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I would have been one of those pigeonholed kids based on my junior high and high school performance. But I went on to pull myself up by the bootstraps in college, earning one degree in computer programming, two degrees in the geosciences, and a fourth degree in educational administration. I became a well-respected teacher and an award-winning school principal. I'm sure my junior and senior high school teachers would have been shocked, when perhaps at least a small part of the blame (certainly not all) in those days was uninspired teaching.
And I am far from being alone in that type of scenario.
My younger daughter had a hard time learning how to read and needed special help in reading all through elementary school, through age 10. She would have been put in the ditch digger track. She graduated in the top 10% of her HS class, no mean feat in a competitive HS like hers. She now has a Master's in Public Health.
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Originally Posted by MyWifiGoesSlow
We did not have child drugging in school when I grew up and I am not even "old." Pharma does rule, these people posting the first pro drugging website they find on Google don't get that all these "advocacy groups" are paid for by the pharmaceutical companies.
I would expect that if you had been a principal in recent decades that you would have a good know, at least for you own area.
But it certainly seems to me to be virtually "the rage" among American parents to have a kid or two with an alphabet label.
I totally disagree. There may be a lot of parents that should not be parents and simply can't figure out how to do it. I dunno. But none of the parents I hung with ever felt that way - if anything, we were the complete opposite.
You just didn't know about it. A friend of mine taught in the early 70s and had kids on Ritalin.
Right. Plenty of kids have ADD or ADHD it just often wasn't diagnosed or they didn't talk about it. Lots of people have conditions that they don't tell anyone about. ADD and ADHD are what's often called invisible disabilities. Only when I see my kid running around in circles over and over again, that wasn't invisible to me. It was so obvious something neurological was going on with her.
My younger daughter had a hard time learning how to read and needed special help in reading all through elementary school, through age 10. She would have been put in the ditch digger track. She graduated in the top 10% of her HS class, no mean feat in a competitive HS like hers. She now has a Master's in Public Health.
You just didn't know about it. A friend of mine taught in the early 70s and had kids on Ritalin.
At that time,having a "hyperactive" kid was a stigma, and your friends and neighbors shook their heads and tut tutted when they found out. So, parents kept quiet about it.
Please read the article more carefully because there's a lot to unpack there. The 51 deaths mentioned in that article may or may not (likely not) have resulted from heart issues. The causes of death in the U.S. remain unspecified, but the article does point out that two of nine deaths in the U.K. were heart related. The rest were the result of other conditions, including suicide.
The boy named Matthew included in another post died of small vessel damage. That's usually caused by long-term high blood pressure, which can result from a variety of conditions, including diabetes. In photos, Matthew is very clearly obese, which makes me wonder if there was something else going on. I know his parents say that he did not have any underlying cardiac issues, but I'm not so sure.
I do agree that any child whose parents are considering methylphenidate should insist upon screening for diabetes, high blood pressure, and hypercholesterolemia. For those who have any of those conditions, Ritalin is probably not a good choice, but for the vast majority of otherwise healthy people, methylphenidate can be used safely.
That's what bugs me no one cares about the minority. How many kids are they allowed to harm ? What is the acceptable death rate ?
In The Wrath of Khan (1982), Spock says, “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.â€
"The current problem with the MBD syndrome is that it has become an all-encompassing, wastebasket diagnosis for any child who does not quite conform to..."
Both my nephew and my grandson are both on medications to curtail some diagnosis that fit the parents desire to play the sympathy card.....See I knew Johnny wasn't quite right and the doc gave us these prescipts to adjust little Johnny.
In both cases: My Nephews Mom , (my sister) simply does not know how to parent. I love her dearly yet she has zero desire to be a MOM per se. She pretty much handed him over to day care and said...here you deal with him. the kid deserved a stable home....but that was not to be.
As for my grandson....His Mother is a hypochondriac...Whatever anyone has...she suddenly has it too! She has passed on that psychosomatic mindset to this kid. His bag of meds is filled with uppers and downers....all to combat a MOM who doesnt have a clue or wish to be a parent. My Son is not his Biological Dad or adopted Dad. He is just an ATM machine for this lady and her bag of ails...passed on to this kid....
"The current problem with the MBD syndrome is that it has become an all-encompassing, wastebasket diagnosis for any child who does not quite conform to..."
I had a good laugh when I opened that link. I know Barton Schmitt, the author. Not personally, mind you, but I know him as a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado medical school and as the medical director of the After-Hours Call Center at The Children's Hospital in Colorado. I've gone to talks by him. He wrote a book for after-hours call centers which we used at our office for our phone line. I've sat at his table a few times.
I can't get into the whole article because I don't have a subscription, but it seems like an opinion piece, of which Dr. Schmitt has a lot. And just from what I can read, he's not saying it doesn't exist; he's saying it is (was) being used as a catch-all.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 12-18-2018 at 08:53 AM..
At that time,having a "hyperactive" kid was a stigma, and your friends and neighbors shook their heads and tut tutted when they found out. So, parents kept quiet about it.
back then there were all kinds of labels for these kids, like "bad", "incorrigible", everything else. The people who say "Back in my day, no kids had ADHD!" are full of it. There's always going to be the old farts who want to tell younger parents how much better kids were "back in my day." Sorry there were plenty of issues going on back then.
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