relax roost - thats just lj bein lj

O.k. for now.
I am very sensitive when it comes to children, because they are born innocent, and we make them what they are.
So I have a hard time with some of these remarks here about children.

We try to anyway. When my youngest lived with hiws mother he was excessively violent. Punching holes oin the walls arguing all the time - fighting braking things... He's an honor roll student now. Trust me, I think I understand.

That is the potential...
 

Hundreds of kids in the foster system, because this behavior is not the "norm."
most of them are so smart though, they need more work in social skills, because thier brain focuses on other development.
Congrats for your son.

Well Impulse Control Disorder is really an umbrella term covering many different disorders. Kleptomania, pyromania, and Intermittent Explosive Disorder would all be considered impulse disorders, but the term itself is too vague by itself to really mean much.
Most are abnormal extensions of what we might normally experience playing a sport for example. There is a buildup of intensity and energy which is released as pleasure after the touchdown or goal is scored. The difference between the person acting like a dick, and the person acting under these impulses is that between actions the person may feel ashamed or frightened of their actions, only to be irresistibly drawn to them as the tension builds again.

Identifying the root cause, if possible, is the beginning of the solution. In my sons case, it was his mother - sux but true. He yearned for discipline and structure. Two things she was/is incapable of providing.

Excellent points 9th - you continue to amaze me with your broad range of insight.

Here, I'll rethink it for him ...

A great deal of harm is done by pathologizing people, especially children, by deciding that bad behavior is part of a disorder or disease over which they have no control.

Yes, there are such people in existence.

But not at the rate at which they are currently identified and excused for criminal actions.

C'mon wolf, every kid born since 1990 has ADD or ADHD - right????
{dripping with sarcasm}

My own personal theory is that Sesame Street causes ADD. Poor parenting plus Sesame Street causes ADHD.

Can it be video games and doing lines of jell-o?

LOL - if it wasn't so sad - My wife had my son so medicated he was a walking zombie - all under the careful watch of three different "doctors."
Now he takes nothing, but an occassional phone call to me so he can vent. Geez, amazing what a little caring and communication can do - eh?

No.

Well, I'm not sure about the Jello (nice Savage Steve Holland reference there, boy), but video games tend to extend attention spans rather than shorten them.

Thank god someone said it. I would have, but I have a short attention span... I mean ADD. Best bet is to try raising your children before excusing them. I don't mean 'punish them sternly for their mistakes' but for god sakes, if you're the kind of parent who asks your kid for permission for things, you're not allowed to wonder why he's a dick... I mean, :ahem: has a Disorder.

But, same caveat as wolf: there ARE people who have these disorders, they're just over diagnosed to the extent that it's pretty commonly a big joke.

I know.

ICD
 

Actually it includes multiples of the disorders that fall under the category.
Several phsychologist believe it could be linked to the serotonin level in the brain. Serotonin from foods can not get to this area. A serotonin reuptake inhibitor is available, but it may disturb the rest of a childs development, so we will wait till he is 12 to take the neurotransmittor test, which I hear can be inconclusive.
There are also several non related disorders which have similiar symptoms, which makes it very important for these children to be constantly monitored.

So very true...
 

I could not possibly count the number of mothers who claim thier child ADD/HD, when in fact it is a child who needs nurturing.
And boys are no longer allowed to be just boys.
My sons KG teacher held back at least half of her male population for not being socially ready.
How this hurts those children in the academics.
There seems to be a point where the childs natural love of learning dwindles away and they get caught up in a very emotional world.

no, sorry, I meant it. did you just say, "won't someone think of the children?!" cuz...pleeze.


dammit wolf...i was being subtle. do you have to explain it so succinctly?

sorry, roost.....Impulse control disorder is bullshit. just like SIDS. it's a blanket excuse for an asshole kid. toughen up and discipline the little fucker. actions have consequences. If your kid can't understand that, he/she needs to experience some pain and/or loss.

i dont care if you think im a dick. i had the impulse to tell you what i was really thinking.

There are studies out there which suggest that there may not even be any such thing as add or adhd. Maybe they're right, maybe they're not, but in my very personal experience, I'd say there are very few, if any kids who actually have any of these disorders.

I think they're mostly bullshit excuses for poor parenting or other psychological issues a kid might have from prior experiences.

I guess that means I agree with jimbo.

You are definately wrong.
 

Infact discipline is still well intact as I allow no excuses. These issues simply mean the child has to work far harder than others.
They did show in these children that a certain area of the brain is shut down.
Anyway you guys have all the answers so I will leave you to it....

I don't think i'm definitely wrong about what I said. I said it was in my personal experience. I said there are studies to support my claims. You must be aware of them or you wouldn't be arguing against them.

Most people only use 10% of their brain. That means about 90% of everyone's brain must be 'shut down'. Actually, i'd be interested to know what you mean by shut down.

With other illnesses which affect the brain zer are vays off making zem vork you know. ;)

btw, I also definitely did not say that your child has been misdiagnosed. I said that I believe very few children actually have the disorders they've been attributed with.

I used to believe the ADD/ADHD thing was crap. And to medicate young kids so quickly rather than nixing the bandaid and getting to the root of the problem was a crime against the child. And for the most part, I still feel the same way.

However, my best friend's youngest son, who is not lacking for discipline or attention or anything else, and is the sweetest and most loving little boy, has some serious freaking issues with attention. If he was my kid, I would have either killed him or been institutionalized myself years ago. I love him, but he drive me nuts to be around him. It was a hard 2-year decision for his parents to medicate him, but it has helped him tremendously. He nearly failed 2nd and 3rd grades, but seems to have turned a corner and is doing MUCH better since getting his meds straight. He's like a totally different kid who can carry on a conversation now without being all over the map and largely incoherent with his thought processes.

