Do many people think that ADHD is not real?

[Ilovecranberries]

Was having remote drinks with a friend and his wife yesterday. She's a secondary school teacher in a quite "rough" school (not in the UK). I was quite surprised when, discussing something quite abstract about how different people think and react differently, she had said quite breezily that the majority of teachers she knows "don't believe" in the existence of ADHD.
Incidentally, one of my children is currently being assessed for it, but it is not news that I had shared socially outside of my immediate family. I wasn't offended, but I wonder if it is actually a widespread view behind the closed doors?

I teach secondary and I completely agree ADHD feel. I’ve taught many children with it. I have developed several strategies to help children with it as teaching them often requires total differentiation, but importantly not ‘dumbing down’ as they are often bright.

I have however taught several children who are just little shits, whose parents have been slack for 10 years, and by year 8, suddenly they believe their child has ADHD. No, they’ve just lived their life with no consequences and now they are going through puberty you’re reaping the rewards of your parenting.

@Estan

In my experience "bad behaviour" is what presents when a child's mental health has been neglected at school (not at home). There are several comments on this thread accusing parents of not proving the right atmosphere at home. But if you read up in the SEND communities (e.g. special needs jungle) it is the schools and the LAs who are failing these kids.

This is ridiculous. A child’s mental heath has been neglected? I don’t know where you DC go to school but I know my DS’s school doesn’t neglect any child’s mental health. Which has caused some interesting questions in Covid-19 times as touch and contact are very important for developing minds.

As an ex teacher children’s mental health needs are at the forefront of schools minds however, the same can’t be said for teachers. Just because the SEND community say something doesn’t make it so. Sadly what parents need to understand is in a classroom of 30 it isn’t possible to cater for all 30 children, I’d love it to be possible however I have had individual plans for two children in the same class that were opposing, think one likes a buff background on slides and the other likes pink but also questioning styles. I’ve had long conversations with parents who say their child cannot do homework due to their SEN and what can I do to make up for this. Every parent advocates for their child and isn’t thinking about the bigger picture. The fact there are between 15 and 29 other children in the class.

My son has ADHD. Part of the debate about whether ADHD exists in professional circles is because of differing ontological views. Its a philosophical divide. It's clearly not an thing' in the same way as a lamp, a dog or a pebble are a thing. There are no physical tests ( brain scans, blood tests) that can predict whether a child shows the cluster of symptoms associated with ADHD and no clear causal pathway. It's strongly associated with genetics, but sometimes also environmental factors ( eg trauma). At best, at present it's a description of a cluster of behaviours, mostly associated with executive skills that we know to be ameliorated by certain drugs and (possibly to a lesser extent, much to the chagrin of my esteemed colleagues) therapeutic and educational interventions. My son shows pretty classic ADHD behaviours and so it's useful for us to think in those terms in order to understand how to help him, but I do understand ( If not agree) with the philosophical perspective of professionals ( psychologists and psychiatrists, not just ignorant randomers) who argue it's not helpful to determine it as 'a thing'.

This is the correct answer.

I thought brain scans absolutely DO prove it (but aren't diagnostic) - see scan picture earlier on the thread.

How can a brain scan prove what symptoms you have and the impact that has on your functioning?

You can't 'self-diagnose' for the purpose of school and SEN support though, there is a lengthy pathway ...
Are you talking about SEN diagnosis in school (which the OP refers to) and support given around behaviour difficulties or is this 'self-diagnosing' something you have encountered in another context?

I've said I agree ADHD exists. I know there is a proper pathway for diagnosis.

I perhaps didn't make it clear, but I think some of the reasons why some people in society doubt ADHD exists or think it's exaggerated is because some people are quick to self-diagnose online (along with a handful of other conditions), or they're very selective with when they claim it. As a result, it can lead to people doubting whether the condition exists.

For example, my school has always had great support for children with ADHD. We've also got additional staff employed in our SEN support base trying to push through assessments, though the system can be complicated and that's a different story. When fidget spinners were a trend, dozens of students suddenly presented with notes from home saying their DC should be allowed their fidget spinners, it helps them concentrate, their DC probably has ADHD etc.The parent never mentioned ADHD before, and when school held the rules and the trend died, the parents never mentioned ADHD again.

Every time people do things like that it's an insult to those children who do need additional support for ADHD to have people grabbing the label when it suits.

The ones who say "it didn't exist in my day" wind me up the most. It did exist, but people just suffered and got labelled as bad instead.
This winds me up.
I bet they never say 'nobody had X cancer in my day... Nobody had COPD in my day...' although one of my relatives thinks I can't be asthmatic because I'm healthy and describes my asthma attacks as 'getting a bit out of breath'.

