To think no one was allergic to nuts in the 1970's or kids had that ADHT or whatever it is

[ipodmama]

I don,t remember anyone with these 'problems' , I only remember the odd smelly kid?

I was just curious as I've heard of people getting carers allowance etc for this condition.

When a teacher pointed certain things out to me I didn't want to believe it tbh so ignored it, although looking back I know DD behaved differently to most children her age.

I might have taken more notice if I knew there was help.

It was when she was about 6 that a teacher said she had been on a course about conditions in children and she has observed certain behaviours in DD. I asked for an example and she said she doesn't seem to take the lead from other children and doesn't realise that instructions are directed at her. Does anyone know what she was hinting at? It's all in the past know as DD is 16.

Oh, well, thought I might piss a few more of you off ... As a young child, I had an unusually high IQ. I was stuck in a corner with another, similarly inconvenient, girl. The teacher gave us workbooks meant for older children, griped about having to do extra marking for us, refused to speak to us, ridiculed us and wouldn't let us go to the toilet. Added to which, the other girl & I loathed each other, so we were both lonely and miserable. After two years of that, I carefully under-achieved in school (and uni).

There you go, parents of gifted children! Time for you to vent, as well

Kids with nut allergies died. Kids with ADHD were labelled as thick/retarded/disruptive and largely ignored by the system.

There were no hugely overweight children in the 1970's. Plenty of slightly chubby kids, but nothing like the sizes seen nowadays.

Original post is very, very funny. Especially quote marks around the word 'problems'.

Golden comedy. very inflammatory.

Had a read about DLA and Carers Allowance, crikey, looks like I might have missed out on a lot of help in the past .

abouteve
I would be sanguine
Ds2 is very very severely autistic but he only very recently qualified for top rate DLA and still does not get full mobility allowance.
A diagnosis of ADHD may not mean that a benefit is relevent.
The child has to need significant levels of help in various areas which are substantially different from the support and average child ofthe same age would need.
And you need the patience of a saint and several free days to fill in the form...

You don't get carers allowance unless your child qualifies for DLA

babybarrister - it probably depends on where you live. We have six. I am thinking of reducing it to four.

Pagwatch, you so deserve all the extra help you can get for DS. I do wonder how a diagnosis of ADHD would merit the allowances and what the extra money would be needed for.

I suppose in our case, if I had followed it through, might have meant that I, as a single parent, could have worked a little less and been there after school rather than have DD picked up by CM's/grandparents which would have added more structure. Other than that I cannot see why it would have been needed compared to other NT children.

Hey Abouteve
DLA itself is actually for the persom with the disability. It is intended to allow then to lead as usual a life as is possible.

I could tell you how I used it with DS2 but that would not be terribly relevent I guess....but will be happy to if you like
Maybe some parents of children with ADHD could identify what additional support they were able to access.

Thanks Pagwatch, I have very limited knowledge of allowances as you can tell. I often think what if when I read these threads. I still wonder what exactly the teacher was trying to tell me. It's 10 years ago now so irrelevant.

I somehow muddled through with DD anyway. She calmed down as she got older but I can remember being exhausted when she was little as she was constantly on the go. Guess it was a sign of something and I hope I didn't let her down by choosing to ignore it all.

She started doing well in school as a late developer, and although she seemed quite different to her peers as a younger teen she is fitting in better now so hopefully no harm done.

I think for those people with ADHD I kjnow, their DLA is used to buy therapies (eg BIBIC0, special diets, maybe a tutor to help catch up on school work, perhaps some respite for the aprents (who would almost certainly not qualify for social services support).

pretty reasonable IMO.

The, IMO very good, thing about DLA is that it doesn't really ask about diagnosis in any big way: ADHD, ASD or CP they want to look at how it affects the child rather than what the official titles are.

Which is very right- exactly what needs to be assessed. With some obvious exceptions, diagnostic titles usuallt cover such wide ranges of presentation that a benefits system that paid out on naming would be completely unfair.

I used some of ds1's DLA this week to replace all his uniform: someone might think 'but we all have to do that..' but no., I have to buy coats / bags etc maybe three or four times a term as he rips them and loses them for DX related reasons. We get through shoes at a pair a fortnight. I've also bought beads as a session making jewellery in his room calms him down immensely. And tehre's special diets too, and a trip to somewhere we can all access with fences and security becuase we can't really use the aprk ( last time we went ds1 found an abandoned open muddy bottle of drink and started to drink it; he's ten not three and the park is full of rubbish like that )

DS1 doesn't have ADHD but I guess that someone with an ADHD dx would spend their allowance fairly similarly? A portion also goes to a CM so I can have a bath or catch up on missed sleep two mornings a week whislt ds4 (the cheapest to pay someone to care for) is cared for.

