Hyperactivity label? [titled edited by MNHQ]

[Flojobunny]

Health visitor wants to refer DD (4 yo) for hyperactivity assessment. What is it with health care professionals trying to stick kids in to boxes.
Yes she's always on the go, yes she doesn't sleep but she's my DD and that is that. No good can come of being labelled surely.

There are good points as well....zany sense of humour, great resilience and bounce-backability (mainly because you forget about ballsing stuff up last time....), permanent enthusiasm for the new, and so on.

Rulesgirl - a lot of France is still firmly in the mid 20th century where neurological disorders are concerned.

Indeed, Davsmum.

However, if you don't have first hand experience of having a child with ADHD or experience of the diganostic process or experience of the interventions that you try to put in place on a daily basis or experience of the issues that crop up under no end of different circumstances...

..then your opinions are akin to people without children telling you how easy it is to bring them up.

i.e. Opinions, but very ill-informed and unexperienced ones.

Ah...I "focus on what"s wrong" with my child.

Thank you Dr Davsmum for your ignorant and ill informed opinion. I would like to tell you to fuck right off at this point but I can't without upsetting the site rules.

You have mightily pissed me off with the comment you made there. I would give ANYTHING for my child NOT to have ADHD and to have to take highly addictive medication.

Walk a mile in my shoes and then you can judge...until then sod off.

Nothing wrong with questioning the number of children diagnosed...and I responded civilly to that ....I agree that some children are misdiagnosed but not all of them are. And most if us do NOT want to give our children highly addictive medication...we do it because we HAVE to. My child manages academically in school with it (in case you missed that repeated comment) and by academically I mean he can now read and write.

Still think I shouldn't give medication and condemn him to a,life of illiteracy. Oh and by the way I read to him from virtually newborn age before you chuck that one in.

Dandelions - ODFOD.

Ds got his ASD diagnosis at 3, at five the paed suggested assessment for ADHD probably because of how he performed at appointments alongside the well documented lack of sleep (2 hours in 24) I put him off, not least because 15 years ago an ADHD diagnosis didn't bring much other than a label of poor parenting and I didn't want the autism diagnosis diluting because I wanted autism specific strategies used.
It worked out well for us ds went to an autism resource and is now at an autism specialist school. His reassessment at sixteen didn't bring an ADHD diagnosis but moved him along the autism spectrum from moderate to severe.
In his autism specialist school ds is calm and focused because of the strategies used and the environment created.
I don't think for us an ADHD diagnosis was needed and might have impeded the support ds did receive although at five I think school and health would have undoubtedly agreed he met the criteria.
Ds has never been medicated despite paed's recommendations I found that for us an education tailored to meet the needs caused by autism was enough. I suspect in a mainstream school without constant TA support we may have thought very differently.

I do agree with Davsmum and Rulesgirl to an extent - drugs companies are making a tidy profit on stimulants, and this may lead to over-prescription.

Also, medication is a partial quick-fix - you don't have to firefight every day, and this is attractive to overworked schools and parents, but this is because it works in most cases.

But, as many PPs have said, getting a Dx and meds is easier said than done and requires a lot more parental input than going to your GP and saying "Ah carn't controwl 'eem, doctor....'ee set fire to ees gran larst week!"

Hmm,.. interesting how those who 'know' because they have experience resort to saying 'fuck off' and 'sod off'

Babyheave - I DO have experience of children who have gone through ADHD diagnosis - one being my nephew. I have mentioned ir previously.

The only people getting rude and offensive are those who think they are the ones inn the right.
I have not said I think I am right - I am questioning something - its not the same as declaring myself to be right and being downright obnoxious and rude as a couple of you are being.

That sounds like a very positive experience insanity.

I do because I am sick of it all Davsmum and actually your prejudice is now showing, you are not hiding it anymore.

It's hard to deal with the day to day, never mid the ignorant people out there who say "oh I do t believe in x, y or z".

Being the parent of a child on the spectrum is hard enough without people criticising me for decisions I have to make about my child to help him.

