pressure from school

Donna, Have they done a full evaluation on your child? Teachers shouldn’t be “diagnosing” anything.
Oftentimes children who have ADD/ADHD have other LDs. Sometimes LDs make a child appear ADD. This is not necessarily BAD, b/c many LD’s if found early enough and remediated can be compensated for. You didn’t say how your child’s grades are, or if she has any problem areas other than the AD(H)D. You also didn’t state your child’s age. All these things are very relevant.

My advice is to

1) IN WRITING request a full evaluation for your child

2) Tell the teacher you won’t put your child on meds until the eval is done and the meeting is held (This might make them work a little faster)

3) BTW, inconsistency is the HALLMARK of LD, so if she is not seeing this everyday, perhaps she is not ADD, but LD and she’s much more interested in how the A/C/heating works than what the teacher’s saying/doing.

Writing problems? Trouble getting started? Could be an receptive/express language problem. Or motor planning. My daughter has it ALL, yet now that we’ve found the problems and addressed them she’s doing well. I’M NOT A PROFESSIONAL, but I am a mom who has learned a tremendous amount about my daughter’s needs and how to get them met.

DON”T CALL the school and request an eval. If it’s not done in writing, it was not done.

Good luck. You’ve come to the right place for information and answers.

I agree with Leah. It is not appropriate for a teacher to diagnose and prescribe medication! You need a neuro-psych assessment that will give you an all-sided view of your daughter’s strengths and challenges.

Where do you live? Let me know if you live in the Washington, DC area and I will refer you to an excellent nutritionist. I also recommend reading Healing ADD by Daniel Amen and going to www.drstordy.com to read about other nutrition/learning issues.

Good luck to you!

Hi Donna,

Leah has given you excellent advice here. Legally, the school MUST give your daughter the full evaluation by a qualified psychologist, and then a team you included must put together an Individual Educational Plan(IEP) for her that should address each and every one of her learning issues, AND what the school will do to assist your daughter’s needs.

My daughter is eight, and does take Adderal 15mgs a day for her ADD characteristics. My daughter herself expressed that she felt the meds. helped her concentrate and her grades and attentiveness did improve while on meds. However, the meds did NOT cure all her problems. We were still getting the same kind of notes you get about her inattentiveness, even while taking the meds. Teachers often assume that the meds. will take away all the problems and sadly many physicians take that same approach as well.

We had the school evaluation done, and then had the local university neuropsychology dept. do a private evaluation of our daughter one year later as well. Interestingly, in one year our daughters IQ was dramatically higher. She still exhibited the ADD, but the evaluator didn’t feel she was learning disabled. I read that ADD can create a maturity gap between age and maturity level, and after seeing our evaluation results I would have to agree. Also, in one year our daughter went from being classified as LD in reading to reading above grade level. She has spent the last year in half hour daily special ed. class, and it made a big difference in her progress.

Still, a word of caution. ADD kids are often socially outcast by their peers, especially if the teacher makes your child a target for negative attention in her classroom. She should call your daughter back to task WITHOUT making her or the class feel she is BAD. Needless to say with an entire room of students to keep on track and schedules to keep, the teachers often loose their patience and positive attitudes. Your child may experience some unneeded pressure and harmful treatment because of her ADD. Just because you get the IEP this year, doesn’t mean they will automatically follow it the next. You will have to watch them closely to make sure each year that the new teacher actually READS the IEP. We were over six months in this year to discover, our classroom teacher was aware of our daughters special needs classification, but had NEVER actually READ the IEP. This is totally unexceptable when this teacher is charged for the better part of a day with educating your special needs child. Because of this and many other troubles with the public school, we have opted out for homeschooling our two children. If it is an option, I highly recommend it, at least for a time. Often in a few years, with time and less negative attention, many of these children’s problems correct themselves. It is something to consider if the option is available to your family. Good Luck and stay involved for your daughter’s well being!

Donna,

My son has a visual motor deficit. He has always looked kind of add but it was inconsistant. His attention was worse in some situations and better in others.

I am still not sure if he has add or not. He was recently diagnosed with a severe ocular motor problem by a developmental optometrist. One of the questions the doctor asked was, “Is he inconsistant in his performance and on test results?”