The problem is that it is so much easier to keep reapplying a bandaid than it is to find the root of the problem and fix it. It's been my experience that both parents HAVE to work full time to survive, and they're tired and less patient with their children, and have less time to spend with them. Parents fail their kids.

Schools are more concerned with guns, knives, drugs, perverts, and mysterious white powders than education - and can you blame them? Schools fail the kids.

And then you have some drug-pushing "doctor" whose education was - directly or indirectly - paid for by the pharmaceutical companies, and they're just happy to keep scheduling office visits and writing more scripts for the kickbacks.

The whole system is fucked up, and it's out of control. There isn't any one person or entity to blame - it's the sum of it all.

That is a myth, most of the brain is used for memory storage so it won't be active like the rest but every part of the brain is used by a healthy person.

I think a lot of the ADHD has to do with age and once they hit puberty, they will outgrow it. My younger brother took medication for ADHD and it actually did help him (he got better grades, ect) and now he is much more calm even being off it for a good amount of years.

As long as parents stress self control to their kids when they are taking breaks from their medicine I'm sure most kids can outgrow ADD/ADHD.

WTF?

How dare you people argue with the great and mighty roost? roost has to be a sock puppet, I just can't figure out whose.

But I could be definitely wrong.

Well I wasn't too offended by being told I'm definitely wrong. In fact, not at all. My opinion might be wrong to others, but it's pretty damn right to me. ;) Besides, there is evidence to support my claims, as well as everyone else's, so we're all definitely right by those standards.

I did manage to be born before 1990, but in my Private school (k - 3rd grade) the teaching staff called my parents in one day to tell them they felt I had ADD and gave different names of doctors who were in our area that would give me the "help" I needed. My parents were so angry that they had me tested. Turns out I had a high IQ and was bored in my classes, so I was slacking off.
Parents decided to move me into a public school at that point (schools in our area are very good) and I did much better there.

Scariest part of the school system that I see is kids getting passed along who don't know or understand the material. Should you really be in a college composition class if you don't understand the difference between adjectives and adverbs? I think that, at the VERY least, should be covered in a remedial class. (I could rant for hours on THAT...but I'll stop here.)

IQ really isn't a good indicator of whether or not you have symptoms of ADHD. I went through the same thing. I was bored in class, have an IQ of around 130 (not that IQ is a real accurate indicator of intelligence capabilities anyway.. that's a whole different subject for another time), but my ADHD was messing with my schooling. Do you experience any ADHD type symptoms? Zone out, fidget with pencils/gum/whatever, have a song constantly running through your head like you're living a movie with the soundtrack playing, can't tune out background noise, etc.?

I know what you mean, sometimes it astonishes me how little some people understand is some of my classes. Then again, this is the learnin time of life, I can't say I know everything.

And so what if I do? That's a good reason to drug me up with ritalin? No thanks. I don't care if I have ADHD, it's no excuse for anything. If I'm not paying attention, then I already know it, or, well, my loss. I'm not gonna whine and cry about some 'disease' that way, way too many people are s'posed to have.
Besides, if you ask me, anyone who CAN sit and concentrate and not fidget and DOESNT have a song going through their head... is the crazy one.

I'm not saying get all pumped full of amphetamines. There are organizational and study techniques that my psychologist has given me that have been of great help so far. If you have ADHD there are a wide variety of things that a person can do to minimize the effects that person's unique symptoms have on his or her life.

And don't even try to tell me that ADHD is all some fairy tale. True it is overdiagnosed in kids these days, but that does not take away from thos eof us who seriously suffer from this shit. You don't know what it is like to literally not be able to pay attention to anything being said to you in class because of the smallest distractions going on in your head (replaying conversations, tv shows/movies, songs, other stuff going on in your life) and the surrounding environment. The buzzing of an overhead light, the sound of a person writing notes next to you, etc. I'm talking unable to pay constant attention at all, to the point where I have to ask people for their notes after class because I just couldn't focus on what the prof. or teacher was saying. All day, everyday, for your entire life. You go from task to task at home not fully completing anything because you are so impulsive that you are just bouncing from one thing to the next. Welcome to my world dude.

I apologize if that was a bit testy. With some of the profs I've had these past years, I wouldn't blame anyone for being fidgety and not paying attention. Some of these folks need to seek a different profession.

dont tell me I don't know what it's like. I've been diagnosed with ADHD, whether I believe it's a serious concern or not. I have the exact same attention problem that you do, possibly to a slightly lesser degree. I get in trouble regularly for fiddling, for fidgeting, for not looking at the teacher, for messing around altogether too much. But everything I said holds true. I've got fifty stories I haven't finished, fifty songs I've learned or written half of, fifty thousand things to do I started but never got around to finishing. Don't preach to the choir here.

Didn't know you were in the choir.. welcome to the club, wanna make t-shirts?
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/0...on-deficit.gif

And just fyi I think you're a cool guy Ibram. Didn't mean to come off rude to you.

I didn't really have ADD type symptoms...the school used to tell us to "feel free to get up and stretch if we are bored during class" so, I did. Also, I'm very artsy...doodling during class a lot of times keeps me focused on listening to lecture, dunno why, just keeps me from getting bored and wandering off in thought...most teachers see it as me not paying attention (for obvious reasons) so I got in trouble for that all through school. Clearly the rest of this story is second-hand info because I was in 3rd grade when I got tested (also why I said I "had" high IQ, as I've no idea what it is now) sos I dunno how the exact events played out. All I remember personally was going to the hospital every day for "tests" which were rather fun for me.