that if you have the inattentive version, rather than the hyperactive version, you’re now ADHD-PI. I’m not seeing an improvement, myself.
ADHD is way overdiagnosed. I suppose it is because it’s the first kneejerk diagnosis to give. I work as a therapist in a foster care agency, and just about every kid comes in with this diagnosis initially. It doesn’t matter if it’s a GP, a psychologist, or a psychiatrist giving the diagnosis; they almost always roll ADHD. Especially in foster care, it makes a lot more sense that the kids have Reactive Attachment Disorder, or Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, or even Adjustment Disorder w/Anxiety from being removed from their biological homes (or abuse, or neglect, etc.).
I really like to see when professionals in this field try out differential diagnoses, or rule out other possibilities. It’s a rarity. More often than not, they just “wastebasket diagnose.”
Could it be possible that they choose the diagnosis with the least harmful implications for the child and its parents?
For instance Reactive Attachment Disorder can indicate a seriously damaged child and doesn’t bode well for his future behavior. Would a diagnosis like that scare off potential adoptive parents or foster parents?
Sometimes a child hasn’t been around long enough in the system for observation. As time goes by, problems present themselves, and different helpers get involved the diagnosis will change.
Actually I’ve seen a roomful of experienced workers disagree on a diagnosis. What then? How important is the diagnosis by itself?
(And then there is the the admitted shortage of mental health workers and resources which doesn’t lend itself to lengthy observation.)
I am familiar with this problem, not the one in the OP. The one where they don’t check to make sure the symptoms can’t be caused by something else. I experienced this first hand as a kid. What’s worse is that, even when they found the correct diagnosis, no one was willing to drop the previous one. So I just kept getting things tacked on.
It took finally finding a real psychologist who was unconnected with any psychiatrist to figure out that it was one basic diagnosis causing the rest. He did more tests than any other doctor I’d ever been to. All of them pointed straight to OCD.
“Hand in your homework now” takes too long. You can’t start class until the very slowest kid has pulled out his work, remembered he didn’t put his name on it, pulled out his pencil, realized it wasn’t sharp, asked someone to borrow a pencil, written his name, decided the paper needs a date, asked the date, written it down, made a mistake, erased it, rewritten it . . .if you use the basket system all that happens during the passing period, and kids are given an incentive to put their name and stuff on their paper in advance because doing that on the spot will eat up their time (the passing period), not the class time, which they kind of see as a bonus.
That said, I will agree that the basket system takes teaching–not just instruction, but teaching. You have to explain about putting your name on in advance and not standing in front of the basket as you riffle through the archealogical layers in your backpack. It takes maintenance as well: you have to write what is due that day on the board, or mention it as they come in. And if a kid who usually turns in work forgets, but remembers by the end of class or even the end of the day, you get a little sarcastic about it (depending on the kid) but you take it. You accept that it’s a learning process that takes a little time at the start of the year and a little maintenance throughout the year, but saves more time overall.
How often do you see “oppositional defiant disorder”, and how often is it the child and how often is it the parent(s)? I know several women who have at least one child with it, and they blame their ex-husbands but we all know otherwise. :dubious:
If there is no history available on the child, then I definitely agree with the ADHD diagnosis to start, because all one has to go on is visible behaviors and self-report and/or the report of the caregiver. However, I’ve seen many referral packets come across my desk where kids have been abused, neglected, have not made attachments, have behavioral issues, etc. for many, many years, and they are still diagnosed as ADHD, often with Oppositional Defiant Disorder as a bonus rider. RAD encompasses all of criteria of both of those diagnoses, and is a better fit in terms of the DSM.
Yes, it really is a huge problem in the field. Sorry you had to go through all that. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to fight to get diagnoses changed or removed completely for clients. It’s really frustrating from my end, and as the client it must be about a thousand times more frustrating. :mad: