childrens behaviour - is there such a thing as just a naughty child - why does everything have to be given a medical name?

[beatty]

In society in the UK these days I think that some unacceptable behaviours in children are too quickly given a medical name. Why can't people just say that some children are naughty and need to be taught discipline rather than giving the a disorder or medical name to hide behind which then makes the behaviour more acceptable. "oh well yes the reason he behaved like that is because he suffers with X". "oh well that ok then bring on some treatment". this costs the NHS thousands where just a bit of discipline and time spent with children would do wonders. Other countries in Europe have so many fewer "behavioural problems" than here. Why is that?
I have just seen a programme this morning where children who don't know right from wrong after the age of about 3 years old has now been given a medical name...utter tosh...just parents/guardians that are probably just too lazy to bother or even badly behaved themselves (yes discipline does beginat home).

I do understand about many behavioural problems as I am a teacher and see the genuine ones every day but everything is now being given a name. When will people understand that there are naughty children out there and that's just what they are - is not medical problem!!

And if anyone is really interested in what happened 'in their day', when 'all these so-called medical conditions didn't exist'. I'll tell them. My son is the third generation in my family to have an ASD, but the first to have a diagnosis. My father clearly has a mild form of Aspergers. He's ok, only of course has never really managed to hold down any kind of job, and had to go and live with his own father in his forties as he could not build any sort of life on his own once my parents' marriage broke up.
My brother has ADHD and probably Aspergers as well. His symptoms were less mild. He was hyperactive from birth and was expelled from primary school after primary school because the teachers 'could't cope'. My mother, who was trying to cope with this while both her parents were dying slowly from particularly painful and harrowing forms of cancer, tried every avenue to get help for her son. She nearly had a breakdown. Being the 70s, there was none of this namby-pamby diagnosis. None of these doctors who just diagnose 'to keep the numbers up'. No, they called a spade a spade in those days. They blamed the parents. So I remember horrible, upsetting, profoundly distressing sessions of 'family therapy' where we were all blamed (me, included, it felt even though I could not have been more than nine or ten) for my brother's inability to cope. The sessions left my mother distraught. My father of course, could not deal with it at all. In the end no school would have him, so he was sent away to a special boarding school for 'disturbed' boys. I lost my sibling forever. In my darker moments, now I know more about what happened to children in 70s children's homes, I hardly dare bring myself to think what might of happened to him there. He ran away a lot. Sometimes some poor pathetic creature would turn up with him. They were clearly, even to my childish eyes, not 'normal'. As for not being disciplined, some of them would visibly flinch if you moved suddenly, they were so used to being thrashed.
Of course, my brother (above average IQ) left that place without a single academic qualification to his name. He has never been able to get a proper job and spent years in and out of prison for the kind of petty, stupid offences that 'normal' people don't commit or don't get caught for.He was totally vulnerable to older, manipulative men who would get him to take the blame for things he simply didn't understand. He was too disorganised and impulsive to pay fines for utterly trivial matters, and ended up in prison again. Now he's in his forties and struggling to build some kind of life. After decades of effort by my mother, he finally did get that ADHD diagnosis. But it is far, far too late. His life has been destroyed. The emotional pain has been incalculable. The cost to the state has been huge. I try not to think about this most of the time. This thread has brought back very upsetting memories of the 'family therapy', in fact. The idea that all these years later, people are still so unkind, so ignornant and so, seemingly, enjoy blaming parents, really does distress me enormously.

Sorrel, I have a friend who has three sons with ASD.

His mother told him that as a child he showed the same behavior as his sons. She took him to the doctor and was told to take him away and try harder

My mate was lucky and has done well in life, has a (very) good job and is happily married. Not everyone was so fortunate

Sorrell, that is so incredibly sad.

sorrell - i know all too well the kind of life your brother and father have had as i am fairly certain my childrens father has AS although he has recently been dx with Borderline personality disorder.

becasue it was so clear to me that he had an unexplored medical condition i stayed for a lot longer than i should have.

