A burgeoning number of parents....
Under the theory that there's something called "Sensory Processing Disorder," people are buying "'sensory-friendly' products and attire, from weighted vests to chewable jewelry... sensory gyms... schools that cater to students’ sensory intolerances and allow them to move around, take breaks and wear headphones."
Public libraries host sensory storytimes, theaters stage quiet performances with modified lighting, museums conduct out-of-hours tours with cool-down rooms. Even hair salons are beginning to offer “sensory friendly” cuts.Must everything be a disorder? I'd like to suggest that as a culture, we have simply gotten the delusional idea that babies and young children need a lot of stimulation, when, in fact, they do not and it's hurting them.
I wouldn't put a weighted vest on a little kid, but I think quiet, calm, uncluttered environments would be good for children (and for adults too). Turn off the music. Turn off the televisions. Stop tickling and bouncing the babies and continually waggling your big, laughing, over-made-up, over-perfumed face at them trying to get a reaction.
As adults, we may think there always should be something exciting happening lest that terrible monster Boredom arrive and crush us. That's our problem, and it's not a disorder, but a failure of character and insight.
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The more disorders there are, the more jobs there are in that field and attached sub-fields.
Sensory Processing Disorder is a real thing, and seems to be connected with autism. I don't have a kid who flips out at irritating tags, but the opposite, a kid who's under-sensitive. Really. How many kids do you know who didn't notice when their baby teeth were loose, and then when they fell out? Whose downfall with potty-training was that they just couldn't tell when they were about to pee, and couldn't feel that their clothes were wet after having an accident? Who wear their shoes until well past when they're ready for the next size, without complaint? Who, to this day (he's now 14) has to be told when it's time to start wearing a winter coat, or, in the spring, take it off? Who has issues with body odor because he can't tell when he's getting sweaty and really ought to take off his sweatshirt?
On the plus side, he'll eat anything you put in front of him, and he never complains about the cold or the heat.
IMHO I believe there is a real down side to having fewer children-too much focus & micro analysis of the 1 or 2 offspring. Everything is blown out of proportion. My wife & I have 6 children & except during the time we just had 1 children we have rarely had time to analyze let alone over analyze such behavior as abnormal. Such "Helicopter" parents hinder normal child development.
Wow, I've had itchy clothes disorder all these years and never even knew it.
My parents had a book on child raising. At a very young age, after I learned to read of course, I would read the book to see what they were being told. I really can't recall if I actually put that knowledge to use, but it can't have hurt.
Kids can live up to expectations, or live down to them.
To your point, we see boredom itself as evidence that we lack as a parent. Thus continual stimulation proves that we are at succeeding at something... although we aren't sure what it is.
In working with parents/teens I often have to teach the discipline of "boredom" because the kids never learned how to deal with it growing up.
It's true!
My oldest was easily overstimulated, and was born at the beginning of the "we must stimulate babies" craze. I went to a parenting group that encouraged pretty much constant chatter at your baby, and I realized at the end of the day he was just exhausted, even though he was an infant. I finally stopped, rejected parenting books, and just was the mom I knew I wanted to be.
Not that I think sensory sensitive readings are the answer. I think just living normal life is the answer, and kids grow and adjust.
As for overreacting to loud noises- I would have my child's hearing checked if that were mine. People with poor hearing often have trouble processing loud noises in the range they are not used to hearing.
Re: All those disorders: It's always something wrong with the kid, not something wrong with the parent.
So many parents may suffer from Inept Parent Disorder, wherein they do not recognize that their reaction triggers a reaction in the child, and the two reactions can reinforce each other in a positive feedback cycle.
I suspect that is is a burgeoning number of parents who are acquaintances of journalists.
Just a suspicion.
But I'm willing to be proved wrong.
Especially if someone can provide a good statistical evaluation on the parents who are bringing such problems to pediatricians.
Lace them onto a cradle board and lean 'em against a tree while mowing the lawn. Keeps them out of trouble and gives them something interesting to watch.
Must everything be a disorder?
Yes.
With an appropriate FDA approved drug for its treatment.
