Some daycare centers will hire anyone with a pulse. I’ve seen them. That’s not to say that outstanding daycare workers don’t exist, because they absolutely do.
Have you ever watched kids interacting with their caretakers and teachers? They absolutely play favorites, for a whole host of reasons. My cousin was fine in preschool, kindergarten and first grade – but all of a sudden she’s “retarded”? Yeah, sure.
If spazurek’s son’s daycare is one of those breeding grounds for future Ivy leaguers, who knows what goofiness they might be up to.
Anyway, I found this really interesting set of questions that a parent can use. Perhaps it will be of use to spazurek:
To me, it is less about the word autism and more about who is qualified to make the diagnosis. Delays in development are symptoms that might have a severe and profound cause. Autism is a life altering diagnosis with a wide range of disabilities associated with it; mental retardation is one. Unless the daycare provider is a preschool handicap (Special Ed teacher) or another highly trained specialist, s/he is not qualified to make a quasi diagnosis, only report symptoms and concern.
Meyer6, daycare workers often spend more time with a child than the parent, so care givers’ observations are crucial and certainly not without merit. I am not angry at the daycare providers’ observations and diligence, only the premature diagnosis. I don’t disagree that parents should be grateful for nurturing and observant caregivers, especially when you consider how much they earn.
I have a problem resolving these two characteristics. If this is a breeding ground for future ivy leaguers (as Spazurek does indicate somewhere) I can’t imagine Mommy Superachiever, MBA and Daddy Superachiever, Esq. are sticking their future CEO in a daycare that hires anyone with a pulse.
This also struck me in the original thread and this one, especially when spazurek said that the teachers “are not the sharpest tools in the shed.” What an unkind way to describe the people who spend hours of their day caring for your child. Why would you leave your baby in the care of people you believe to be unintelligent and untrustworthy?
But the OP did say the teachers said they should get MiniSpaz checked out, and gave their impression of what might be wrong. They didn’t diagnose. They told them about some concerns, and recommended a doctor visit. It’s probably not a huge concern, or they would have said something sooner.
I would assume that the teachers, who are spending 8 or more hours a day with this kid, would be able to tell the difference between a developmental delay and a hearing loss. When you spend several hours a day with kids, you can figure out pretty quickly if it’s a developmental problem or a hearing problem.
I teach preschool part-time, and we do speech, hearing and vision screening of all the kids (if the parents chose to take advantage of it) every year. It’s not required, and most kids are screened as a matter of course at basic pediatric check-ups.
I’m dealing with this very problem at my school. I have one student (she just turned five) with some pretty obvious problems (gross motor problems, social interaction problems, constant hand-flapping), and when we shared our concerns with the parents, they countered with, “Oh, she just does that. It’s nothing.”
Well, okay. As long as the child isn’t in obvious danger or showing signs of abuse or neglect, that’s as far as we can take it.
I’m not finding that direct quote, but if spazurek really said that, he can bite me. I take offense at being called ‘not the sharpest tool in the shed’ and in that same vein, I am NOT ‘barely breathing and with a pulse.’ I was hired for my qualifications, and have continuing education classes every year.
I make jack-shit moneywise, but I love my job.
The context of that comment was specifically his son’s teachers; not daycare teachers as a general group. It’s still not a great comment, but I don’t think he intended any offense to you, BiblioCat.
So if you work in daycare, woe betide you if you don’t simply sing the praises of the offspring of the pretentious people. You are obviously just uneducated if you can’t see that their kids are the best kids in the world, you poor thing.
Interesting about the breeding ground part, that was a shot in the dark. Maybe spazurek’s going to have to revisit his priorities. Grooming future ivy leaguers =/ encouraging Junior to march to the beat of his own drum, IMHO.
And either way, spazurekwill eventually run into problems in his son and his son’s world - flaws, defects, mistakes.
My daughter was diagnosed with asthma last year. Asthma? Us? Really? You sure? I thought our legacy was alcoholism, cancer and mental illness - now we have breathing ailments in the family tree, too?
Isn’t it fun, Modern Parenting?
BiblioCat, I hope you also read the part where I said there are some outstanding daycare workers. My kids are in their second year of preschool and I have a LOT of respect and gratitude for their teachers.
