Last year Stephen's grades were terrible he was getting D's and F's and now he has 4 A's and 2 B's .... Gotta tell you the meds really work and I have the proof.

:D Now I want to go to the principal and yell at him .. He kept telling my husband and myself that our son was lazy. I just want to shove the grades in his face and yell at him No my son isn't lazy he has ADHD like I told you . No thanks to you he got the help he needed .

WOOHOOO!!! Steph, I am, soo Happy for him....and PLEASE at least get it on video camera if you do go to principals...I woiuld LOVE 2 see look on his face...wonder if it would turn into a Jackazz like in cartoons LOL!!!!!

we started our son on stattera last year. the dr said hes real "borderline" adhd but since his dad's got it so bad we might as well figure the boy's got it to. well, his grades are up alot from what they were before. i notice the riralin's helped me out alot to, and i wish id been on it when i was his age.

Steph that is so great,

I am really happy for you and him. :D

I think you should go and see the principal and say ner ner ne ner ner :p ;)

No seriously, it just makes me mad that they judge our kids so easily, and considered them lazy, when we know that they are really trying hard. :(

So easy to Judge and label when they are not your kids and don't want to deal w/ em *SIGH*

I do think its easier for the schools just to label our children .. lazy, trouble , a problem, ect .. then dealing with the truth . You know it surprises me the most that schools deal with so many children and alot have add/hd but yet they do not believe in add/hd . I kept asking the teachers and stuff if he could have adhd and they would always say no.

Heh....Steph....Unless they are professional doctors intead of professional boneheads with a cracker jack Box degree....Me thinks they should not be giving OPINIONS about something they know nothing about...but...heh such is life in this happy world of DUH!

First, I'd like to say congratulations to Stephen: I hope my meds have the same effect on my grades here at college.

That said, I most vehemently and strongly disagree with, and, in fact, denounce sentiment here that there should be any "gloating," or that the principal and the teachers here have in some way wronged you by saying your son was lazy or contraindicating ADHD.

The pressure from the outside world on schools not to diagnose ADHD unless absolutely necessary is increasing. Because for a very long time schools overdiagnosed ADHD, basically giving such diagnosis to any problem child whatever, schools took a lot of flak. Subsequently, diagnostic criteria have (supposedly) increased, and the extent to which schools can be involved in a diagnostic process has most certainly dropped.

Furthermore, there is the common problem of the Least-Restrictive-Environment principle. Schools are very underfunded these days, and the system is sorely lacking trained special educators. Because many people with ADHD diagnoses will seek the full benefit of their "disability," e.g., accomodations, tutoring, etc. at the expense of the state (and such accomodations are costly), it becomes very undesirable for such a diagnosis to be given, and when it is, it becomes infinitely more difficult for the school to teach that child. An ADHD label travels, and it does and will call for and elicit different behavior from the part of the school staff.

ADHD is very difficult to diagnose, and while few teachers are actually trained and qualified to even see it, even fewer have the training required to diagnose it. In today's litigation happy society, it is far too risky for teachers to suggest such things except when it is clearly present. "I suspect your son may have ADD" could easily translate to "Your son has ADD," and if such is not the case, the teacher could be held liable. Further, the teacher must now view and respond to any actions of your son (better or worse) through the lens of "special needs." This means that the teacher must treat your son as a "special case," and that is very difficult on teachers.

On top of this, teachers have to make "compensations" already for so much, and learn so many things. Learning Disorders, Behavior Disorders, ADHD, Emotional Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, Developmentally Slow, and so forth with so many diagnoses, none of which educators are trained to make, and all of which educators must by law accomodate and deal with; you can see why it is undesirable for a teacher to suggest a student have ADHD, and why a teacher might not encourage such diagnosis unless they feel it is absolutely necessary. (Going back to the LRE principle: it is best to assume and treat a child as being as normal as possible in every case, at all times, unless absolutely necessary.)

For these reasons, I think holding any ill will or feeling towards the principal for this is entirely out of line. Is it interesting that in this case a child with ADHD wasn't called as it was? Yes. Is the school responsible for this? Absolutely not.

The school and the teachers had your son's best interest in mind when they said "lazy" instead of "ADHD." Despite the fact that there is a diagnosis, and despite the support and aid in esteem offered by places like this, ADHD is still not a "good" thing to have. It is, at best, a "neutral" thing, and more often than not, it is a problem; a problem which causes bureaucracy and Special Needs labelling, as if the disorder itself were not difficult enough to deal with. There is a stigma attached.

I know for a fact, having worked 3 years with such things: ADHD diagnosis changes opinions, and it changes the methods of the teachers and educators. ADHD is not a desirable thing to have; and for this reason, the teachers were doing their best to prevent what is inevitably not a "good" diagnosis. Was what they were doing right? No, because if the disorder exists in a person, it is better that it be diagnosed. Were they acting, from an educator's perspective, in the best manner possible? Absolutely.