@Jane
What do you think of grouping under and over sensitive children together?
Even if something is a real disorder, e.g., autism, that doesn't mean that everything else that seems like it is the same disorder… or even a disorder.
Take ADHD, for example. There seem to be too many kids put in that category, perhaps because they are looked at from the perspective of what's convenient for adults and what drugs are available to make them fit into an environment that adults have designed for adult purposes.
I'm just suggesting a much calmer, simpler environment as the default for children.
Just send your over/under-sensitive brat unaccompanied to Central America.
Payback.
We are doomed. It was good knowing you all.
Weighted vests are great, actually. It's a lot like swaddling for babies.
"Madison Man": spot on! Inept Parenting Disorder; also Lazy Parent Disorder: Overly Dramatic Parent Disorder...the list goes on
I had disorder disorder as a kid. Everything I did seemed disorderly.
Ann, I agree with you on a calmer environment for children. But I group under-sensitive and over-sensitive children together because that's what the experts do, even though, as the article indicates, some of the experts (and it's hard to identify who and how many) are quacks.
But then, I'll also tell you, from experience, that ADHD is real, though I won't weigh in on whether someone else's kid is misdiagnosed.
My personal theory is that these issues are all connected to assortive mating.
At the same time, yes, of course, there's a lot of bad parenting, and bad parenting theories causing problems. An old college friend used to blog about her deficient preteen, who she had diagnosed as mentally ill and medicated him -- when it was fairly clear that a prime issue was that he was resentful of her lousy me-first parenting. (He shared a room with his younger sister because mom prioritized being right next to the ocean for her walks rather than a larger place further away. His birthday trip to Disney was cut short because she didn't bring the power cord for her laptop. And that's just what she openly blogged about.)
I think this may be a good place for the often-derided expression "differently abled."
Why don't we value children for what they are?
Some people thrive in quiet, others in activity. It's an orientation. Let's not pick one as right and another as wrong.
Someone is making big bucks from parents who have too much money and too little common sense, too much money and too little time for their kids, too much money too into fads...
"their children exhibit baffling, intense behaviors. Some overreact, recoiling from loud noises or refusing to wear itchy clothes."
Problem is with the parents who found it baffling that their kids recoil from loud noises, most people can't stand loud noises.
Why the heck do they want the kids to wear itchy clothes? I hate itchy clothes, if I bought some by mistake, I threw them away. And that is baffling to the parents?
Put the kids in weighted vests to slow them down. Give them stimulants when they exhibit baffling behavior for not moving about. Pssst: they are weighted down! Please take off the vest when you throw them in the pool for their swimming lessons.
(I could blog extensively about kids' diagnoses that I think are real because of personal experience, but, even in my anonymous blog, I don't think my husband and kids would appreciate it. Hence the comments here.)
"CStanley said...
Weighted vests are great, actually."
Not if you have a swimming pool or live near a river or a lake. Then sink or swim parenting becomes sink only.
Parents make tons of mistakes. It's inevitable, even for "good" parents,. Kids have to overcome these mistakes. That too is part of growing up.
"n one forum, a British mother complains her five-year-old throws tantrums any time he has to wear footwear. Parents on either side of the Atlantic pitch in, suggesting canvas shoes, soft-cotton socks and socks without seams. A few days later, the mother returns to proclaim the ordeal over—a store clerk solved the problem by inserting an inner sole—only to admit the next day that the solution was short lived. “Back to the drawing board,” she writes. A month later she logs in to report that her occupational therapist recommended a daily ritual of rubbing her son’s feet across the carpet, jumping 20 times, soaking his feet in cold water, and “squishing” them before putting his socks and shoes on: “Boy, I don't think I have time to do all this before school.” "
Has she tried spanking?
If kids are have extraordinary sensory processing, perhaps it will work even better than normal?
I agree with your 10:32 comment but for those at the extreme ends of those capabilities, some coping and adapting is required.
