December 8th, 2005 | 
Author: If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you’ve realized I’ve have issues with public schools and their rampant use of ADD/ADHD as an excuse to drug an ever increasing number of children into submission. In fact, I have a catergory on this blog dedicated to the subject.
To be honest, I only had a passing notice of ADHD in the news. That changed early last year when the boys school started complaining about his ‘inability to stay on task’, ‘inattentiveness in class’ and of course, hyperactivity. One teacher came right out and stated ‘he obviously has ADD and would benefit from medication’. A few days later I wrote this entry. Although I did not specifically mention the boy, you’ll see that I had decided that I would not pump my son full of amphetamines just to keep him from acting like a 7 year old boy.
Yes, I was worried that I was just being a blind parent thinking ‘there can’t possibly be anything wrong with my kid’. So I did a lot of reading. I watched the way my son, and other boys his age, acted. I talked to two different Pediatricians. I determined my kids teachers were full of shit.
Once the teachers realized I wasn’t buying into the ADD/ADHD hype, they changed tactics. They wanted to hold him back in first grade. Once again they kept trying to scare us. ‘He’s behind’. ‘He lacks basic concepts’. ‘He doesn’t socialize properly’. Here they almost got me. His grades were crap. He told me he didn’t like school because it was too hard and they spent too much time trying to learn instead of playing. This also wasn’t the first time they pushed us to hold him back.
There was one teacher (reading) who took the boys side and said he didn’t need to be held back. She suggested that it wasn’t that the boy found the material too hard, she thought he just found it boring. After talking to this teacher for a while, we figured the hell with it… we’ll push him ahead. If we screw him up too much, there’s always summer school and tutors.
The boy brought home his first report card a couple weeks ago. Three B’s and two A’s. We finished conferences with his teachers within the past two weeks. Not a mention of ADD or other problems. One of the A’s was his reading teacher who was just beaming when we came to the conference. ‘I’m so glad you didn’t hold him back’. Three B’s and two A’s. Damn, thats better than any report card I ever brought home. And this is the newer grading scale (i.e.: 85-93% = B, 94-100% = A). If they used the scale I had in school he would have had one B and four A’s. Good thing I didn’t have to deal with the newer grade scale when I was in school or I would have really been screwed.
Sometimes you’ve just got to go with your gut….
Glad to hear the good news on the report card. I would have PAID to see the look on those teachers faces when your son brought home such a good report card and you proved them wrong! I can only imagine how they felt when they were pushing to medicate your son and/or hold him back when that wasn’t what he needed at all.
Maybe they just don’t feel like doing their jobs? So of course medicating a child or holding him back for a year would seem like the easier thing to do. Instead of working with a child.
I once read, or heard from my pastor, about children’s behavior. Parents get mad when you’re sitting in church and you have some kids that just won’t sit still. Well, don’t blaim the kid… it’s in every childs behavior at that point in life to be restless. They have tons of energy and they NEED to excercise that energy. They can’t just be told not to be that way. It’s natural.
You did the right thing- good for you and good for your son. I don’t envy teachers for the task that they have and I completely understand the temptation to put the kids into chemical restraints- but to actually do it? Uh-uh.
First we tell the kids that we need to take physical education out of the schools because we don’t have the budget for it. Then all the parents have to drive their little princes and princesses to school because there is a one in a billion change that Jeffrey Dahlmer is lurking in the bushes. Then we remove all the sidewalks because we certainly wouldn’t want to encourage anyone to actually walk anywhere, after all this is the US of A where anybody worth their salt drives an SUV.
After we get done eliminating child exercise completely that we expect these poor kids to sit still for 180 days a year in a very boring classroom and learn some incredibly boring subjects through the monotonous drone of a control-freak grade school teacher.
This country has enough pity not to do this to the terrorists locked up at Gitmo, yet sees no problems in using this form of torture on our own kids. If you made me endure this daily nightmare I would definitely start running up and down the aisles screaming that I have a bomb in my bag. This is why there is such a huge call for mood altering drugs in the schools.
this holding kids back form kindergarten until they are 6 is bull.! The boys taht can’t sit still are really just bored and not challenged, girsl held back too the same thing in my experieince in the classroom ..I sent three at five all the top of their class the one who was 5.5yrs was never challenged in school, always got a’s with no effort. now that’s not good, success should be earned not easy.. My comments on Ritalin Ihas anyone ever connected the ritalin with the increase in methamphetamine use. they are chemically related that’s scary for america.