I suggest rather than gloating, you use this case in point in order to make a push for better funding for schools; after all, it is the lack of funding, in the end, that makes schools so difficult to work with. Rather than talking down about the teachers, I call for you to talk down on the terribly bureaucratic educational system which prevents teachers from doing what they can; and act against the ridiculous litigation system in our country which threatens schools constantly, preventing them from acting in the best interest of children as they must constantly ensure that they don't "offend" anyone or, God forbid, "insult" someone with ADHD.

Maybe true but I find it unfair to the child that schools automatically dismiss them as lazy or retarded. When I was in junior high...my being not able to concentrate or stay focused and not staying still and not to mention Failing Test n slow to catch on in the work...One teacher told my mother..her diagnosis..."Melanie is Retarded and needs to be put in special classes." Luckily my mother smiled and said..."NO, She may be slow but she most certainly is not retarded." And what kinda class was this?? ALGEBRA!!!!! So many teacher do tend to give diagnosis w/o knowing what they were talking about...No teachers offered me Tutouring or worked with me to understand and yet they thought I just had a problem and dismissed me as FOREST GUMP! Never want to try with a problem child and still it is happening today.

You're all right ... and I think this thread serves as a reminder that our childrens' problems need to be treated sensitively. Of course the schools are trying to do the right thing, but sometimes school personnel can lose sight of the fact that the child and the parents are really suffering. And in the long run, I have to believe that it's better to diagnose a struggling child ADHD (a condition that can be remedied) rather than calling the child "lazy." The "lazy" label may temporarily make the child try harder, but if he still can't succeed, he may well decide that he's stupid, that he might as well not try anymore. Statistics show that ADHD children drop out much more often than their peers. We need to preserve their self-esteem and their ambition while they're young.

I agree that it is better to diagnose a struggling child ADHD...so long as they really actually have ADHD.

Today, there are about a million billion things teachers have to remember, like I said: ED, DR, ADHD, CD, ODD, LD, BD, and a billion more things. Any of those labels are not good, and teachers are simply not trained to make those diagnoses. For that reason, a teacher can't say "I think the kid has ADHD," because they could get sued. 4 classes out of my Education curriculum are all "litigation avoidance" classes. It's a sad, sad state of affairs when I have to spend 16 credit hours learning how not to get sued. (Those classes, by the way, have mostly replaced Spec. Education related courses that were deemed "least necessary" for normal teachers to have. Heh)

That said, "It couldn't be ADHD" is also "diagnostic" in nature, and they stepped out of line if they said that. They aren't qualified to say that. As such, they would've failed litigation avoidance class, heh.

An ADHD diagnosis is a good thing, IF the child really has ADHD.

It's just very, very risky to say that, because so many people are trying really hard to make ADHD disappear, especially after it was Overdiagnosed for so, so long. I think we all remember a time not too long ago when everyone was ADHD if they failed a single test.

Fortunately, the anti-drug lobbies are going after anxiety disorder and depressed children these days, saying that those things are overdiagnosed and overtreated with SSRIs. There is still a background hate for Ritalin, though. Just last night on some TV talk show I was watching with my RA, he went after how "11 million children are on Prozac...so first we put them on Ritalin, then Prozac, is that how it works now?"

Nevertheless, it's very risky to make an ADHD Dx, especially in a school setting in the absense of trained professionals.

An ADHD Dx is good only when the child really has ADHD.



Draga: Retarded means Slow. "MR" is slowly losing it's use, simply because of the PC Nazis, but in individual subject areas, you can be "retarded" without being MR. It simply means you are having difficulties learning. Teachers are qualified to assert that students are having too much difficulty learning their subject for their class: that's one of the few things they can say.

That said, "Retarded and needs to be put in special classes" does NOT equate to the kind of "Retarded" you're thinking of, which is MR (Mentally Retarded) or DR (Developmentally Retarded) or whatever the new acronym for it is (They change them all the time to stay "PC"). There was no diagnosis there. The teacher was _probably_ just saying that she believed you were not academically capable to sustain a passing grade in her class, and needed to be put into a different, slower paced, class environment for that subject.

In the event that the teacher said "Melanie is DR" or "MR" or whatnot, that's a huge problem, because that's an LD diagnosis which she can't make and she could get in a ton of trouble for that. But she is, as the teacher, entitled to say that a student is likely not capable of following the courseload, provided there is evidence of that. If she uses the term "Retarded" to say that, that's her prerogative, because it means "slow." She may also have been "subtly" hinting that LD Screenings were called for, but not necessarily.