Well... I'm very loathe to succumb to the "favorite problem of the month" syndrome that seems to crop up frequently in our modern US society. It's almost like a combination of Stuff White People Like combined with a bingo game of ersatz scientific methodology mistaking amateur symptomology for genuine epidemiology. "Hey, Little Johnny has X, Y, and Z symptoms. It's a trend!"
That said, if the medical field is even looking at it - and despite the 2012 rejection by the ASA noted in the linked article, there's definite evidence that its being studied - then I don't want to dismiss it either. The thing that sucks about genuine, careful scientific/medical research vs. patient treatment is that it can take a loooooong time before enough knowledge is gained that a proposed disorder can be evaluated as being legit. And that happens well before enough knowledge is gained that a genuine course of treatment can be created.
I'm not ready to say that it's a standalone issue, but if research shows otherwise, then it'd be silly to deny it. Just saying "I'm not ready to accept yet" is not the equivalent of saying "It's impossible". It's simply saying "We don't know enough yet". Again, it's all about the evidence garnered by research. It always is.
I think there's a version of Munschusen-by-proxy-lite going on. Parents who feel very special if their kids need special care.
Whether its a young boy who might like fingernail polish (ooo! He might be gay! I'm going to let him wear a tiara to school to show my acceptance), or a dietary need, or what have you....
Just being normal doesn't get you celebrated. Having problems does.
Ann Said:
Must everything be a disorder? I'd like to suggest that as a culture, we have simply gotten the delusional idea that babies and young children need a lot of stimulation, when, in fact, they do not and it's hurting them.
I honestly believe that much of this is the result of too many people with too much free time. As a society, we have reached a point where a very many of us do not struggle for daily existence which is a "very good thing" but it also results in a lot of free time for people to kvetching about things that if they were involved in more pressing endeavors, would not have time for.
Things like helicopter parenting, over monitoring, today's version of feminism, today's environmentalism, man-made global warming, "war on women", rape culture, etc.. Much of these things started out as valid responses to pressing issues but most have moved so far beyond what was needed to be done, in large part because people want (dare I say need) something to do that they feel is important. This leads to so much over reach and invented crises.
Kids are all different and all kids are (wait for it) kids. I have four siblings and each one of us is different even though we were raised in the same household. By today's standards at least a few of us would have been medicated into submission. I am glad that was not an option when we were growing up. We all turned out OK. As others pointed out, when my oldest brother was born, my parents were all "Dr. Spock" on him as they had no experience. By the time the youngest was born it was "where did your baby sister get off to?".
Today the big "issue" is Autism and it is EVERYWHERE, before this it was ADHD and it was EVERYWHERE. Tomorrow it will be something else.
The child is probably in a contest to control its parent's behavior before the parent controls the child's desires; and the smarter child is talented enough to see 2 or 3 moves ahead.
The child is playing a game that he intends to win or at a minimum cause a draw.
I'd put my money on the child.
Re: ADHD overdiagnosis, I'm convinced that a greater portion children really do have the disorder now, in 2014, than in 1984 or 1974 or 1964. ADHD is strongly correlated with unplanned pregnancy, and is highly heritable, so it seems likely to me that adults with ADHD have simply outbred their neurotypical counterparts ever since birth control came around. In my personal life, the larger families I know (4+ kids) fall into two categories: the deeply religious (mostly Mormon and Catholic) and the really disorganized (in my family that includes a lot of people with ADHD).
Interestingly, "ethnic Mormons" who have an ancestral link to the first Mormons also appear to be genetically predisposed to addiction---which is also linked to ADHD.
I always recognize my boys when I read articles like this. As an infant, my oldest was easily over-stimulated, so we stayed away from very noisy restaurants, etc, with him until he was older. My youngest still has sensitivity to clothing -- he actually prefers to wear hand-me-downs because they're always softer. I never considered either of these things hallmarks of a disorder, just "how my kids are."
They are both teens now, and these things haven't been an issue for many years because we didn't let them take over our lives. But my daughter and I are both still really, really picky about the kind of socks we will wear, since most of them just don't "feel right"!
Everyone is different, and there is a wide range of behavior and preferences that are normal. It has to be extreme and persistent, and negatively affecting quality of life, before we should start classifying something like this as a disorder.