Either Spazerak is leaving his child in the care of professionals - who are qualified to - not evaluate and diagnose - but recognize the signs of and recommend evaluation for developmental delay. Or Spazerak has his child in a crappy daycare - and, unless he can’t afford better for his kid, should get his kid the hell out. And therefore gets the “what in the hell were you doing with your kid there in the first place?” question. Apparently these people were qualified enough to help raise Andrew before they said Andrew may have issues.
I have nothing but sympathy for people who have to leave their children with mouth breathing morons from financial necessity. That doesn’t strike me as the case here.
I was making a point. Before routine screening, children with hearing impairments were often misdiagnosed.
To be fair, the daycare providers didn’t diagnose but suggested. I think if you drop a bomb like autism, it is probably the only word parents remember. I would rather have a doctor diagnose a pervasive developmental disorder than make the wrong suggestion to a parent.
Yes, parents are resistant because it is human nature to deny a profound disease or brain abnormality afflicting a loved one. If you consider all the hopes and dreams most parents place in their children, it is clear why many do not want to face a reality that is going to alter their vision. Denial isn’t productive but I would think it is a normal initial reaction.
All you have to do is talk to day care providers and/or teachers as they assess the skills/abilities of their peers to learn that while most are excellent - there are some who are not. Some have specific axes to grind, some mean well but just are below average in their abilities. Their views of the children in their care is informed by their own views of the world.
For example, my 3 kids went to pre-school when they were 3 years old. All of them enjoyed the company of their teachers more than their peers initially, and spent most of their play time hanging around the teacher. For the first 2 (girls) this was noted in parent-teacher conferences as an observation and nothing more. Just something to keep an eye on, nothing to worry about unless blah blah blah…
However, when this same observation was made about my third (a boy), I was told that “I think Phillip has a crush on me.”
This was said by a good teacher, but she couldn’t help interpreting behaviors through her gender/relationship lens.
To believe that people who work with children are all noble, trustworthy professionals is, frankly, nuts. I don’t extend physicians, dentists or other professionals with a sweeping, profession-wide pass. Day care workers and teachers are the same.
Which has absolutely no bearing on anything. Most parents are occasionally surprised by something their teacher says; I hear it dozens of time a year. Because he was expecting something else, and the daycare workers did their job, they were being threatening?
This is absolutely true. My degree is in Secondary English Education. I never taught, but I did my student teaching. One of the teachers I was assigned to was a 6th grade English/Language Arts teacher. She was nearing retirement and was on the more authoritarian side. Frankly, I think she was just sick of teaching. At the parent/teacher conferences, she recommended that several kids should be tested for ADHD. Interestingly, they were all boys and all in her class right after lunch. They were doing stuff like talking when they shouldn’t and passing notes. Who knows - maybe those kids did need to be tested, but to me, it just seemed like her expectations were off.
Yes. Agreed. Of course, the views of parents on their own children are informed by their own biases, desires, fears, paranoias, and views of the world, too.
If only there was a way to determine whether a particular day care provider / teacher’s evaluation was reasonable when it conflicts with a parent’s own evaluation. Say, someone trained in studying behavior, with access to a bevy of validated screening and assessment instruments designed to minimize observer bias. Someone to whom you could go, when your child’s caregiver expresses a concern that doesn’t match your own observations, for a more detailed and educated opinion.
This particular thread and the one that inspired it have confused me terribly. Sarcasm aside, I don’t agree with a lot of what spazurek says: I can’t see a good reason not to have your child evaluated for a problem if someone who spends a lot of time with both your own child and dozens of others sees signs that something might be wrong. Who’s harmed? If the evaluator agrees with the teacher that there’s a real problem, then the child gets help early, maybe has less difficulty down the road. If the evaluator agrees with spazurek that there is no problem, then great! Everyone goes home happy that day. There is no downside to the evaluation.
I mean, the reasons given just don’t scan. I don’t want to have him evaluated because “I like him the way he is?” I guess little Andrew won’t be the first or even the fifty millionth child raised as an extension of a parent’s ego, but it’s bizarre that someone who purports to be so intelligent doesn’t see that he is doing just that. And the condescension he shows to the daycare workers, who he liked just fine until they told him something he didn’t want to hear, is off-putting, too.
