A disturbing trend that I have observed locally is a seeming unwillingness on the part of ordinary public schools to deal with "problem kids." These kids then end up in psychiatric lockups, and thence are court-ordered to behav mod facilities as they and their time in the system mature. I haven't been on fornits long enough to know this for sure, but it does seem as though we have gotten an increasing number of visits from parents who are stuck between a rock and a hard place... That is, having a kid who has been court-ordered into a facility, and the parent complies with the system simply because they do not want to lose their kid.
It is very disturbing. It appears the school system has found a different way to flex their muscles and fight the baby sitting job they have been stuck with. When kids were disruptive in school it use to be the parents would set the kids straight at home with a few ultimatums... now that isn’t being done because both parents work and they don’t have time. So the new approach is that if the child is disruptive he/she must have a problem and the school sends a note home (from the school nurse) indicating the child should see his pediatrician to be evaluated... the doctor gets the message (understands the drill) he is suppose to medicate the kid (which is cheaper for the insurance companies than sending the child to another specialist or a therapist)... so he goes through his drawer of labels and picks one out i.e. ADD, OCD, ADHD, XYZ.... hangs it around the kids neck for all to see, prescribes some meds and once a child is on meds there is no going back except more and/or different meds.
The kid goes back to school and the school is happy, the parents go back to work, unhappy,after blowing a half a days vacation at the doctors office, the doctor is happy seeing he doesn’t have to explain another referral to a shrink or specialist to the insurance company so he stays within his quota for the month and the child’s personality is altered to make him happy (short term).
As the child acts out more because he is building a resistance to the meds (or his/her mind is growing in a different direction to compensate for the meds)they just up the dosage or switch to something stronger in the hopes they can keep the kid sedated long enough to get him/her thru the system to legal age. The court ordered referrals are just fallout from a failed system…. A half decent statistician can probably predict how many kids they will need beds for a year in advance so the courts are prepared for the court cases coming their way.
Although the parents have virtually all the legal control over their children they want they just don’t realize it because the system doesn’t tell them or they don’t get (non court appointed) lawyers.
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