It's seems the media's primary purpose these days is to make everyone neurotic. Parents should just relax.
My daughter graduated from kindergarten yesterday (yes, in case you were wondering, they did have a ceremony; yes, she did get a diploma; and, yes, our city councilman was there to give the commencement address) and there was a baby nearby whose parents put headphones on him to protect his little ears from the national anthem.
I don't know whether to hope he has a hearing problem or that his parents are insane. Which would be the worse fate?
Why don't we value children for what they are?
----
Because it's just plain too hard for the kid who needs quiet and the kid who needs to talk himself through every problem, aloud, to be equally valued when they are thrust into the same classroom. To equally value each child, of each orientation, we'd have to stop throwing them into one-size-fits-all-the-"good"-kids public schools, and the unions really don't want that to happen.
and there was a baby nearby whose parents put headphones on him to protect his little ears from the national anthem.
Maybe they were playing him a little Beethoven to stimulate neural pathway development. Or teaching him Mandarin.
But really: Kindergarten graduation? That's something I would have actively avoided way back when. High School Graduation a while back, complete with a horrible speech by Tammy Baldwin and far too many musical interludes, was dreadful. I envy parents whose kids were out of town that day.
"CStanley said...
Weighted vests are great, actually."
Not if you have a swimming pool or live near a river or a lake. Then sink or swim parenting becomes sink only.
Sure, because obviously I am advocating that parents permanently attach a weighted vest to their child, rather than, you know seeing if it is calming to the child during a restful period of the day.
I have seen parents medicating their children before soccer practice. Better parenting through chemistry!!
With the sensory-avoiding child, it's not just that they need a quieter environment - and they do need one - it’s much more than that. My younger son falls into the over-sensitive camp, and when he was small he interpreted unexpected light touch as painful. The child behind him in line at pre-school would brush against him, and he would think he'd been clocked (and respond in kind, which was not fun). When he was very upset, he honestly stopped being able to hear you. But if you applied pressure on large muscles (aka, pushed your hands firmly down on his legs just above the knee) you could see him "tune back in" right before your eyes. He needed not just a quieter, less crowded environment, he also needed to be taught specific coping mechanisms for the odd sensory stuff that was going on.
We consulted an OT for a bit, and then just went on our own with what worked and what we had time for. Soccer as a sport when he was small? Nope - too hot, kids run into each other all the time, parents yell. Tae kwon do? Of course - everyone practices evenly spaced out, in silence. Last year, when we were choosing a middle school, I made him tour the biggest of the schools with me, so he could stand in the hall when the bell rang and tell me himself “yes, I can deal with this melee.” Now at 11, he has developed a host of coping skills, and unless you knew him really well you would have no idea he’d ever been diagnosed with anything.
I don’t endorse parents making a huge deal out of a diagnosis of SPD, and I don’t like the word “disorder” very much. But I do know it was helpful to have a name for my younger son’s “issues” and a rough guide for how to respond. It wasn’t an excuse to not discipline him, or not push him to improve his behavior and reactions to the things that bothered him. It was just a way to figure out how to do all those things more effectively.
Oh, and my older son? A huge sensory seeker. His grades and attitude improve during football season every year. Because having people run into you for several hours a day feels good – to him at least. Football and now, this year, rugby – whatever works.
I've got four kids and I can tell you, each one of them is different.
My oldest, my daughter, is about as normal as you can get. Studies hard. Behaves. She would excel in public school.
My oldest boy, just a year younger than my daughter, has all sorts of issues. I don't know what they are as far as labeling, but my wife is a hero for home schooling him (And the other three). He didn't learn to read until he was 10. He does all sorts of odd things and behaviors that we don't understand. The best thing that has ever happened to him was we put him in Gymnastics and he excels at it. I don't know why.
My next boy is a genius. Yet he has all sorts of social issues. He still wets his bed. Why? I don't know, but we're trying to help him.
My youngest boy, just turned 9, is what we would call normal.
Do any of my kids have this disorder? I don't know.
