tru dat
Posted on 01/04/2014 11:11:27 PM PST by grundle
In private practice, Saul found himself wondering, what other problems do these patients have besides being easily distracted? One girl he treated, it turned out, was being disruptive in class because she couldn’t see the blackboard. Correct diagnois: myopia. She needed glasses, not drugs.
A 36-year-old man who complained about his addiction to online games and guessed he had ADHD, it turned out, was drinking too much coffee and sleeping only four to five hours a night. Correct diagnosis: sleep deprivation. He needed blackout shades, a white-noise machine and a program that shut all his devices off at midnight.
A young man who asked, “Can’t you just ask me a few questions and write me a prescription?” simply left the office when Saul started probing too deeply into whatever was ailing him.
One by one, nearly all of Saul’s patients turned out to have some disease other than ADHD, such as Tourette’s, OCD, fragile X syndrome (a genetic mutation linked to mental retardation), autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, learning disabilities or such familiar conditions as substance abuse, poor hearing or even giftedness. A boy who was disruptive and inattentive in math class (but no other) was, simply, bored by the material and needed to be advanced a grade to regain his concentration.
In a few cases, there was simply no diagnosis. One adult who thought she had ADHD and had been prescribed stimulants by another doctor got a different take from Saul. He advised her to instead return to her habit of exercising regularly and cut back on work hours.
“I now realize it wasn’t ADHD,” she told him later, pleased with the progress she made as a result. “It was just life.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Think of it this way.
Many of us went through the same thing ‘in class’. Teachers constantly accused me of daydreaming (which I was), but I made top grades. I was daydreaming because I was bored. I was ‘ahead of the curve’ (even though most of the time I had the ‘best’ teachers). So likely, were you.
BUT..... at home, I was challenged constantly. I was provided with the tools (many times LITERALLY) to keep my mind (and hands) busy.
If you had parents (or only one parent) who had to work a job and keep up the house and pay the bills and they don’t have or get the time to spend ‘challenging’ you (or buying you educational toys and projects), what are you left to do with your very active mind ?
This leads to real frustration for the child, the parent(s) and the teachers. The child takes out that frustration where he(she) can, and that is often on the teacher and the other students.
Didn't you know? Everyone on FR is a friggin' genius.
": )
Agreement
Call it whatever you want, my son has it. It may be some other known problem that is misdiagnosed, but he has many of the classic signs of ADHD.
First off, he was NOT disruptive in class nor “out of control”.
The symptom that clued us in was when he was reading, he would skip every third or forth word. For example - “For score and seven ago our fa on this continent a new na conceived in to the proposition that all created equal.”
He knew and could pronounce the words individually. But as he was reading them, he would skip over words.
Of course he had the classic signs of being SUPER easily distracted.
You could give him his medication and within about 20 minutes, he could read through the Gettysburg Address without skipping a beat. He could sit down and do his homework with no problems.
Whatever it is, it is real. Don’t let pieces like this fool you.
tru dat
“We need to get over our phobia about fat and return to feeding our kids actual food.”
Amen!
You are right. They are taking nutrients out of today’s food. There’s that old saying about stop and smell the roses but today’s roses don’t have much smell. It’s the same as food in the grocery store doesn’t have as many nutrients as it once did. This week, I was looking around online at what the local farmers markets were selling and it’s mainly the GMO/hybrid/improved garbage that is sold for eye candy. Here are a couple of scary links:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/26/sunday-review/26corn-ch.html?ref=sunday&_r=0
LOL!
I had a brief conversattion with some guy here who starts out by saying "I'm not one of those keyboard commandos...but" or something to that effect, then he goes on to brag about what a badass he was.
By the time he was done, he had me convinced he was a super ninja........
Some of these ADHD drugs do change the kids personality and that’s not good.
Teachers know but they can’t do much. You are evaluated on the % of kids you keep in the classroom.
Wow, thanks for the information! I have an almost five year old who I joke is either going to be a super genius or criminal because she is so clever. She has had sinus issues her entire life, but allergy medicine tends to make her even more wired. She has the ability to completely focus on things, so I never really considered that she was a candidate for ADHD, though her concentration abilities are more limited than my other three kids. I will definitely be researching this issue, and thank you for your input!
“This I’m not buyin’. Makes no sense to me as a lifetime math nerd.”
My son was thought to have ADHD in first grade, and they wanted him on Ritalin at school. I had them test him and it turned out he was simply bored, testing at the 4th grade level in math and reading.
After eventually moving to homeschool him, he got a full ride scholarship through his masters, in Mathematics.
I can’t imagine what would have become of his mind had I allowed them to force him on to drugs at the age of SIX.
Kids who have “ADHD” now, used to be called brats. A few pops on the bottom was an effective cure.
Now, there is a lot of howling about "diversity", but the hyper kid who got a job delivering groceries or messages, the OCD guy who got the job at the warehouse putting everything in its place, the 'slow' kid who swept the floors at the grocery store, and a host of others have been hammered, medicated, and culturally normed to fit into slots which do not necessarily take advantage of their God-given differences, their talents for things others might not even want to do.
For all the research, all the education, all the alleged knowledge, we possess little wisdom, to the detriment of not only individuals, but our society as well.
The answer to ADHD is the right food, home and schedule structure, two vigilant parents, direct eye contact with parents, and spanking them until they walk like John Wayne.
ADHD = Adults Don’t Handle Discipline
My grandson is much the same. He has a very high IQ and is in gifted classes. He rarely has a score less than 100% on anything. With him the auditory thing is because he is living a very active inner life and the external stimulates take a bit to get through. If you have his attention, he responds to the auditory instantly. I had the same issue with my son.
I hope you find some assistance in working with your son, because I am positive that his auditory language processing can be improved. Ask around about teachers who specialize in working with children with learning disabilities - even if their specialty is not your issue. They network with the other specialists. They may give you a path through this maze.
I had wicked sinus infections in high school, the kind that felt like I was kicked with a steel toe boot. Some teacher concluded that I was on heroin.
It’s not just about hyper behavior. A major part of ADHD is the inability to stay focused. Some kids don’t have the hyperactive part of it at all.
Is inability to focus the reason why so many kids are drugged in our schools? Is this inability to focus the reason for the abysmal graduation and drop out rates in our schools? How come we knew NOTHING about this in the 1950’s and into the 60’s before all this drugging was deemed necessary and yet the rates of graduation were so much higher along with the drop out rates being much lower?
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.