Does pushing for an ADHD diagnosis usually come from a parent, or not?

[JanH]

DS2 has a friend who is nearly 13 who has been a horror for as long as we've known him - always in trouble at school and outside, always falling out with friends, generally misbehaving, failing to concentrate - as he's in the year below DS2 I never got much detail, and I don't know his mother well enough to discuss it with her, but he seemed like a classic ADHD candidate to me so I assumed she would have involved SENCO at primary school and that it had been discounted.

He is in Y8 now and has been excluded from school for several periods already for various misdemeanours. With the clocks going forward at the weekend he called for DS2 tonight to go and kick a ball around (they hadn't seen each other for a while) and he told DS2 that he has just been diagnosed ADHD and put on Ritalin - this followed an incident where he apparently found a French lesson boring, threw his pencil case on the floor and walked out - the French teacher went "to the office" (DS2's version, bless) about him and wheels were put in motion.

Apparently he is pleased and relieved about it but I don't know how his mother feels. Thing is that she has always appeared to believe that he is OK really but gets picked on - OTOH our primary school has an unsympathetic Head and SENCO so maybe they did brush her off.

I just think that if a child of mine had done the things I know about him doing, never mind the stuff I don't know about, I would have been pushing for help long before nearly 13, but are there parents out there in this situation who refuse to believe that their child has a problem?

JanH ~ I know lots of parents who refuse to believe there is a real problem and bury there heads in the sand.

It's a shame really as the main damage is done to the child themselves.

Hmm, ADHD is a difficult one! Conditions such as autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia are now recognised as disabilities, but ADHD is not fully accepted as neurobiological (ie real not bad behavior) by all it seems especially in education! At a recent meeting I was told ADHD was not listed on some education list for special needs can't remember the list name!It is very hard in some areas even now to get a diagnosis, so perhaps 6-7 years ago when this lad started school, it was even harder. IMO ADHD is suffering the same misinformed bad press that dyslexia suffered 10 years ago! It is very hard being a parent of a child with ADHD- you know something is different, but even the so called experts blame the parents! I am sure it is even harder being the poor ADHD child!