But what I do know is I thank God every day for my wife. She pays attention to all of them, all day, and has them work hard, and play hard, and be good to one another.
If we had put them in school, I'm sure at least one of them would be on medication right now.
Thank God for my wife.
Yet a burgeoning number of parents, like Pamela Trigg, are reporting that their children exhibit baffling, intense behaviors. Some overreact, recoiling from loud noises or refusing to wear itchy clothes.
That is certainly baffling. It would probably take a super-genius to figure out why children might not like loud noises or itchy clothes.
I must have a disorder because I startle easy (how many times have I screamed at my neighbor when bumping into her in the hallway...she now says, "it's just me..,"but that startles me too. Poor woman")
I also hate sudden loud noise. Like a car horn. Especially now that people remote lock there car over and over and it honks every time they hit lock. It usually takes 2 or 3 times for people to decide it's really locked. Drives me nuts.
I am sure that is some kind of disorder.
I also flinch super easy where I don't even notice I flinch. It's a gag amongst friends.
A friend's Dr. after "testing" put her kid on ADD meds in hopes it would improve his grades. She said to me, "if he had cancer, would we not treat it?"
I thought, he spent a whole day pulling an old car engine apart and rebuilding it over a weekend. He seems able to concentrate for long periods. I don't think he has ADD. He's just bored by school (and I don't blame him). I say nothing of course.
There are days when a post like this is the most rational and reasonable thing I encounter. Well said Ann. It is staggering the amount of nonsense that passes for parenting these days.
Leave the kids alone and let them play...It is the parent that is craving the stimulation... not the kid.
Helpful context for Althouse:
this
Embarrassed my sister when I saw Blue Man Group with her because it was so loud I was miserable...knew to avoid the show STOMP after that...
Catherine, one component of ADHD is hyperfocus. If your friend's son didn't register other stimuli (like an alarm going off, or his mom telling him to clean his project up and go to bed) while he was taking apart that engine, that may actually be a symptom. In fact, one of the tests they do now challenges kids to listen for an alarm while playing a video game. It's a badly- named disorder; should be called Attention Regulation Disorder.
I think there are a lot of parents who COULD get their kids diagnosed with something. The thing is, SHOULD you? If they're improving as they grow and tending towards functional, a diagnosis may be more of a burden than a help.
(Though, as homeschoolers, we have the time to let kids grow out of the weirder quirks and into themselves, because were not going to flunk a kid for 'squirms when clothes are uncomfortable' or 'can't stand noise.'
I must have a disorder because I startle easy
Resist the temptation to label. You are a normal person -- normal is a very large spectrum.
Maybe I have a disorder because I don't like assigning labels to people.
Humbly submitted for your perusal:
http://www.ego-vero.net/main/?p=1034
what's the advantage of "testing" and "labelling"?
Depending on circumstances, potentially a lot. My ADHD son takes a daily pill -- the minimum dose that seems to be effective and not on weekends or in the summer. It's made the difference between getting work done at school and coming home with a backpack full of homework that the other kids got done during school.
(And his diagnosis was not due to a teacher complaining that he was disruptive -- back in Kindergarten and 1st grade, he sat quietly in his seat, but just spaced out, in a manner that made us worry at first that there was something neurological going on.)
My older, sensory-impaired, autism-ish son has an official autism diagnosis at school now, although he doesn't meet the criteria for the DSM (mostly, he doesn't have any peculiar interest about which he obsesses). He has been receiving "pragmatic" speech therapy on a weekly basis at school (which is more of a social skills instruction, but also help with the stutter which comes and goes), and awareness of his other coping difficulties (changes in routine have brought on tears, at best, anger at worst, though he doesn't act out as badly as a kid further on "the spectrum" might) have helped his teachers develop strategies for days when he has trouble.
Next year he starts high school, and will be taking a special class tailored for mild autism kids, with social skills and coping skills and the like, as well as some accommodations in his regular classes.
Some overreact, recoiling from loud noises or refusing to wear itchy clothes.
I refuse to wear itchy clothes too. If we keep working at it, maybe we can come up with a disorder for everyone.