My ds is ASD and i am forever telling myself i am being paranoid when i try and explain that ds isn't just naughty he has autism....i see the lok in peoples face as if to say "yeah right, you mean your a crap mum"

this thread has really angered me. and im even more angry at myself for not staying well away.

its a bit like saying...why don't parents who have physically disabled kids just tell them to stop being so lazy and get up and walk.....but of course you SEE the disability so no one owuld dream of it.

yes there are some people who will try their hardest to give their poor parenting a label an i am just as angry, if not more so to those people than you are. it is those people who make it all the more difficult for me to getthe help my son actually needs because i have to fight twice as hard to be seen as a genuine case and not someone out to claim extra benefits.

i think the media should start letting people know that you really can't claim smnall fortunes off the DLA and that your not entitled to all this money that people seem to think is the case.

maybe that wya people will stop thinking that we teach our children to misbehave in order to get some quick cash!

Sorrell that's really sad but also a sobering and imprtant read, thank you.

My Grandasd has clearly got AS; Nan basically kept him locked in the kitchen when she got too old to intervene in everything he did. Now she has passed and Mum has the caring repsonsibility I understand why: he always has the council round to investiagr=te neighbours trying to steal his house, or the papers, or is abusing people in shops because of their colour- it's so sad. It certainly ruined my Mothers childhood and has nearly cost my parents their marriage on many occasions.

sorrell,ur post was very moving and sad.when i refered earlier to the children who were 'labelled' as naughty or whatever when i was at school,i had no idea what happened to them.i remember my mum saying so-and-so had gone to a 'special' school but that was it.

i am aware,however,of parents who claim there is something wrong with their child when there clearly isnt.i had a friend(who is no longer a friend)who claimed her 3.5 yr old son had adhd.he had never been formally diagnosed but she thought herself an expert on the subject.she used his'adhd' as an excuse for,amongst other things,locking him in his bedroom at night,the fact that her house was always dirty and untidy(i mean unhygeinicly so,contents of potty spilled on floor and left,washing up not done for weeks etc).i think its parents like that who make it difficult for people whos children have genuine conditions.

That's fair enough Diva and a very sad tale, but the OP refers to the cost to the NHS, whilst this child your efer to didn't have a DX

OP hasn't returned anyway, PMT firestarting????

i have just re-read the op and she doesnt actually refer to (now) well-known conditions such as AS or ADHD but to something 'new' she had just seen a programme on tv about.which could well have been a load of old balls,i dont know!
i mean the unknown condition refered to could have been a load of old balls,not the fact the op saw it on the telly

thing is thats bothering me most about this is that the Op was a teacher!

it is precisly that sort of attitude that makes it inevitable for the governments Inclusion policy to fail and is exactly why the NAS "make school make sense" campaign is so vital

there are so many teachers out there who simply refuse to look at HF ASD as anything other than poorly behaved children.
unless the child is so severely autistic its visibly evedent thatther is an issue its just deemed bad behaviour.

im sorry but it makes me very angry to hear such comments.

to be fair though, fm, there have been teachers posting who do see that asd exsists. I'm one for starters.

For me the problem with inclusion is not just lack of understanding of teachers (although this undoubtibly is a problem), but also the chronic lack of funding for helping children with asd.

Oh don't get me started on funding. ds's school has had the entire SEN dept removed from teh school because of lack of funding.
so instead of the fantastic SENCO who had been on every training course imaginable, had a son with ASD and was now battle hardy from her triumphs over the LEA we now have a very well meaning but ill informed deputy head as an "inclusions officer"

im sorry but inclusions officer and senco are two differant roles in my mind but hey, it slashes some £34K off the school budget.

DS's teacher last year was amazing. she was newly qualified and willing to adapt in order for DS to fit in. some of the strategies she introduced worked really well..and were also good for the rest of the class as it meant things were explained a lot clearer.

this year i have a teacher who looks at DS as a disruption, he gets in the way of her teaching.
she can't concentrate on stoy time because DS can't sit still on a mat and listen to someone waffle on for 30 minutes. he does have a 1:1 but apparantly thats not good enough.

i agree Mb that for every ignorant teacher there is one worther her weightin gold....but its just that there are quite a few who are stuck in the middle and end up causing more harm than good.

apparant;y 1 in a 1000 children has an ASD and 90% of those children are taught in MS schools so why is not a bigger part of ongoing training for teachers to learn autistic startegies?

Actually isn't the figure for ASD's now closer to one in a hundred? Sure I read that somewhere

The thing I find amazing is that many of the basic strategies- visual timetables, time out awareness (for a while they taught DS to detect when he was on overload then go to a quiet place, then they just took it away) actuallya re interventions that are positive for NT kids too.

I'm disgusted by the provision for dyslexic children in MS schools too.