My son was diagnosed with ADHD. My ex husband when I look at him and his behaviour clearly has ADD. H was punished repeatedly as a child and stigmatised and told he was a bad child. It had horrendous consequences for him as an adult. With support I hope my son can live fairly normally, and understand his diagnosis.

Soverylost makes a good point about schools and trying to please everyone, sometimes it's just not possible. Inclusion as a concept is a worthy goal but until CAMHS, Social Workers and schools are properly funded to deal with SEND children then not much will change. I've never come across an teacher saying they don't believe ADHD exists, but I have come across plenty that say a lot of behaviour is choice. I'll give you a recent example. Year 4 boy comes in, soon as his settling time has finished turns to me and says "If you ask me to do any work today I'll punch you in the face." Now i'm used to this boy, my plan is to have a chat, find out what's wrong, check he's had a good night sleep and some breakfast and to present him with his tasks when I think he's ready. Problem is in a mainstream primary there are rules about threatening staff. Teacher hears the threat, explains to the child that it's not acceptable and that they will be in the thinking room at break time. This escalates the situation and ends with me having to positively handle him out of the room.
Now I know the threat is merely learnt behaviour because the child knows it will delay him having to start work but I can work with that. The teacher sees it as a concious choice that needs to have concequences because he has to apply behaviour policy consistently for the 30 children in there.
This boy hates calming music but it benefits a number of children in the class and often in mainstream it comes down to whose reasonable adjustment trumps anothers' diametrically opposed reasonable adjustment.

This is ridiculous. A child’s mental heath has been neglected? I don’t know where you DC go to school but I know my DS’s school doesn’t neglect any child’s mental health.

Sadly, I could name a few including a special school who really should have known better. If you can not recognise when a child is stressed & force them into situations where they can not cope you will damage their mental health. If you punish for something a child has no control over then you will damage their mental health.

SoVeryLost - its not a parents job to think of a bigger picture. If a parent doesnt advocate for their own child then who will?
I absolutely appreciate the challenges - but just because it is difficult, challenging or impossible to mitigate it doesnt mean it isnt the cause of the issue. My child with ASD had a number of huge meltdowns when the child with ADHD just couldnt stop themselves poking him with a board pen during carpet time! That it was challenging for the teacher i dont dispute. But for the teacher to suggest the issue was i needed more boundaries at home as the cause of a meltdown was offensive.

My DD is in a three form entry school so I know school have the benefit of size to help but both she and another child in her year both have 1-1s and clashing needs. They will never ever be placed in the same class. Nor would DD be placed in class with the boy who does nothing but antagonize her. She is removed during things we know are triggering and removed when she starts escalating to calm down.

I absolutely will fight with only my child in mind. It's up to school to sort the bigger picture but these kids have such little voices that they absolutely need their parents to advocate for them and purely for them.

I'm in an appeal situation for my son's EHCP.
The LA has consulted a number of mainstream schools (we've named an independent special) and of the responses back they've all said they're too full and also have pupils with significant high and clashing needs already. 9 so far.

The LA have engaged a barrister and we're self-repping. It's a horrible situation we're probably going to lose. We will be faced with the choice of "elective" home ed or a school the LA has decided can accommodate him, but really do not actually want him.

It's an incredibly stressful situation

@CalledYouLastNightFromWaitrose
Remember to focus on why the mainstream suggestions wont provide an adequete education. (If that is your belief)

Thanks wagtail unfortunately there's lot against us. And that's not unique to us, there's plenty of kids barely being contained in a school too under-resourced and over-capacity to properly support them. (I'm not going to go there on what kinds of things have happened to DS3 but he's terrified of school now). At least that seems to be the case in my area. So many out of school or on very reduced long term timetables. 20 mins a day was the lowest I've heard!

@CalledYouLastNightFromWaitrose I think I might recognise you from some EHCP groups on Facebook - been chatting to someone there about a similar situation. Keep going! x

I do find it a bit suspicious that the symptoms for ADHD are mostly the same as for food intolerances. You treat ADHD with expensive medicine and food intolerances with a different diet. The pharmaceutical industry does not earn money by people changing their diet so they have an interest in maintaining the focus on ADHD.

A son of my parents friends was practically climbing the walls when growing up. Then his mum found out she had some food intolerances and as she was the cook, the entire family got on her new diet. After a week he became calm. I had some mild food intolerances for some years and experienced the same thing to s lesser extent. I just had some concentration problems thst vanished with the new diet.

@Vodkacranberryplease

Bertie if you are in the UK you absolutely are allowed to! Medication will change your driving completely! And no need to declare it.

Where's your devil-may-care adhd ness? I hope you're not one of these people faking it to get fucking speed which isn't a patch on coke and readily available the medication?

