Posted on 07/21/2007 5:49:14 AM PDT by cinives
ROFL. types like me. WTF does that mean? You don’t know me, and have made it abundantly clear you don’t know wtf you are talking about.
admire who you will, i do not agree with you. period.
We're already doing that. How about you? Do you have kids diagnosed with ADD/ADHD? What's your experience or lack thereof with Ritalin or Adderal? Do you even have kids?
"MSNBC, 2001-Nov-11:
Ritalin may alter brain, study shows Changes appear similar to those caused by amphetamine...
...The changes look similar to those seen with other stimulants such as amphetamine and cocaine, at least in rats, the team at the University of Buffalo found.
Well, it should. It is an amphetamine, speed. No news here. And the rest of the article goes on to vaguely talk about a gene being switched on and no information on what that gene does or how it does it. Sounds to me like somebody got a grant and a paycheck to write something of no real value.
"Clinicians consider Ritalin to be short-acting,"
No one is claiming any different. You ought to be around my daughter around 6:00 p.m. and watch her start bouncing off the walls again especially if she has a couple of friends over.
from Insight Magazine, 2001-Sep-7, by Kelly Patricia O’Meara:
New Research Indicts Ritalin
A recent study reveals that the drug being prescribed to tens of millions of school-age children for a scientifically unproved mental disorder is more potent than cocaine."
Insight Magazine is not exactly the place to go when looking for articles on sound science. I balked when I read the title and quit after the above sentence. More powerful than cocaine? What does that have to do with anything?? Actually, it's a skillfully written article that invokes one demon, cocaine, and goes on to use other hot-button words like "cocaine-like", "Doping Kids" then denies the existence of brain chemical imbalances, etc., ad nauseum to the point of sounding to the ignorant reader rather ominous but with no real science. In essence, the article written to push someone's ideology (opinion) about mental health and no scientific value. It's not unlike any pro-creationism article you might find.
Anything else you'd like to throw out there? How about your kids?
I have one who was declared by all concerned, including a private psychologist who did the testing once after 1st grade and again after 5th grade, to have a case of ADHD. The schools wanted her put in special ed classes even tho that meant she’d have been working well below her intellectual level. No gifted classes because she was now labeled ADHD, and that obviously meant you were stupid to my school district. In that school district, if you weren’t equally as gifted at math as at reading, you were LD, and LD kids did not qualify for the extremely limited enrichment classes in the elementary schools (it would have been OK if she was high school age at the time). She was highly gifted at reading, comprehension and spatial skills - testing at a grade 16+ level (the test didn’t go any higher) at 5th grade - but was only at a 5th grade level for math.
I contended that the kid was simply highly intelligent, as the tests showed, unchallenged in school, picked on by certain members of the class, had her own opinions about an appropriate education which pissed off her teachers, and lots of energy not conducive to sitting in a chair 6.5 hours a day. I tried her in parochial school, 2 private schools, and public school before I finally pulled her out to homeschool. How do you tell a kid that the teacher who couldn’t spell and whose grammar was atrocious was allowed to send you to detention for breaking your pencils 3 times a day, even tho you rewrote her note with correct spelling, grammar and punctuation - at grade 2 - and made the mistake of showing it to her.
Today, she’s graduated from high school (at home), is riding and competing horses 12 months of the year all along the East Coast, is taking courses towards her college degree, works 4 days a week, is extremely independent, is fully capable of arranging her own schedule, getting herself up and out of the house for her hectic schedule on time, and is a genuine joy to be around. The negative ? She often cannot remember where she last put her cell phone. And her room is a mess, as is the inside of her car.
And oh yes, all this without a whisper of drugs or other means than consistent discipline and rational expectations.
She was allowed to stand at her desk if she wanted and do schoolwork, she was allowed to run around the place while memorizing biology terminology, she learned to speed read so she could finish her schoolwork in a few hours instead of 6 hours, she learned that there were things that must be accomplished just because but she could have control over the how and the how long, she learned discipline while learning to play flute and ended up at 1st chair in the band, and she could then spend 4 hours a day at the barn riding and mucking stalls and assisting the vets and farriers when her schoolwork was completed. She also learned to have patience with young, unruly and often handicapped children while volunteering as a docent at the local Natural Science museum and the therapeutic riding stable.
In short, it was a journey that was most frustrating for 5 long school years, and most satisfying for the remaining 6. Yes, she graduated a year early, with 28 credits on her transcript.
