Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The additives/sugar meme seems to have gone out of style. Allergies are the big rage these days among parents, but I never heard of them supposedly causing ADHD.
Retired pediatric nurse
My daughter, back in the 1990's, attended a school where fully half the student body had "food allergies" that, oddly enough, the actual allergy doctors could not find. The sole symptoms were always misbehavior, absolutely nothing physical. I carefully, when such a child was visiting, got a list of their allergens from the parents, only to find that as I offered various foods that weren't on the list, the list would grow until I said "In THIS house, you can say you don't like something, you don't have to be allergic to it" at which point the list would shrink. Even when accidentally serving something they were allergic to (because I hadn't been told), I had no problems with behavior because I automatically parented and that seemed to be an excellent antihistamine.
Really irritated me because being allergic was a bandwagon back then as someone who carries an epipen (but doesn't talk about it in real life and only those closest to me know because it's my problem, not everyone else's), because that makes it harder for people with true allergy problems to be taken seriously.
What I don't understand, is why has there been this explosion of supposed ADHD cases? When I was in grade school, no one was diagnosed, and everyone was able to pay attention in class.
When I was in school, there was a boy in my class (1st through 6th grade) who probably had ADHD. He was always the kid who couldn't sit still, always the boy in trouble for talking when he shouldn't have been, and always the one who got in trouble. He stood out amongst all the rest of us. This would've been the early 60's.
When in junior high, I knew a couple of boys (they were twins) who couldn't read for sh**. They weren't the rowdy, loud type...they were more ADD, then ADHD. No. Instead, they slunk through school, no doubt praying for the day they could drop out. That was late 60's, early 70's.
I would bet you went to school with kids that had ADHD. It just didn't have name back then.
The worst situation I ever saw was at the junior high where I student taught many moons ago. Like most student teachers, I was struggling through my student teaching (actually, I wasn't struggling...but there's a lot to learn in student teaching, and most of it is teaching by doing). Midway through the semester, I said to my sponsor teacher, "How come there are so many students here who are on Ritalin? It was over 20% of my students. My sponsor teacher said, "It's a disgrace. And if you ask everyone of those parents who their child's physician is, it'll be the same doctor in every case. And they couldn't blame it on one doctor in a small town...this was in a large suburban area of Rochester, NY.
I don't know about everybody. I only know about me and my son. But getting to diagnosis for my son required input from LOTS of different people, including different doctors.
Teachers, parents, and in my son's case, grandparents, had to fill out multiple pages of questions. Then we (son and I) saw a counselor, who recommended us to a psychologist, who recommended us to a psychiatrist, who had us see a nuerologist, and last but not least, my son had to mave a physical, which included an EKG.
We're not special people with special connections. Did I have better insurance than everyone else? No. I don't think so. It takes input from a lot of people, many of them experts.
When I was in elementary school in the 1950's, most boys (and some girls) were restless (especially in Spring), but we had recess twice a day and a period at lunch where physical activity was highly encouraged, AND PE, and that took care of it. Also, school started after Labor Day and ended before Memorial Day. Also, we were encouraged (and some required by the necessities of farm life) to be physically active at home, as well. I remember at 8 years old (I grew up on a church camp of some 800 acres) heading out to hike in the woods around the 80 acre lake and not coming home for hours. It was normal to be outside and to have unsupervised adventures.
There also was less emphasis on everyone MUST go to college and MUST have that in mind. Farming and other hands-on occupations were respected as being absolutely necessary to our existence. And the people with Real Money as often as not got their start working in the oil fields with their hands, or their Daddy did. So getting enough exercise was not really a problem - it was considered necessary.
In the 1960's, it was Kennedy and the 50 mile hike challenge which many young people participated in.
I don't disagree that ADHD is a thing. Just that lifestyle and cultural expectations can have as much to do with exacerbating it as anything else, and that it is over-diagnosed.
