I think it's largely a matter of perspective and practice. The kinds of parents who will fall for all the quack dx early on are the ones who get into trouble later on.
I had a very good friend in first grade who showed up in second grade dazed and drooling into his lap, shuffled into the slow track. There were 4 or 5 of us who goofed off together. Granted, we were a pain in the ass to the teachers. But I don't think any of us were disordered. I think we were just high energy, playful kids. We all show up to the first day of school, happy to see each other, only Drew just wasn't all there. It was really disturbing!
The rest of us, who's parents resisted the directives to treat our 'hyperactive disorder' with speed continued to entertain each other by vexing our teachers, but we did so in the average or advanced tracks. Drew just sat there among the other slow track kids, day after day, drooling into his lap. I imagine he was among those early trials who, they later found out, had been overmedicated to the point of permanent neurological damage.
What a profound betrayal. I think the parents who are vulnerable to the troubled parent industry scam are the very same ones who bought into each successive bogus early childhood dx. They've always seen their kids as a problem and never believed themselves competent to deal with things as they happen.
How oppositional and defiant would you be by the age of 15 if, every time you got upset or got into mischief or some teacher or other authority figure drew you into their highly unpleasant flight of fancy, your own parents looked right through you and, instead, went along w/ the whatever crazy ideas the pill pushing child psychology experts had to offer that year?
That's why I cringe every time someone suggests that parents in trouble should just go see a shrink. I suspect that very often, maybe more often than not, the root of the problem is the quack shrinks.
for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence.
--Thomas Jefferson
_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
Drug war POW
Seed Chicklett `71 - `80
Straight, Sarasota
10/80 - 10/82
Apostate 10/82 -
Anonymity Anonymous