'Rather worrying was the fact that someone working within the ss framework suggested how I could call in a social worker after my husband died to 'assist' me in writing a few letters about my sons 'special needs' to 'help' me get him into the local school I wanted. Surely this cannot be an isolated case of 'labelling' ?

Social services can't label a child as having a dx or anything you mentioned, they simply cannot. paediatriciians and psychiatirts, psychologists for a few conditions. Specialist neurologists and others with medical specialisims for others.

They can advise on ways to increase the support available to a family with issues (eg bereavement) but usually when they do this it's mre about finding someone else to take the burden as their caseload is exploding.

And some might try it: before ds3 was diagnosoed a SW turned up toa ssess and said as she had an MA in ASD she could tell me DS3 clearly did not have ASD. He does, needs an SNU place and won't be independent, and I am doing teh same MA and can assure am not qualified to diagnose. As in anybody indeed unless they use proper diagnopstic processes- ADOD, 3di, DISCO, ADI-R...whatever their PCT works with and trains on.

check out "Toxic Childhood - how modern living is damaging our kids" by Sue Palmer. She charts the rise in such problems and the massive changes in how we bring our kids up and the impact that has on their brain development. A very easy, inspireing read with upbeat 'what you can do about it' summaries too. Issues include forward facing prams which mean we don't talk to our babies much (or car seats in the back of the car, TV as babysitter and the negative impact on early brain development, how we don't exercise our kids anymore or allow them the freedom to walk to school alone etc etc. Can't recommend this book highly enough. Real food for thought.

When I was a child I was a lazy waste of space. Who had cooked their goose. Due to my now diagnosed dyslexia. I had cooked my goose because I had displayed, through my language, that I was not as thick as I made out.

My friend was just plain backward. Not sure what she would be diagnosed with today.

Thank God todays DC don't suffer this cruelty and ignorance. (at least not often)

Um. I think children have more nut allergies now than they used to because Cow 'n' Gate and others went through a phase of putting peanut oil in their baby formula. These babies are the ones with the nut allergy.

Obviously now peanut oil is no longer used in formula one might expect the incidence of nut allergies in babies to be on the decrease. Don't know if this has been measured.

So if you are asking was it unreasonable for Cow 'n' Gate and others to use peanut oil like this, then the answer is yes. Otherwise, not sure what your point is.

There has been an increase in allergies since the advice on weaning changed to 6 months and there is now a study to see if earlier weaning makes a difference EAT study

"Um. I think children have more nut allergies now than they used to because Cow 'n' Gate and others went through a phase of putting peanut oil in their baby formula. These babies are the ones with the nut allergy. "

My nephew was on the LEAP study and was in the peanut avoidance group. He was EBF until 6 months. He has a peanut allergy - the people from the study told my SIL that so far it doesn't look like early exposure (from 6 months) to peanuts makes much difference, hence the EAT study.

The 6 month weaning advice is quite recent (around time DD aged 6 was being weaned) and the rise in allergies had already happened by then.

I've read toxic childhgood and it's good, inteligent and interesting but wrt to disorders such as adhd / asd she's doing well if she has definite evidence of a link as I can assure you it's the subject of very much academic debate!

Many theories as to the perceived rise, quite of few of which credible ones involve no actual rise

it's asd rather than the disorders mentioned but we can learn a lot from what research ahs been dopne already I think, and they did a retrospective screening of people in provision etc and found no actual change in prevalence rates, just a change in reecording and labelling.

I had lots of food allergies in the 1970s. My parents just muddled through without medical support so there would be no record to inform any statistical analysis - just a few hospital admissions for asthma attacks.

Am very glad for ds' sake that these things are better understood today.

I remember coming home in the early eighties after being out for longer than expected due to unforeseen circumstances etc etc. My lovely neighbour had been watching my two year old son for what was supposed to be fifteen minutes or so and had turned into hours. 'Oh he's fine' - she said - 'no problem, Ive just given him some tea - he wolfed it down - a couple of scrambled eggs'!Yeah you ve guessed it - my son had an egg allergy - and we watched in horror as his temperature soared and he became covered in hives and struggled to breathe.
From the tone of OP sounds like he just needed a good thrashing and be told to stop acting up. Thankfully we took a more tolerant course of action and called an ambulance and sorry to report to you he made a full recovery - so one more annoying kid with an allergy walking round eh ! Get a life.