"Allowing ADHD 'queue jumpers' causes more harm than good"

[Glitterknickaz]

according to Professor Katya Rubia

I'm wondering if Prof. Rubia has stood in a queue (for example at the Post Office) being bitten, hit, screamed at or even the child in question running off out of the post office into the road?

Opinions?

2 words.....stupid cow

She is so so welcome to take J to stand in a queue!

I've just seen a thread about this on TES, the teacher's forum (it's in the opinion forum).
Quite worrying, if that's what teachers think!

Hi I;m new to this site. I am Mum to 'E' my Seven year old son who has ADHD and Autism. I have two other children who are 8 ans 10.

Glitterknickaz and givememoresleep... I totally agree. My son is OK in a queue for 10 mins or so, but after that the WHY and needing to go comes into effect! This is when the trouble can begin!! First he will SCREAM (break glass mode) and then the stares and comments begin, i used to shout back at the public, now i TRY and ignore and get on with it. The abuse i get about him...OMG, if this was about say a colour of skin, my god these people would be locked up! I do agree that children HAVE to, to a certain extent learn to wait, and have strict directions, but sometimes it is far to hard for them to do. that is why we see on average 4-5 doctors and paeds before a diagnoses if given!! I would like to say a HUGE thank you to all theme parks who help us and all the people who show support when the ground needs to swallow us up!

Good Luck people, and thank you for letting me rant for a moment :-)

Steph

PMSL, DS2 does not have ADHD but has ASD.
He cannot queue, he would stand in a queue for hours but we would never get to the front as he cannot tolerate people in front & behind him. So each time someone joins the queue behind him he moves to hte back of the queue, so we never move up the queue.

Solve that one Dr smart arse!

Bloody stupid woman.
If my 6 year old who has asd and adhd, has to stand in a queue, his latest thing is to run, in order to avoid anxiety and standing close to people. He runs everywhere, and he is fast. I am 37 weeks pregnant and can not chase him. Perhaps she would like to take him to a theme park etc for the day. She could just try Tesco's for a start.
Silly bint

This sounds a bit DM for the BBC, what are they thinking of?

I think it's reasonable to say with any SN, that because it is hard to work out how to modify the behaviour, the behaviour can sometimes go unchallenged. And that isn't always ideal. It would be fair comment with DD1 (for instance) that there's no harm in her being in a queue for 5 or 10 minutes from time to time, to get the queue experience normalised and her more used to the idea of waiting. For other kids it might be 1 minute, or 20 seconds. However, how often do you get a reliable 10 minute queue, let alone 20 seconds? And what sort of lunatic would start training this behaviour at a theme park? We were at Legoland today and the queue times for some rides were 2 hours. That isn't pushing the boundaries, that's lobbing the child out of the park and into a thick patch of nettles.

Do you think Ms Ivory Tower has ever seen a theme park in the school holidays? Or is that just something that she has read about in a book concerning those ant-like human creatures?

~applauds r3dh3d & mumcarer~

what planet is this woman on. I have one 10 with adhd and one 3 with asd and I can not queue at all it can be world war 3 if the cashier at the till takes too long depending what mood they are in. Theme parks are my biggest nightmare, I haven't ventured there as yet.

so would her solution to treating anorexia be to immediately expect patients to eat 3 meals a day? or a germ phobic with OCD not to wash their hands? or would she acknowledge that sometimes you need to gradually work up to goals.....

i suppose being devils advocate i would say the main sentance is that our children do need to learn how to queue. My DS needs to learn to be not so rigid in routine. DSs OT actually gave me a challenge this holiday when she saw my diary at the last appointment.....she saw how organised my diary was and how i had times for trips and where we were going on what days etc and she said she wanted me to have atleast 3 days in my diary where i had 2-3 different options for the day.......this is to try to get DS to accept things cant always be written in stone. I understand this. Living this was a different matter. Ds looks at my diary every day....when he saw the days that had....conkers/dobbies?????.....on he freaked out. i got questions galore, there was no let up, his anxiety levels definately increased the closer we got to the dates that were not organised which meant his behaviour also escalated. we are now at the end of the OTs experiment......am not sure if it helped DS time will tell.

this is surely the same idea. I know when i took DS to Gullivers they gave us a small hand written letter which had to be handed to the ride operator but we were then given a time of 5 or 10 minutes to come back and then we were let on the ride without the need for queuing. this meant we could explain to ds that you have to wait your turn but that we accepted he found it difficult to line up, i suppose i am hoping that this route is the first step to introducing queuing which is a valuable lesson.

