A couple of months ago we got the call from the teacher of our 6-year old son saying that “he may have ADHD”.
“Oh”, we said, “how’s that.?”
“Well,” they said, “he’s finding it difficult to focus in class compared to the others.”
“So, what should we do?” we said.
“Take him to see this specialist at Auckland Hospital”.
“Ok” we said.
After we filled out a long questionnaire and submitted it, my wife took our son to see the ‘specialist’. After 30 minutes of talking about the questionnaire to my wife the ‘specialist’ then diagnosed our son with ADHD and suggested that we put him on Ritalin. Job done! Note, the ‘specialist’ NEVER spoke directly with our son.
The ‘specialist’ gave us some material on the symptoms of ADHD and as I read through them I thought “this could apply to my other son, to me and pretty much every f**king person I know!” Needless to say, our reaction was not positive.
Not wanting to drug our 6-year old boy we then spent more time with him trying to understand the problems he was going through. We also took him to a child behavioural coach for an assessment. Her view was that his vestibular system was slightly underdeveloped but that with some hearing and balancing exercises this could be corrected.
We have followed this programme and I’m happy to say that his performance both at home and at school is much better. Most importantly, he’s happy and he’s learning. We’ve also included my parents in this and they also see improvements. He is very ‘hands on’ and loves building things with his Grandpa. As it turns out, this happens to be a great way to teach him mathematical fundamentals.
This got me thinking though. Both the school and the hospital would have led us to putting our 6-year old on Ritalin had we taken their advice. This is really scary when you think about it. It would have been so easy for our child to all of sudden be dosed up on something that we didn’t fully understand.
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders whether or not there is another agenda at play here. I’m not saying that the teacher or the ‘specialist’ are bad people, but perhaps the system has been designed in such a way to allow this to happen. Or perhaps, we as adults are just too ready these days to find quick fixes.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I have started my research on this and would love to hear from others who have experienced this themselves or who are knowledgeable in this area.
Some useful links below.
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/adhd/what-is-adhd
https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/natural-remedies
https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/02/doctors-quick-prescribe-drugs-adhd.html
https://www.naturalnews.com/023334_child_children_brain.html
Here are a few posts that I wrote about this topic:
https://steemit.com/life/@canadian-coconut/drugs-for-kids-if-your-child-has-a-condition-know-as-being-a-child-the-answer-is-drugs-parody
https://steemit.com/education/@canadian-coconut/how-schools-fail-so-many-children-animal-school-video-explains-simply
https://steemit.com/education/@canadian-coconut/children-who-question-authority-at-school-are-drugged-ie-ritalin-or-otherwise-squelched
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Thanks @canadian-coconut. I'll have a read later today when I have more time. I've followed you though.
Cheers, Alan
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If you think your kid has ADHD, but he can play video games all day, I'm sorry, but he doesn't have ADHD. Often though, these behavioral problems are linked to gut health and the importance of nutrition, especially gut flora. Dr Natasha Campbell- McBride talks a lot about it.
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We should take care our children. Thanks for your info.
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Agreed @cryptorasel here's a greta video a friend just sent me.
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He's great! Also Peter Gran's presentations and Ron Paul's book about schooling are great.
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Thanks
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Hi Alan,
I am here in response of my brother Rik DL ;)
I took Rilatin as a kid, because my grades at school below average, but just enough to pass...
I indeed had difficulty focusing back then and was quite active. Conclusion: I had "ADHD" --> Welcome Rilatin!
Initially it looked like it helped me as a young kid, because it calmed me down and kept me less distracted.
But in my later teen years when taking it, I felt fuzzy and weird and did not experience as helpful, so I faked taking it to show my parents that I take this. My parents were convinced that this would help me as it did back in my younger years, but anno 2018 we all are getting smarter day by day…
After looking back at my times at school combined with Rilatin, I can say that (like many others) most stuff I saw at school did not interest me, so I just did that enough effort to pass at the end of the year. Rilatin was supposed to help getting me over the finish line.
But if you take it or not, who of us still uses all the uninterested lessons from school up to this day?
Not me… I have my OWN interests. I don't need Rilatin or any of these so called helpful drugs...
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Thanks @sdl1987 and thanks to Rik DL for sharing. I 'virtually' spoke to him about this on Facebook. I agree with your assessment and I'm sorry that you had to experience the 'doping'. Sadly, I did vaccinate my kids when they were younger but I would refuse any prescribed drugs now. I've already told my wife that our relationship would be very strained if she agreed to drug our children and as a legal guardian of them have refused to give my permission to do so.
Thanks again for sharing your story.
Take care.
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It is a shame that many doctors are so intellectually lazy and misdiagnose leading to misprespcribing kids.
I was misdiagnosed long ago as NOT having ADD, before later being correctly diagnosed by a doctor who ran several tests on me. I could take adderall, but I don't like Rx/s.
My only point is that although there are a lot of doctors incorrectly diagnosing, ADD/ADHD is definitely a real mental variance. It is a gift, and a curse.
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Thanks @nashty How do you deal with it these days?
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Great move. You avoided solving a problem with another problem.
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thanks @marihuya I think so too!
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Hey there. Sorry to hear that happened to you. Sadly ADHD (or more likely ADD in this case) is real deal. I speak from position of psychology student and I got some insight about it when I was making research about attention deficit disorders. Truth is that doctors nowadays are used to diagnose rapidly and put people on medication because thats how they earn money. You should visit good psychologist to diagnose your boy properly before letting him take medications as even most psychiatrists will usualy describe med after hearing assumption without even caring to get some real insight. Wish you best :)
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thanks for the advice @pahgen much appreciated. For now, letting my son learn in his on way and own time seems to be working. Even his teacher says he is happier in class now. Seems to be working at the moment.
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