I have to run to a PTA meeting for the special ed parents. Methinks it’s time to get more involved. So, a couple of links to articles that got a lot of buzz this weekend.
My Facebook people were talking about this article about overworked doctors.
I’ll have some thoughts later on the overdiagnosis on ADHD and autism.
This article on the backstory behind the shutdown is amazing.
Haven’t had a chance to read this New York Magazine article on Scalia, but it was much discussed on Twitter.
Apt. 11d 
I had no idea Meese was still active. He should go back to reviewing porn. There’s been a whole bunch of changes since the 80s.
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PTA meetings during the day? Wow. We have “School Council” meetings after school (so many parents around here, it seems, leave work and go straight to pick up their kids or meet them at the bus) and PTO meetings at night.
Re doctors being overworked: someone I know (/vague) who is a nurse had a difficult situation at work after 3 days in a row of 12-hour shifts. It was one of those things where the phone order overruled the order on the computer, but in the 11th hour of the third 12-hour shift in a row, the phone order was forgotten. She is *so* upset about it. I’m upset knowing how easy it is for someone who cares as deeply about her job and doing it well as I know she does to make a mistake under these circumstances.
The medical profession is incredibly stressful. It’s not all women in scrubs in your doctor’s office taking your blood pressure.
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Re: overdiagnosis of autism and ADHD.
Isn’t it very likely that instead of “no label,” a difficult child will get a lot of even less unflattering labels from teachers and staff?
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It’s just possible that at a very small, very expensive school, that parents can tell the school, “My very special snowflake needs A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, etc.” and the child will get some super customized individual handling.
However, in a large school with lots of students and limited resources, it is more efficient to say, “Grayson has ADHD” or “Isabelle is mildly autistic” or (and this is one I really wonder about) “Genesis has oppositional defiant disorder.” When you give a label, it saves the teacher time and effort. She can compare the child in question to other children with the same label, and reuse the techniques that worked with those children. The teacher does not have to reinvent the wheel every single time, and you’re less likely to have a situation where school believes that you are a bad parent and you are letting your child get away with murder.
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“When you give a label, it saves the teacher time and effort”
Well, if the label actually does give a teacher shortcuts to a solution. I’m pretty unconvinced that it does. Instead it seems to me like there are a number of generic solutions that are applied in a number of circumstances.
Take, for example, the ADHD/stimulant medication connection. Stimulant medication just isn’t like giving insulin to a child who has diabetes (i.e. their blood sugar is too high, they don’t have enough insulin, you give them insulin and their blood sugar goes down) v giving it to a child who doesn’t have diabetes (bad, blood sugar is normal, goes down, bad). ADHD has similar effects on many people (as does caffeine, not the same effect, but the same idea). So the label doesn’t really help — the real question is whether the child functions better in a way that’s important enough to accept the side effects and risks of the medication.
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There are non-medication approaches to dealing with ADHD or attention issues generally. There are special automated reminder systems that can be created for individuals with attention problems or brain damage. There’s a cute little cartoon ad here for one of them:
http://watchminder.com/
Of course, it’s true that if you ask for extra accommodations you do run the risk of school asking why, if the child’s issues are so serious, you’re not medicating, but I think we know that it really isn’t a cure-all (or at least not a permanent one), and it should be possible to make a case for trying the non-pharmaceutical approaches.
My oldest isn’t on any medication and can be very spacey. When we have our big teacher (ALL of them)-principal-psychologist meeting in a few weeks, I am going to be asking that she get extra reminders for turning in her homework. I’ve discussed it with the psychologist, and the psychologist thinks that not at all unreasonable.
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One of the problems with labels and shortcuts is that you end up in the disastrous situation that Ian has landed. His case worker never got it through head that Ian had autism and is very, very smart at the same time. She put him in a class with very slow kids. It’s 1am and I am losing my mind. We’re going to have pull Ian out of this school and totally disrupt his life. He hasn’t learned anything in five weeks. I have a meeting on Thursday and I can’t sleep with worry.
The problem with labels is that some people don’t fit in those boxes very neatly.
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Argh. Well, if it makes you feel any better, pulling him sooner than later is probably best, and it will minimize the longterm disruption. Also, a friend (the one who eventually put her kid in the YALE school) had something similar–bad placement, misdiagnoses, clueless school staff–and now her kid is almost ready to graduate and is doing great–there was no longterm damage. Once you find the right place, everything else in the past doesn’t matter any more.
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I wouldn’t worry so much about schools. I’m reliably informed , by a member of the House Intelligence committee, that the world is ending soonish.
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