Most of you don't know what you are talking about. Of course, until I had a child who was fine, then began to unwire neurologically, I thought I was a fine parent, too. As my son got worse I began to feel like a failure.
Now I know that when development happens as it should, it is effortless. When it doesn't, it is a train wreck. Children don't develop successfully because you are a good parent or particularly laid back so that tags don't bother your child. It means that you are damned lucky. Count your blessings.
It changed my life. I was a Systems Analyst studying Computer Science, but my son started deteriorating and I started to look for answers. Computer Science went out the window. I started studying brains. When I started, I didn't know anyone with abnormal children. Now most of my clients are children with similar difficulties.
We are manufacturing these children by vaccinating the brains out of them. One of my autistic clients has had 58 individual doses of toxins given to her, before her age of 6. She was fine until the had 7 vaccines on at her 12-month Well Baby checkup. That's when she started to change. This is insane. When I first learned about autism, it was so strange that a child psychologist wrote a book about THE autistic child in her practice. The natural occurrence of autism was about 1 in 300,000 births, when it was first named. It dropped to more like 1 in 3000 when my child started having problems, and it's now 1 in 80 or so. It is not because of better diagnostic techniques. You can pick a kid like my son out in a crowded airport. It is because it is new, and we are doing t his to our children.
So, don't give me the "helicopter parent" bat crap. It's not because I don't have six children. It's because my son's perfect brain was damaged by vaccines, twice, before I understood what was happening, and the coup de grace happened when he fell and landed on his teeth. That was his third strike, and his future was taken away from him. He is 27 now, and still lives at home because he cannot take care of himself.
No one wants this. It's not because our precious little hot-house orchids need special diagnoses to make us feel complete. I wanted him to be an engineer or mathematician, which is what he started out to be. I wanted him to move away from home, be self-sufficient, marry, and have a family. But I will not get that. Now he jumps up and down in front of the mirror all the time.
"Child Experts" frequently are not.
I thought, he spent a whole day pulling an old car engine apart and rebuilding it over a weekend. He seems able to concentrate for long periods. I don't think he has ADD. He's just bored by school (and I don't blame him). I say nothing of course.
You need to tell her that, or you are part of the problem.
Funny how we didn't need to medicate kids before the 60s.
MathMom, I am not denying your son's difficulties, but no credible scientific study has indicated any link between vaccines and autism -- and the belief that too many people hold that there is a connection, is causing the resurgence of diseases once thought conquered in America.
There are, of course, kids who do need the meds. I get that. But I think there is an overmedication s issue. My step son was recommended for meds when he was 5 by his teahcer. This teacher had no children of her own.
My wife told the teacher, "No, he is very intelligent, he is a boy and he is bored in your class. If you try to medicate my son, I will get you fired."
She also had him moved to a teacher who had boys of her own. The new teacher "got" him right away and he no problems after that.
While there is a real need for certain kids, far too many are on meds with no real reason I think. There is far too much trying to turn every sign of individual difference in development into a "disorder", especially in children.
Jane, you are kind. Thank you for your nice way of disagreeing with me.
I watched the damage happen, but didn't understand it. It was the pediatrician's nurse who told me never to vaccinate him against pertussis again, because of the likelihood of brain damage if I vaccinated him again. Back then it was assumed that you could handle one bad reaction and the second one would cripple or kill. I didn't understand that I had seen the first one after his shots at 6 weeks. So by the time I learned about this, he had already had two bad reactions.
A woman who became my friend wrote a book based on her experiences as a speech-language pathologist from 1975-2005. She writes about the dramatic changes in the needs of children brought to her for help, and how there weren't even classifications of ADHD and ADD when she did her undergrad work. Her conclusions are worth evaluating.
Something has changed, causing a serious rise in developmental problems. There is no corresponding increase in Down Syndrome or MR. Every possible path is researched and theories are floated, but the only graphs that match the rise of autism and Sensory Integrative Dysfunction (my son's diagnosis in 1995 or so, it's not a Disease of the Week), and Asperger's etc., are those which chart the increasingly compressed and heavy vaccination schedule.