Not in the UK sadly! But it doesn't matter :) At my next medication review in 6 months I'm hoping to be in a better financial position and I will clarify with my doctor about driving. They are supposedly quite strict about medication here and the public transport is good so there may be a sense that if you can't drive it's no big deal.

@JollyRogerandDiane

I thought brain scans absolutely DO prove it (but aren't diagnostic) - see scan picture earlier on the thread.

The picture isn't quite useful in itself because it's totally out of context and doesn't explain anything - but essentially yes, if you look at a whole load of brain scans of people with ADHD, compared to brain scans of people without ADHD, when the scans are averaged within each group and then the averages are compared, you see clear differences.

The problem is that the differences exist on a bell curve and there is a huge overlap. So a brain scan on a single person doesn't tell you anything about whether or not they have ADHD, because there is a huge area where the same scan could be representative of an ADHD brain or a neurotypical brain.

It's like height - you say somebody's height and you can't use that to definitely say they're male or they're female, but we know that on average men are taller than women. It's just that for an individual you couldn't extrapolate their height and determine their sex without knowing anything else about them.

“The pharmaceutical industry does not earn money by people changing their diet so they have an interest in maintaining the focus on ADHD.“

A huge amount of parents try diet first, contrary to what a lot of people think, parents are usually fairly reluctant to medicate their children after diagnosis.

From my experience i think opinions are split to be honest. My 9 year old ds has been diagnosed with autism and is now being assessed for adhd also. At his previous school the head teacher, who was also the school Senco at the time, actually dared say to my face that my ds isn't like the other autistic children at the school and as for adhd she just thinks he hasn't been taught self control. Needless to say it took a lot of self control on my part not to scream at her and knock some sense into her. Autism and adhd runs in my family, mostly in boys/men yet not one of my family members present in the same way despite having the same diagnoses. I've never had my parenting blamed directly for my ds's "behaviours" but one medical professional was going in that direction until she came to realise that i had another child who has no issues what so ever, has never had any problems at school etc and we have never been involved with social services as a family etc. My mental health years back, when i first began to notice signs of autism/adhd in my son, was absolutely fine. I put boundaries in place with my youngest the same as i did whith my eldest, and when i realised those strategies didn't work i did some research, enrolled myself on parenting courses and spoke to other parents to get advice etc. So back then no decent professional would have dreamt of blaming my ds's issues on me or my dh for that matter. Fast forward a few years and i'm still doing everything with my ds that i did years back but my mental health isn't what is was. Both me and my dh have a good relationship, we back each other up when it comes to our ds, are on the same page etc, but it's been difficult. We get zero support from professionals and the same when it comes to our families. Our ds doesn't come from "one of those" families that SOME teachers assume all kids with adhd come from. He's at a specialist school were there are lots of kids from those kind of families, which has impacted on him and he has started to act out a lot more and is copying behaviours, but me and his dad go to great lengths to support him. But anyway, back to teachers and how they see things. Some teachers are great, fully believe in SEN, as opposed to parent blaming, and will move mountains to try and support kids with adhd. But there are also those teachers out there who do not believe in adhd. They aren't interested in supporting kids with sen and will only do so reluctantly, because it is, sadly for them, a part of their role. I don't know about other parents of kids with autism/adhd but me and my dh are now way past caring what other people think, and don't care whether or not they believe. We know in our heart of hearts that our ds has both conditions and that it is no ones fault. To us that is all that matters.

I'm sick to death of this neurological disability not being recognised or respected by the public. Try living with it 24/7. Battling to get support at school/ medical appointments/ social struggles etc. Those people who do not recognise it will get a wake up call if/when it appears on their own family and you can bet of that happened they would be suddenly be supportive !

@SinkGirl ha! Yes we have. You can expect an updated panic post on Friday after I get the big reveal on the remaining school consults

A son of my parents friends was practically climbing the walls when growing up. Then his mum found out she had some food intolerances and as she was the cook, the entire family got on her new diet. After a week he became calm.

Truly magic.

SEND children up and down the country are bing denied their legal entitlement to education. This is a fact, not some silly piece of fiction being promoted by parents who don't know what they are talking about. Your children's school may be lovely. Lucky you. My son's new school is lovely. We are lucky too. And I am eternally grateful to them for rescuing my son's education before the crash it was headed for. SEND children do have rights to reasonable adjustments. I get that the classes are too big, and the funding is desperately insufficient. But that does not alter a SEND child's right to an education. How the school/LA pay for the provision to meet those needs which result from his/her disabilities is not the SEND child's problem. And a failure for the school to provide reasonable adjustments is Disability Discrimination. Sadly, these unlawful practices are common place up and down the country. And the losers are of course the children.

Sorry, my above post was intended for @SoVeryLost