From another perspective, I once took care for a few weeks of a little boy who had some serious issues with aphasia. His mother very much wanted for him to improve and had someone to be with him/work with him in a home setting (me) and a group that came in to do patterning exercises with him and several other things. He and I got along great. I left when it became clear that every time he started to act like a normal boy, she would immediately dose him with Ritalin to bring him back to "not normal" - clearly she had something invested in that or she simply couldn't cope with normal child behavior, and Ritalin was the in thing at the time. I was 19 then and didn't know who I could or should report this to (had no idea who his doctors were), but I did recognize drug abuse when I saw it (it WAS the Sixties, after all).
When I was in elementary school in the 1950's, most boys (and some girls) were restless (especially in Spring), but we had recess twice a day and a period at lunch where physical activity was highly encouraged, AND PE, and that took care of it.
Since homeschool laws vary greatly from state to state, I'll stick with Texas. Just a simple question. I wonder how many homeschooled children in Texas get diagnosed with ADHD? ( percentage. not raw numbers. )
American Big Pharma is a huge industry. The more pills they can force-feed kids, the more profit they can rake in from their complacent parents. The shrinks prescribing these psychoactives get kickbacks from Big Pharma.
Back in the mid-90's my son's doctor retired so we had to look for another pediatrician. We were in the waiting room of the potentially new doctor with two women (possibly sisters?) who were there together with their collective 5 children. The two women were talking with each other, showing each other magazine ads, etc. while the kids literally were climbing the walls and destroying the waiting room. The two women did absolutely nothing to stop the kids.
The nurse called them in first - I think two of the five were sick - and they all went into the same room together. My son and I were called in next and were put in the exam room next to their room. The walls were paper thin and I could hear every word being said. The doctor went into the first room and did his best to examine the two sick kids while the others were bouncing around. Then one of the women said that her kids would not sit still and she wanted to put them on Ritalin. I heard the doctor pause, then he told them "Based on what I have observed, these kids all need some old-fashioned discipline! Neither of you have done any actual parenting from the moment you walked into this office. I will not prescribe drugs to kids who do not need them, just to make life easy for their parents. If you really think any of your children have a medical condition please make an appointment and bring that child back and we will begin the steps to find the issue. In the meantime try being a parent to your children."
I was sold - he was definitely our new doctor!!
I think the basic problem is that schools need kids that can pay attention, turn in work on time and get along with teachers and classmates. When a kid can’t do that—and many kids can’t—parents turn to ritalin and similar drugs. In our own family, this has had to be done. One of the grands was having problems concentrating, learning and also some problems with social skills. This child takes a small dose of ritalin every school day. It has helped a lot. The decision was not made without a lot of thought.
In some cases, I know kids don’t receive solid, stable parenting, and their problems in school stem from their chaotic family life. I don’t know if a drug helps all that much in these sad cases.
I do know that kids have been diagnosed with variations of ADD and ADHD for a couple of generations. So, this is not a new phenomenon. My own kids probably had forms of ADD but were well behaved and managed to get through school successfully. I suspected things, but did NOT want them labeled. My youngest had an especially hard time in the primary grades, but turned around successfully with maturity. Not one teacher ever suggested getting a diagnosis.
I think if you want to condemn teachers or the schools, you should volunteer or at least visit to understand the magnitude of the challenges educators face today. I do think it is OK to be wary of simply prescribing a drug and not following through with other actions. My grand has had tutoring to help with deficiencies. The parents have worked conscientiously to back up the school. But not all parents can or will be that dedicated.
I see this as a flaw in our society as a whole, frankly. It is too easy to try and solve behavior problems with a prescription. But I think there is a lot of shared blame.
And, I am not saying that schools are blameless. But our schools are really microcosms of the culture in which they exist.
This. But there are always those on each side for whom absolutely everything must be political. Which is on topic, because it's an addiction of sorts.
That's true. And there's a lot about education that is political...because politics -- for good or bad -- is how a nation works through things.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