Well if there is one word I would use for this kid it would be inconsistant. The doctor, (a man with 40 years experience) stated rather matter of factly that the inconsistancies would disappear once his ocular motor problem was dealt with.

I’ll let you all know if he was right.

I’d sit down and talk with the teacher. If find that hard write a note with the following things in it. Be as warm as you can be either when you would speak with her or when you write to her.

Tell her you’re sure it must be very challenging to have the responsibility of so many children in the room and to have your daughter’s special needs making the challenge even the greater one for her. Tell her you’d wish you had the money to put your daughter in a private school just for LD children with auditory processing issues and then she wouldn’t be a problem to her anymore but that you just don’t have that kind of money. (the teacher will look uncomfortable as you say that but no matter - she deserves to be made a little uncomfortable)

Then tell her you’ve spent the last two months reviewing all of the information on ritalin. Tell her you’ve spoken with several doctors about it (fib a little) Tell her their opinion was very divided and inconsistent. Tell her some doctors feel ritalin is a safe drug to give and others feel exactly the opposite. Tell her that you were told that some children develop permanent tics when put on ritalin and that one doctor strongly suggested that your daughter was at particularly high risk for developing ‘ritalin tics’ if put on the medication. (fib a little more)

Print any article off the web on the dangers of ritalin and give it to the teacher that very day. Tell her that - based on the doctors’ conflicting advice that of course you cannot put your daughter on medication now but that since you have a strong sense the teacher feels that ritalin is the way to go for your daughter you will keep this question wide open and keep doing research on it.

Tell the teacher you are going to continue to tirelessly pursue gathering more information on ritalin and you will leave no stone unturned in your search and you’ll keep her informed every step of the way and as you find more articles, both pro and con you will send them to her and together you will get to the best thing to do for your daughter. Thank her again for her many, many notes and her time and wish her a good day.

That approach leaves the teacher with nothing to say and that’s fair cause she’s said already had enough chance to say things in her silly, nagging notes to you.

In the meantime, I’d say that though I would ever support any parent’s wishes for their child, as a parent myself, I did put my own son on Ritalin and it worked wonders for him. This is a important decision each parent makes for themselves and they should be able to make it without nagging pressure from a teacher.

Teachers cannnot diagnose anything….. and frankly most do not understand ADHD and they often mistake developmentally appropriate behavior as ADHD.
You do need to seek an evaluation either by the school or an outside psychologist. Sometimes school psychologists are not trained to diagnose ADHD or do not have the proper tests. I am a graduate student, I have a masters in clinical psych and I am working on my doctorate. Make sure that serveral tests are done for your child. There is a computer test for attention, and forms for you and her teacher to fill out. I commend you for asking for advice and not wanting to medicate your child just because her teacher and school want you to.

have given really good advice. DO get the eval and DO set the positive, proactive tone with the teacher. After all, she has your child several hours per day and you want her working with and for your child not against her. I hate to say this but planning your meeting in the manner Sara suggests is well worth your time-although it may sound a tad slick or devious.

I, too, have walked this mile-poor initial diagnosis/difficult teacher. In our case, our daughter is ADD-inattentive, as well as having a language processing disorder and a visual problem which has been remediated. Our child also had a bad reaction to Ritalin. After 3 years, I still don’t think we really have the best meds figured out and will probaly try Strattera, a non-stimulant med this summer. You are absolutely right to want more information so that you can make an informed decision. This is not a easy call.

If you sense that the teacher is unable to be positive and supportive of your daughter while you investigate the ADHD seek out another classroom. A steady drip, drip, drip of a negative, exasperated, frustrated teacher is very damaging. Is the teacher accomodating the auditory processing issues? I am amazed that the teacher is able to seperate the Ld issues, the auditory issues and the attention issues. More than the rest of us can do!!

I would further suggest if testing indicates ADD/ADHD issues that you seek the advice of a better qualified doctor. Many people on this board use pediatric neurologists, neuropsychologists, etc. Our experience (and we are not alone by a long shot!) has shown that can be difficult to find a doctor with the depth of knowledge of meds and combination of meds. If you hang around these boards awhile, you while see that the right meds for the right kid is a very complex issue.

Good luck-and you are at the right board.