I teach 3rd grade and we are forbidden from even insinuating that a child might have a diagnosis of add/adhd. When parents ask me if I think that their child may have add/adhd, I always tell them that I am not a doctor, and it isn’t my place to try and make a diagnosis. Obviously, some kids are more rambunctious than others. As a teacher you just have to learn how to deal with it. My biggest problem with the education system is that administrators are way too quick to label any unkind look or word as bullying. When there is an actual case of bullying administrators want to punish victims who fight back with the same punishment as the bully. Instinctively kids can see that this is unfair, but many of them just hold it inside until they snap. I am only 36, but I remember being able to handle kids who were bullying me without fear of repercussions. The word “bullying” never entered my mind as a kid. I just recognized that some people are simply assholes.
Well, the teachers and administrators at our school have brought parents in and insisted that they are add or adhad or some other label.
I know a parent of a gifted student that took her child to 5 different doctors to satisfy these people. The answer was the same every time. The child is not add or adhd.
Apparently the child was smart enough to train the teachers to react the way they wanted, and get their way, because they had labeled the student, decided that the child couldn’t help the way they acted. This behavior was not seen anywhere but at school. Not at home, not at Church, not at parties etc.
If a student needs extra help on class work, they claim they can’t help them unless they get some sort of label pinned to them.
When I was a teacher, we were told that we had to deal with individual differences, we didn’t have teacher’s aides, and we didn’t have to have labels in order to help a child who needed a little extra help understanding the lesson.
If a child misbehaved there were immediate consequences with out a lot of attention. Now the students get a 20 minute dissertation, maybe a note home, and a warning don’t do it again.