The estimate is that 1 in 10 people may be dyslexic, and these children could be helped by lots of basic, cheap to implement measures, but they aren't.

It infuriates me that a LEAs don't seem to have any basic common sense!

I was always made to feel like it was my fault because my children had difficulties.

I know what you mean- friend has a dyslexic son and she asked why he was doing NT worksheets; she was told that if he looked in the tray labelled dyslexia he'd find some for him.

jhe can't read.

why couldn't they just leabel it the green tray?

Sorrell - that is one of the saddest posts I have ever read! I am so sorry for you and even sorrier for your poor brother and father

2 of my brothers are Dyslexic. the older (11) is currently going through the statementing process but we doubt he will get one.

thankfully the school are brillaint with him. the thing is it isn't just ASD it is all kinds of SN.
but the majority of SN is visable and its when its not that the problems arise.

Ds kept being sent home when he had a meltdown. i was constantly told that it was during a particular lesson.
after about 3 weeks i find out that he was asked to join in with the group activities with a tabel full of up to 10 other children.

he has very poor social skills and finds groups particularly difficult. so he would say that no he didn't want to but would be made to go to the group...he then kicked off.

its pretty basic stuff and yet the school didn't see whyt this was obviously worng.

i see it the same as asking a child with CP to climb a ladder! you just wouldn't do it. but because Ds "looks normal" they seem to forget he isn't the same aas the other children

My eldest son wrote to the LEA about exactly the same issue, FattieMumma.

He wrote that it was unfair not to support all children that needed help.

He needed help with his dyslexia, but no-one helped him.

He said it was unfair because no-one could see his dyslexia, so no-one knew how difficult and scary he found school sometimes.

He said that the LEA would get into trouble if they didn't provide ramps for children in wheelchairs to get into school. Everyone would be furious because the children in wheelchairs would be sit in the playground in the rain.

They would all complain and the LEA would pay for ramps. And everyone would be right to complain.

He was nine years old when he sent that letter.

The LEA didn't reply.

The difficulty that MS teachers have when they try to integrate children with ASD into a MS class is that all the odds are stacked against them....actually, more awfully, against the child.

First of all the child may well not have the sort of TA support they need. I'm sick and tired of children not getting the TA they are supposed to get, to be told that they don't get support in your class, for example.

When that happens, with the best will in the world, you can't support the child for the amount of time they need, you have 27 other kids in the class to cope with at the same time.

You can't provide and ASD child with a quiet environment all the time, it simply isn't possible in a classroom of 28 children, no matter how hard you try.

You may well want to send a child to the chill out room, but often that room doesn't exsist, or if it does it is currently occupied with a EBS child who is going into meltdown becuaes the woman from the social services is coming to take him into care.

You can't control the environment enough for them, no matter how hard you try.

I'm not saying that integration can never work...I'm currently teaching a child with ASD at A level...but he had the support that he needed, most children with ASD do get that.

We need more training, absolutyly, but there is not point in being able to recognise the 'triggers' that will tip a child with ASD into meltdown, unless you have the resources to deal with it.

And while I have every sympathy with the child with ASDs needs, and those of their parents, I also have to take into account the other 27 children in the class.....and many of them may have their own SN.

It isn't the job of the SN child's parents to think if this, and it never should be. You naturaly want the best for your children, and thank god that you do, because without you your kids are stuffed as far as education goes. But I do have to think of the 28 kids in the class, much as I understand the needs of the 1.

Inculsion is arse. Unless it has funding. Which it doesn't.

MB,what ia EBS?just curious

Yopu're right, MB of course. sam's time out for the summer was an outdoor table, no use in winter but it helped a little.

sorry I got my acronyms in a knot!
EBD, emotional behavioural disorder

often worked with by the EBSS, Emotional, Behavioural Social Services.

these are often children who come from very difficult family backgrounds, who's behaviour can often be very challenging, who do not have ASD or ADHD, but may have, for example parents who are drug addicts, or who are abusive. They may also have lovely parents who think the world of them, and the kid's behaviour goes off the rails for no obvious reason.

You often get these in a class with children with ASD and often ADHD. You can imagine what potential difficulties that can cause the classroom teacher when he or she is trying to create a calm learning environmnt

Bloody hell, Sorrell, I feel sick thinking of your poor brother, and mother, and all of you, going through that. How very harrowing.

thanks.i cant even spell is today