I don't think Davsmum and Rules are denying it, Jake, I think they're wondering if there are alternatives, and also why there is what looks like a sudden rash of sufferers.

Dandelions can do one, though.
Mind you, it looks like s/he has.

Oh, well if you know about it through your nephew then thats OK.

My nephew has a dairy intolerance. He's been through the diagnostic process, but I think my DSis is just pandering to him and needs to look at introducing dairy into his diet as he's never going to get over an intolderance if she just accepts it like that and doesn't look into homeopathy or something.

Of course I could just be spouting bollocks as having a nephew with a problem is nothing like having to live with it day by day when its your own child.

If you read a lot about it, for instance, you'd know that the hyperactivity element of ADHD is age-inappropriate hyperactivity, not hyperactivity full stop. It is normal for kids to be lively, but a red flag for the possibility of a serious issue is hyperactivity that's out of synch with the child's age.

And also, a disorder of internal self control can be compensated for to some extent by an environment that gives lots of external control.

Most people can get homework done with harsh immediate consequences for failure, people with ADHD will struggle without those harsh immediate consequences because their mechanisms for internal self control (maintaining focus, working memory, planning, attention) are weaker. That doesn't mean that those external consequences have actually solved the problem and shown the ADHD doesn't exist, all they've done is compensate for it a bit.

Finally... untreated ADHD doesn't leave a child or adult with no problems, it just causes more problems such as depression and anxiety, substance abuse problems... all sorts. Drug companies (and, in the US, doctors) can make plenty of money out of those too...

It's not really been positive Rulesgirl it has pushed us as a family to breaking point. It has cost us heavily financially as to get the education he has needed has taken tribunals and lawyers and barristers and independent reports costing £1000 a time. It's cost us emotionally as taking ds anywhere led to points stares and abuse. We have had the police involved after some idiot threatened to firebomb our house because ds hit his child in nursery. We travel out of area to schools and shops so that we remain anonymous after seeing other families targetted for abuse because of their child's disability.My others have been abused because they have a "freak" as a brother. I've done nearly 19 years of 24/7 care and there's no end in sight and my health has suffered. That's the reality of having a label for your child.

People with ADHD can struggle even with harsh consequences!

At £60 a month, I don't think anyone is going to be handing out DS1's medication like smarties. He a;so suffers from anxiety, so we didn't take the decision to try medication lightly and wanted to avoid stimulant therapy because evenings were already a real flashpoint without introducing rebound behaviours. We were pretty desperate by that point, because we needed to put a lid on it all before there was any chance of any behavioural interventions having any effect. The evidence, btw, is that behavioural and family therapies tend to work best in conjunction with drug therapy.

Apart from the speech, impulse control and social stuff, there's various other things that he has become better at, since starting his medication. At times, if he was tired (as he would be after struggling to sleep, in summer) he wouldn't be able to feed himself because he'd lost coordination. His inattention and impulsiveness are improved more than his hyperactivity but he does still sometimes struggle with getting dressed. This also has a sensory origin, but if I don't plonk a top over his head, I'd end up chasing him with his clothes for half the morning while he faffed about with other stuff.

If you're looking at us for a family that is always in conflict and living off takeaways and red bull, then you've come to the wrong house.

To be fair, Dandelions said ineffective parents were often to blame.
Before s/he went off into the ether again.

So can it ever be a good thing. For example Robin Williams the actor says that it caused him to become a comic/actor because he needed the applause to get his hit of dopamine. Others have said that for them as an adult it is like a gift that has allowed them to strive to be the best.

I have three sons who are "labelled" with different autism spectrum disorders.

Prior to being "labelled" they had no help or support from anybody. After being labelled they were able to access a whole variety of services, attend the schools that were right for their needs, receive the medical treatment necessary, the therapy needed, the extra support needed and the understanding of others enabling them to live a full and happy life. Prior to being "labelled" their lives were so difficult, almost impossible as they tried to exist in the world they did not understand...every day was a struggle, every day was filled with unhappiness. After being "labelled"...wow...life just got better.

THANK GOD THEY WERE "LABELLED", THANK GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!