To wonder why it is deemed acceptable to call a diagnosis "labelling"?

[JakeBullet]

This is about a post in another thread (not a thread about a thread) where a poster wrote...

"I also believe that very few children have actual SN and think there's far too much labelling, and some children are just little shits".

As the parent of child who has been "labelled" (with autism, dyspraixa, dyslexia and ADHD) I find this all too prevalent attitude appalling.

My child is not "labelled", he has complex difficulties and challenges which he has to cope with every single day of his life. Just because they are not immediately visible does not mean they are not there.

His difficulties are not made any easier by those who doubt these diagnoses....from relatives to other parents to strangers in the street. None of whom have any medical training you understand....they just "know" it is "labelling" and that these conditions "don't really exist"

"ADHD means naughty child" (for example) just as "dyslexia" means "can't read", autism means "can't talk" and dyspraxia (if they have ever heard of it means "a bit clumsy".

My DS is thriving, he is thriving because in school they DO believe in his diagnoses and they support him.

He is thriving because a paediatrician prescribed medication when he was 8 years old because she was concerned he was not achieving his potential. Three months after starting medication he could finally read.

He is thriving because I meet his needs for sensory issues and support him.

He is thriving because there are still thankfully many who DON'T believe all the crap they read about children being "labelled" and DO understand.

For those of you who DON'T get this ....shame on you. You have much still to learn. Perhaps start with the National Autistic Society and then move outwards to the surrounding conditions.

MrsDV

Do we believe that anywhere in the world there is a society that doesn't label every single one of its members?

It's just that the labels differ:

successful

naughty

lazy

bright

dumb

arrogant

helpful

fucked-up

You cannot choose not to be labelled at all unless you elect to live alone on a desert island.

My dd has had her physical disability diagnosed. It can lead to misunderstandings because people who have come across other people with the same condition may not believe in the severity of her symptoms. But the alternative would be for everybody to accept that it is normal for a 10yo not to be able to walk up the stairs to her maths lesson or to refuse to get out of bed in the morning. That isn't going to happen.

For any society to function, people have to have an idea of what they can ask of the majority. That, unfortunately, carries the result that some people will be viewed as the exception. The alternative would be to expect the same thing of everybody and enforce the same sanctions on everybody: exclude the autistic child who has a meltdown in assembly and fine the parents of the child who cannot attend school during a flare up of pain.

How unutterably tedious. A thread about a thread and because the bun fight wasn't big enough in chat, drag it to Aibu where it will be done to death.

I have been back to the other thread once since posting this one. I said in there that if the comment was intended to be a lighthearted everything on here is put down to SN" then I withdrew my comments. I havent been back to see any "bunfight".

Sadly I hear similar comments from people only too often and I blew up....hence this thread which I shall now let lie.

In fact I will ask MNHQ to pull it...I blew up, I posted, I feel better. Time to let it go.

I'm not sure how your comment helps Theodorus. Surely if you find a thread tedious you just go to a thread you find interesting? Or do you make a habit of butting in on conversations to tell people how boring you find them?

Because we still have non-medically qualified people like Katie Hopkins being allowed to air such an opinion and be taken seriously by her fellow minions idiots .

No Jake let it stand. We can but try and educate.

Perhaps there is a problem that with our system you have to be 'labeled' to get help. Maybe there just isn't a better way of doing it, but essentially they're saying "if XX doesn't qualify then they won't get any help at all".

Since the parents already know there is a genuine problem they are then in the position of hoping that there will be a diagnosis in order to get help. They know it's real already, but they need it to be officially real.

With some conditions there is a real and unmistakable cut off point - you either have it or you don't. With others it is a sliding scale and just ignoring everyone to the left of a line is not helpful.

You can't butt into a public web forum. It is a public website forum not a private club. And I usually do avoid threads that will irritate me but I think this thread is really bad form. As is thinking people need educating by a bunch of strangers of what is essentially a motherly website not New Scientist.

That's the most tedious thing of all

My son has a diagnosis of verbal dyspraxia. Before the diagnosis, his speech therapist was unsure of how to proceed with his therapy. Without the diagnosis, he still would have been given help, but possibly not the most appropiate help.

A friend told me that she didn't want to send her child to speech therapy because she was worried that it would 'label' the child - despite the school telling her that she needed speech therapy! I don't understand how anyone can refuse their child help because of fear of labelling.

When you come down to it, diagnosis is a real medical word and carries more weight - labelling implies that there's a choice, it's not a real disability, it's just a name to stick on some behaviours.

If children are labelled as having ADHD or ASDs instead of diagnosed people can carry on believing that they're something that happens to other people, other parents, other children, because really - deep down - it's much easier to believe that too many children are labelled as having something and that really it's just that some parents don't do as good a job.

Because the alternative is that you have to admit that there are real disabilities that could affect you...and that doesn't sit well with the idea that people with disabilities are other and that's scary, that that otherness could affect you.

At least that's what I think when I'm being generous, it's even bleaker than that when I'm not...

I agree with that....Back, my DS was having real problems and the LEA were just NOT interested...despite the fact that he was crying every time the school wanted him to write. He had a very immature pen grip, very hyper-mobile finger joints, and was scared of certain noises.
I applied several times for a statutory assessment of DS's needs to the LEA only to be refused. I appealed....reused again.

Two months later a paediatrician armed with occupational therapy reports, school reports and the specialist speech and language therapy report saw DS, she spent nearly two hours with him and diagnosed autism and ADHD, she also diagnosed dyspraxia formally from the reports by the OT.

The LEA got her report and then phoned me asking me to apply again for a statutory assessment. It took every ounce of self control not to snarl down the phone that the issues DS had were not changed by his diagnosis.....he had the same issues when I had applied previously.

There is no doubt though that once the diagnosis took place a lot of extra support and planning went into helping DS access the curriculum in school.
He did not get ADHD medication for a further 18 months ....and even then I really did not want him to have it. It was only because of his almost miraculous response to it (within three months he could read) that I have continued to give it.

Thing is that DS had problems right from nursery onwards.....it took until he was 7 before he got a diagnosis but the problems were evident well before then.

To be honest Theo I get fed up with the implication that children are over diagnosed. Some of us deal with the issues on a daily basis...

This is NOT a thread about a thread...it is a thread about a comment made within a thread...I haven't identified that thread either.

FWIW I was enjoying that thread...until I came across that comment. And I WILL tackle comments like that.

As I said in the thread...if I got her meaning wrong then I take it all back.

My mum fought to get my middle sibling diagnosed with dyslexia in the early 90's, only eventually succeeding after paying for tests herself, by which stage he was already about 15 and had started falling behind educationally when moving from independent to state schooling aged around 13. The independent school had taught him as an individual with possible dyslexia, whereas the state school refused to acknowledge it as a concern until it was formally diagnosed, which was such a shame. It was almost as though his education went backwards from the moment he was state main-streamed. After a really positive start with way above average results he left school with less than the 5A-C grade basic GCSEs.

I think it's easier now to get a dyslexia diagnoses in most cases, and that's great progress. There is still more work to be done on early diagnoses though.

I haven't commented on that post. I am not policing anything although if I was some sort of internet parenting forum police officer, I would have suggested m that this thread would only be posted in Aibu to be gaudy, otherwise the sn forum would have been used. Anyway enough time wasted, I don't really care that much so will get back to the tv.

Wow, this is weird. Hiding now.