SP> 396/1 2255/90 I've been watching Jane "dominate" the conference
 SP> for quite a while now. Jane, I think it's unconscionable
 SP> the way you try to persuade parents to not give their kids ritalin
 SP> when they need it.  Yes, the school did put pressure on me and I
 SP> resisted for awhile, but that doesn't change the fact that he has
 SP> ADHD and he needs the Ritalin to be able to be successful in the
 SP> classroom.  BTW, the Ritalin is prescribed by a very competent
 SP> psychiatrist, not a GP.  Ritalin wasn't a magic wand for him though.
 SP> He was continuing to have problems getting along with his peers.
I found (after quite a net search as Mark had left out some of the necessary 
information) the article he referred to in one of his latest sarcastic posts 
to me.  It can be found at:
  Http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/adhd.htm
         ~~~
and says in part:  "Attention lapses caused by Petit Mal seizures can be 
confused with ADHD".  That is exactly what I have been complaining about, the 
idiots at my grandaughter's school who want to put a child with a diagnosed 
seizure disorder on Ritalin in spite of what very competent M.D.'s have said 
about her in the past!
It further states:  "Another debate is whether Ritalin and other stimulant 
drugs are prescribed unnecessarily for too many children.....critics agree 
that many children who do not have a true attention disorder are medicated as 
a way to control their behavior".
Exactly what I have been complaing about also.
Further on I found this:  "Restricted diet helps those with food allergies".
Mark refuses to admit that any dietary intervention at all will help.
Then I also found that it is linked to both Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the 
abuse of cocaine during pregnancy.  Just how many times does the school have 
access to this information when telling a parent what to do with a child?
In fact, just who in the school system is qualified to diagnose and treat 
ADHD?  I could not find any of the experts listed in that article as being 
either a school teacher or a school counselor with very limited medical 
knowledge.  In fact, the list contained only medical specialists who are also 
medical doctors.
 SP> Risperdal which is helping.  My point is:  if I had listened to YOU,
 SP> Jane, my would be labeled as a serious trouble maker and probably
 SP> viewed as psychotic by the school. His neurological problem would
 SP> have never been recongnised. He wouldn't get the help he needs and
 SP> would probably eventually drop out of high school and end up in jail.
If you had listened to me, you would have insisted upon a complete evaluation 
by someone with  medical degree who will ask questions about the health 
problems of the child's parents and grandparents as well as his or her 
brothers and sisters.  I've been to several new doctors over the past three 
years and have yet to be given a questionaire with the kind of questions on 
it that are pertinent to what is really wrong with me healthwise.
 SP> And yes, Jane, I'm sure there are many kids that the teachers
 SP> just don't want to mess with and push the parents put them on
 SP> Ritalin.  On the other hand, most of the teachers seem not to want
 SP> to believe that ADHD is a real disorder. It's very paradoxical.
Teachers and school officials have long since decided that they are the real 
experts in raising kids and that parents are some sort of idiots who endanger 
the little darlings until the school gets hold of them.  And straightens the 
parents out.
The Seattle Times had an article over the weekend which documented the number 
of substandard schools in that city and the measures which the man who was 
recruited to straighten them out is taking.  I downloaded this and will quote 
from it soon.  There are a very high percent of the total schools that have 
been deemed unfit against the very much smaller number of those who are 
deemed to be adequate.  The citizens of Seattle have had enough and are 
insisting that something concrete be done in order to educate their children 
properly.
I have also been complaining about this.
So where do you get off by thinking that I am wrong in my conclusions about 
the school system or about current medical practice in this nation?
Further, I've just started working with a youngster who is about a month from 
using crack cocaine.  Her mother has taken her to idiots in the mental health 
system who have diagnosed her as everything else under the sun but the 
genetic alcoholic she is.  Complete with food allergies which have largely 
gone unaddressed. Until she got tired of living on the streets of Seattle and 
landed at her grandmother's house......a grandmother who listened to me and 
who is presently enrolled in classes for student chemical dependency 
counselors.  A grandmother who lived with a man during his drinking days, 
survived, has been in therapy along with him for the past year or more, and 
who knows full well that the major problem with her offspring is genetic 
alcoholism with all of its problems.
The kid has no idea how lucky she really is.
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