The difference was that I arranged her day and her studies to suit her temperament. For example, she used the book Biology by Campbell Reese at age 11, a college level book, to study biology. It satisfied her need for high-level material, and she scored an average of 96% on the tests she took online. On the other hand, at the same age,I used the Saxon 65 math book to help her with her weaker math skills. I could tailor her curriculum to suit her needs, rather than try to tailor the child to fit the one-size-fits-all classroom. After she caught on to what was expected, she took ownership of her work and had many useful suggestions about making it more interesting. I rarely heard any gripes about subjects she found difficult, because it was her decision to do the best job possible. The discipline was imposed from within, not just from without. The drive was all hers.
In the end, she’s a much better person for it. It taught her to teach herself anything that she might want to learn, including things that take great effort to master, and has given her a maturity far beyond her years. Her friends are typically 7 and 8 years or better older than she is, because other teenagers and college students often are very immature and still into the clique/exclusion thing.
So yes, I know exactly what I am talking about. I lived it, I struggled thru it since I am not that type at all, I even had an ex spouse who tried to force me via the courts to give her the drugs, and I did all this as a single working parent. I talked to loads of people, I read lots of books, studies and articles, I visited LD schools, I have family members who have had their kids on these same drugs and I’ve seen those results.
I am satisfied that I made the best decisions available for this kid. My daughter still tells me how appreciative she is of my efforts on her behalf because of the experiences of some of her friends and her memories of that hell that were her school days, and I am totally at peace with everything I say about the subject.
I’d do it again the same way, in a heart beat.
Fantastic! It sounds like not just you, but your daughter too did a wonderful job. You have a greatly gifted daughter who is probably truly one in a thousand. You should rightly feel both proud and blessed.
High intelligence seems to be the common thread that runs through ADD/ADHD kids. I agree they are bored with the curriculum because they’re not challenged. That is one thing I talked to my daughter’s school (a private Catholic school), but to no avail.
I’m also happy to hear that they did make proper accommodations for your daughter per the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act such as allowing her to stand while taking tests. I learned that often these kids have to keep moving. Its what they do when they’re thinking and learning. If you make them sit still, they freeze up. My wife is the one that pointed that out to me with our daughter. I was the “stand there, stop moving and look at me when I’m talking to you” type dad when I was being stern with our daughter. She would freeze up.
And a messy room? I’ve painted the entire inside of the house in the last year but I have flat refused to even begin to touch our daughter’s room until she cleans it up and it stays that way for at least 6 months. I want to just nail it shut and put up yellow Police tape across the front of it or maybe a “Condemned By City” sign!
I want to assure you that we felt we had tried everything possible to get our daughter focused. Long about 6th grade, we felt that we were fighting a losing battle as apparently our daughter did not have the ability to focus despite (what we hoped was) her own best efforts. We felt we had already burned up 5 years of school with mediocre performance. We could let this brilliant child continue status quo and end up with a mediocre at best education regardless of the quality of the curriculum or we could start her on the Adderal and maybe give her a shot at maximizing the rest of her pre-college education. The immediate improvement in her grades and behavior at school was the verification we needed that we did the right thing. You are blessed that your daughter has it in her to get her self organized and make herself focus.
There are still times when I’m not completely sure my daughter’s attention problems are beyond her control as she sure is able to focus real well when it’s something she wants or something she wants to do. But her psychologist continues to tell me that it is the disorder and not her. I’ve a lot of respect for her psychologist for many other varied reasons so I’m trusting her on this one too.
And yes, I agree that there are kids that are taking the medication that probably shouldn’t have to. But that doesn’t mean there are not kids that truly need it. The drug does work and it works well. Few drugs are without side effects. No doubt Ritalin and Adderal have theirs. But we felt that sometimes one has to take some chances with one’s kid’s best interest at heart.
So I’m happy to hear of a great success story like your daughter’s. Good luck to her. She’s one kid you will never need to worry about.
I hear you loud and clear, and believe me, I don’t condemn your choices.
I think the difference is that I am a contrarian - I don’t believe in following the pack or fitting in just because that’s the way everybody else does it. It’s the reason I made “school” at home fit the kid - I knew schools weren’t going to be willing to make any changes necessary to ensure this kid’s success and I had extremely limited time that I didn’t want to waste butting heads with the blob. I preferred devoting that time toward more positive things.
You crack me up with your nailing the door shut story. Mine is the same way. I refuse to drive anywhere with her until she “mucks out” her car :) Oddly enough, the guidance counselor in one of the elementary schools told me that a messy locker is a major symptom of ADHD and that all kids with messy lockers should be on Ritalin. I asked her if she had any kids of her own, because surely no one could be ignorant of the fact that neatness is rarely a birth trait - it’s learned.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.