If this particular preschool follows a curriculum that’s supposed to prepare them for Ivy League schools (which would explain why the teachers were concerned that Andrew wasn’t meeting 3-yr-old milestones at age 2.5), then their perceptions might be biased.
The kid isn’t meeting those teachers’ expectations and therefore they’re labeling him as having a problem. Maybe so, but maybe not – perhaps that school is accustomed to parents and children who come from a specific academic culture. One that spazurek has himself embraced - but is now questioning, because of the way that culture measures his “normal” (assuming spazurek is correct in his assessment) child.
If you took your tot to a very religious preschool, don’t you imagine those teachers would have a bias and an agenda?
Have you ever sat in a play environment and watched the differing expectations that parents have of their children?
It’s the same problem that puts so many kids on ADHD meds – teachers want/need little ones to sit still and do their work. It’s the only way for them to make sure everyone passes those standardized tests and the schools get the funding.
But who’s to say that all 7-yr-olds have the same capacity to do that? Where, exactly, is “normal”?
I think the fear of testing is the fear of a false positive. There has been a lot of questioning lately about why autism diagnoses have been on the rise. Some speculate that behaviors that were once just another form of normal are now being labeled as a disability. With that comes recommendations (and pressure) to funnel your child into special classes and therapies. There is the potential that your child will carry that label - and the stigma attached - for the rest of his school career. There is also the chance that having this label will change the child’s view of himself. You can argue all you want that being autistic is no different than needing glasses, but the reality is that most people don’t look at it that practically.
So, I can definitely understand, if you’re a parent who is viewing autism in that context, the feeling that you may be harming your child by starting the diagnostic process.
Not threatening, just inconsistent. So inconsistent that it makes them seem not normal.
Let me pose this analogy:
Lets say your ob/gyn was also your next door neighbor. Let’s also say that you had a pap smear at a yearly exam and it’s the doctor’s policy to discuss test results with his patients in a follow-up face to face meeting. Due to scheduling conflicts, you know that your ob/gyn has the results of your pap smear one month before you have your follow-up appointment to discuss them.
So for one month you wave at your neighbor as he drives to work. You’ve chatted over the hedge a time or two. As always he’s pleasant and chatty. Then you arrive at his office to talk about the results. “I’m afraid you’ve got cancer,” says the doctor, “I suggest further testing.”
Would you find that threatening?
Or just odd. If this guy knows you’ve got a major problem, isn’t it odd that he’d make small talk for a month and never mention it?
Well, I find it odd that teachers would believe a kid had a major problem and not mention it at all until a scheduled conference. Not threatening, just odd.
But don’t you think it’s more likely that the teachers aren’t very, very concerned, but only mildly concerned? IF the conversation went as reported, it seems like they have a few weak reasons to be concerned, not a huge red flag of the sitting-in-the-corner-rocking-and-muttering variety. I think it entirely appropriate that the team working with him took the time to gather and compare their impressions before bringing it to the parent at the time already set aside for discussing concerns with the parent*. Two and a half IS “earlier” as far as these things go - it’s about as early as most non-specialists can really get a sense that there might be something more than personal quirkiness going on, and much sooner than most parents realize it on their own.
I think it’s entirely possible the day-care providers are wrong. I think it’s very likely they’re treating a normal kid as an abnormal one because they’re used to overachieving kids of overachieving parents. I think it’s certainly possible that someone on staff just attended an autism awareness seminar and is now, like a small boy with a hammer, whacking at everything as if it were an Autism Nail.
But there’s still the possibility that they’re right. And you know what would sort that out? A diagnosis from a professional in the field of child development and pathology. Preferably two, from non-associates, to minimize the chances of misdiagnosis.
*I get the sense that some people, **spazurek **included, feel like PT conferences are social time for you to get to know your kid’s teacher better and bask in their accolades as they gush over what a wonderful job you’re doing as a parent. They’re not, they’re time for the teacher to express his *concerns *to you and you to him and together to decide if you need to make another longer appointment to do something about it. It’s really nice when there are no concerns and you can spend 20 minutes chatting about what a charming boy your kiddo is, but frankly, that’s not really the purpose of a PT conference, and it’s sort of a waste of everyone’s time. I’d rather give up my, “Nope, nothing wrong here!” timeslot to a parent of a kid having problems so they have more time to get their worries addressed. (And I say that as a parent who’s had both kinds of conferences re: the same kid.)