bonkerz, there is the concept of building up though, and unfortunately I don't think either of my boys will ever tolerate 45-60 minute queues - ever..... I have got DS1 up to five min queues, but does that mean I should never take them to theme parks?

glitter dont get me wrong....my DS has ASD too and is a nightmare in public suffering regular meltdowns and needing to be restrained. like i said i was playing devils advocate.
you are right there has to be a concept of building up. At 9 my son can manage about 5 minutes (on a good day) in total but by the end of those 5 mins he would be at boiling point if not completely boiled over. (on a bad day we would not even attempt anywhere that queues may form!)
the time thing struck me as a good idea because i think it is a thin line, especially with my son, between making reasonable adjustments for his asd and (for want of a better phrase) spoiling him!

oh no, I was just exploring, not challenging iygwim

Heejung - you have absolutely no idea what you are rattling on about, now crawl back into the uneducated hole you came from.

Um... I'm afraid this is the Special Needs section and we don't do trolls here. We have kids in wheelchairs, kids who won't live long, kids who will never learn to communicate, kids who spend much of their lives in hospital.

The reason my DD1 can't do queues is that two thirds of her brain is damaged. She will never talk or communicate or wipe her own arse. She doesn't know how to laugh.

Really, really DONT pick a fight with us, this is where Angels Fear to Tread.

Now sod off.

Sorry about apostrophe failure in "don't". Am a bit cross. No apologies for the SHOUTING, however.

Nicely put and far more eloquent than my somewhat hasty & very angry response.

Hear hear r3dh3d.

Heejung, I got that response from uneducated idiots quite often when I was out and about with my AS son.
How that correlated with me being a confident and experienced teacher was never quite explained.
Assuming that ASDs and ADHDs are caused by poor parenting skills is antiquated and ignorant nonsense.

Heejung I see you are new to MN .... what were you called before ??

Was it Informer2?
Maybe not,you seem to be able to spell.

Bonkerz- your diary sounds like mine! Dd has ocd, and her therapist has really made her get out of comfort zone- she obsesses about my ds having "unhealthy food" eg a biscuit-she worries about him being sick. The therapist said if she kicks off, we had to tell her that he will have 2 biscuits.
It has gradually done the trick.
Mind you, ocd gets better, then a new obsession springs up.

She struggles with queues, but nowhere near as bad as some of your dcs. She has never been to a theme park, but that's more to do with the fact that I hate them and would rather stick pins in my eyes than go to one!

Agree that some kids with asd and adhd could benefit from practicing queuing. Errm..Disagree strongly that a theme park is the place to do said practicing.
Doesn't sound much fun for anyone involved
It's just shit isn't it?...it's just another example of the nt world not wanting to accommodate a few people with sn.And who is it really who can't wait anyway? Nt people who don't want to/can't wait/too selfish or impatient to let people with special needs go in front of them if you ask me.

Bonkerz, I was so when you put that about Gulliver's. We took J there with a friend a couple of years ago, took along the doctor's letter confirming autism and ADHD and asked what their wristband system was (we'd been to Legoland the week before and were well impressed by theirs). I'd emailed before we visited but nobody replied to my query. Probably shouldn't hav risked it, in hindsight.

First, we couldn?t park in a disabled space, despite having a Blue Badge, as people without badges had parked there. When I mentioned it to a member of staff, he said ?yes, well we?re busy today and there are only 7 spaces anyway.? We therefore had to park some distance from the entrance, which would have proved disastrous if J had had a violent meltdown and we had had to get him back to the car quickly.

I spoke to three members of staff about fast-tracked access to the rides, who were vaguely sympathetic, but we were informed that ?the lady who runs Gulliver?s doesn?t believe in special treatment for disabled kids?, ?the management don?t really do disability arrangements? and ?they just won?t make any arrangements like this here ? it?s against our policy?.

I was sooooo angry at the attitude. J not only doesn't 'get' queues; he also finds the sensory overload intolerable - he hates feeling penned in - and we didn't end up staying long because the was getting uncontrollable and lying on the floor, screaming and getting terrible looks, and then lashing out... and nobody was having any fun!

I wrote a stinking letter to them, complaining that they were contravening the DDA by refusing to make reasonable adjustments, and their disability advisor got in touch. He was mortified and actually quite responsive. They agreed to create a better system and offered us a free visit to see how they'd improved. I've not taken them up on the offer because the horror of that day is still too fresh in my mind! But I'm so glad that they have actually made some changes .

Do you know what, our kids do have to learn to queue, but there are times and places for that. We do 5 minute queues at Sainsburys and he can tolerate some queueing at school, but a fun day out, in public, is not the time to practice - and this Professor needs to realise that.