I suggest to my clients, and anyone else who wants to listen, that if you want to vaccinate your children, read first so that when you sign the consent form, you know full well what you are signing. Read books written by medical doctors who are awakening to the problems caused by vaccination. And, as a way to identify problems if they occur, vaccinate with only one toxin at a time. This will take effort, but you can't fix brains after they have been ruined by vaccination.
Did you know that there is at least one MD who has a practice where he does not vaccinate unless you insist? He also practices home birth to avoid that first jab in the hospital (I can't say I'm a fan of home birth, personally, YMMV). He has over 30,000 patients over the years, and almost zero ADHD, ADD, autism and diabetes(!). It is impossible to find 30,000 people in one place in America these days with no autism. I don't know if you could find 100 randomly selected people without a single case of ADHD.
I'm sorry, Jane. You got here too late to convince me that there is no link.
People used to believe the world was flat, too, but it eventually became obvious that it was not.
One more comment, Jane - do you think the high numbers of illegals crossing our borders, with virulent infections, or non-vaccinated home-schooled kids, would be the more likely source of increases in infectious diseases in the US?
Intelligent people marrying intelligent people for more than a generation or two are going to have a lot of autistic children.
There's a reason we aren't all Alpha Double Plus.
Math Mom - there is no link to vaccine. There is a schedule because of the science tells us when people are at risk. It's not put together arbitrarily. There are fewer kids with Down's Syndrome because of sonograms followed by abortions. There is a rise in Autism because it is recognized and diagnosed rather than saying, "he's slow" or "he's anti-social and a loner" or those with serious Autism would have been called "retarded." Period. Now we have a lot less people that are "mentally retarded," but a lot more people with Autism. Also, we now have a spectrum that labels a lot of kids who have issues (like they prefer to spend hours with Lincoln Logs than socialize or don't really speak until they have to), but may not have autism.
Read the Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin.
Madison Man - that was my point. I don't think I have a label and need constant soothing environments because I startle. I think it's one thing to be sensitive to the fact that your kid gets upset by loud noises, but avoiding them doesn't help.
ACM - why do I need to label my friend's son with hyper-focus now? He is just mechanical and loves to learn that way. Sitting in a classroom is boring to him and listening to someone blather is boring.
Blows my mind...he doesn't fit the ADHD label, so let's find another diagnosis for him...
You know, with all of this labeling and telling a kid you have this or that, you aren't preventing him from becoming who he or she is meant to be. I had stages in my development where I was really outgoing (before 12) and really introverted (12-18) and if someone labeled me, I wonder what that would have done.
Catherine, you don't need to label your friends son with anything. And yet, here you are, labeling him as "not ADHD, just a mechanical learner" even though people who know him better, like his doctor and his parents, disagree.
You don't seem to know much about the disorder, so I tried to explain one component of it (which is absolutely fascinating to watch---my brother literally buzzes when he gets into hyper focus) but you're entitled to remain ignorant if you'd prefer.
Really, though, common sense tells you that it takes an unusual amount of focus for a child under 12 or even 16 to disassemble and rebuild an engine in two days. Does it really seem unlikely to you that his frontal lobe regulates dopamine (which controls motivation and attention) differently from most others'? Because that's all an ADHD diagnosis tells you.
Catherine -
Math Mom - there is no link to vaccine.
Thank you for your opinion and your book recommendation. I will read your book, as soon as time permits, because if I am wrong I want to know it and adjust.
Will you read Dissolving Illusions by Suzanne Humphries, MD? We can compare notes when we both finish.
CatherineM -
I have ordered the book you suggested. Got it used for a pittance on Amazon.
Here is a link to Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History in case you want to learn something new, too.
Might want to look at some of the graphs, produced from statistics kept by the government regarding infectious disease. Here, just for fun, is a graph showing mortality from measles from 1900-1988. Note that deaths per 100,000 from measles were almost at zero when the vaccine was introduced.
Way weird, eh? Vaccines didn't stop measles. Improved nutrition and proper handling of sewage did.
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