This file contains the text of messages which appeared on ADD Forum in various threads. The unifying theme of the messages is the importance of parents in preparing children for school and in monitoring the progress of their children in school. The actual text is unedited, but was reformatted to make following the conversations easier. David Lecin * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * POVERTY, PARENTS & KIDS Is it ADD/ADHD or a Developmental Delay? QUESTION: >I'm curious about the kind of situation that is troubling >you, where attention and behavior problems are caused by >social things such as poverty and family dysfunction. REPLY: The kids in the South Bronx and other poverty areas are UNsocialized. The kids receive very little supervision outside of school. An old/ill grandparent who can't properly care for the child, or an older sibling who really doesn't know how to care for a child, is frequently in charge. The kids do what they want when they want. When the kids come to school, they do what they want when they want. The kids do not know how to share. They do not know how to play cooperatively. The kids don't sit quietly with their hands raised waiting for a teacher to call on them. Teachers and other staff then complain that the kid can't sit still, responds inappropriately to authority, has no attention span, etc. A quick trip to the local clinic and we have another ADD/ADHD diagnosis and a prescription for Ritalin. The Ritalin doesn't really help, and the real cause(s) for the problematic behavior go unadressed. The behavior persists and the kid is moved deeper and deeper into Sp Ed. We lose these kids. They drop out of school in alarming numbers. It perpetuates the poverty and the cycle of UNsocialized kids. QUESTION: >If you/they are concerned that a kid is mis-diagnosed, are >there channels they can go through, or is it just you? REPLY: Fortunately for me, there is one other person in the school who is willing to sit on the phone for hours and try to talk with the psychiatrists in the local clinics and hospitals. However, as the school psychologist, it really is my job to do these things. If it were an occasional thing I wouldn't even have mentioned it - everybody is human and makes mistakes. The misdiagnosis of ADD/ADHD is just so common in the South Bronx that it's a pet peeve of mine. PREPARING KIDS FOR SCHOOL QUESTION: >Do you think it's [success in school] impossible without family >behind the child? REPLY: I'm going to answer this from two different perspectives. I'm a school psychologist - that makes me an educator as well as a psychologist. First, the educator's point of view. When I went to school, all the kids knew how to listen and follow instructions. We knew what crayons and coloring books and paste and scissors were. We knew how to play cooperatively. We had some concept of sharing. There were consequences at home if my teacher called and complained about me. With the exception of the more difficult clothing used in winter or bad weather, we knew how to dress and undress ourselves. We were ready to begin our academic careers. Imagine having 20 kindergarten kids who can't do any of these things. Imagine having 25 1st graders who can't do any of these things. Families prepare kids for school by socializing the kids. The kids come to school *ready* to be *students*. Preschools (age 3-5) are big business in NYC because so many kids just aren't ready for school even at age 6. Having the family support and reinforce proper student behavior makes a big, almost insurmountable, difference in how successful these kids are when they come to school. I must tell you that my orientation as a psychologist is that I believe in developmental stages. Every person goes through the same stages in the same order. Many of the kids in the South Bronx have "holes" in their development because they did not successfully complete a stage (or two or three): there was something missing in the family and the kids are now paying for it with all sorts of social, emotional, and behavioral problems. These problems interfere with success in school. Yes, it's possible. But it sure ain't easy without a strong supportive family behind you! Some of my students have gone on to Bronx Science HS, Art & Design HS - very powerful schools in terms of college placement. But these are the exceptions, the rare exceptions. QUESTION: >It's *shocking* to think there are kids growing up without >those things that are so ludicrously simple. You're in a >part of hell, it seems. Or am I being overexcited about this?? REPLY: Your reaction reminds me of how shocked and confused I was my first year in the South Bronx. I had lived a rather sheltered and protected life before getting on the subway and then walking around the South Bronx! When we were given those special school (blunt) scissors, that awful tasting white paste , and wrapped in an old smock to protect our clothes, we all thought the teacher was giving us play time. Nope. It was "visual-motor skills integration" time. We were actually developing our fine motor skills and our eye-hand coordination. When I first heard from a South Bronx teacher that the school principal had outlawed scissors from the school because the kids used them as weapons, I reacted just as you did above. Today's kids have video games to help develop their visual-motor skills, but we're talking the older kids not the kindergarteners. Wanna know why these kids don't tie the laces on their sneakers? Because they can't. COMMENT: >It's hard to imagine a kid who's had so little upbringing ... >hard to *fathom.* REPLY: The NORM in inner cities is different from the norm in middle class suburbia. You would not believe the behavior that is tolerated in general education classes! When I must decide whether to classify a kid as "emotionally disturbed" and place that kid in a restrictive setting designed for kids with severe behavior problems, I compare that kid to the other kids in general ed. I can't compare that kid to what schools should be like. Sometimes I can't even compare that kid to standards of mental health! DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES QUESTION: >Also, can you give us some examples of what a child "looks >like" who's missed a developmental stage? REPLY: It depends on the stage that's "missed." One of the common problems my kids face is an inability to decide whom to trust. They have been betrayed by the adults in their lives. The kids come to school so suspicious (almost paranoid) that they see threats to their safety where none in fact exist. This is one of the reasons they fight so much and confuse the adults: the adults never see the reason for the fight. The adults don't see the cause of the altercation because the cause is a misperception inside the kid. The kids just don't see the world as we see it. Little boys like to play with daddy. Boys like to rough house, be tickled, etc. Think of the teenagers you know. How many of them like a man to touch them? Healthy teenagers have outgrown that phase and their "physical" relationships have changed. My kids know that I will not allow them to fight. They (even the teenagers) pretend to fight so that I'll grab them and take them to my office for "crisis intervention." One of the keys to calming a situation is to distract the kids from whatever caused the altercation. The kids say I look like a character from professional wrestling (no, I won't say which one!) and I use that when working with the kids. I will grab them and pretend to do a "pile driver" or a "DDT" move on them (I'm actually tickling them). It works even when the kids really were fighting! It distracts them, they regain their composure, and they can go back to class without an incident. For a few minutes, they are receiving the attention that they never got from their fathers. In many ways my 14-year-olds function more like 6-year-olds (emotionally). My teenage boys (students) are so desperate for this kind of attention that they will do anything to get sent to my office! (I must tell you that I'm not good at discipline. Being sent to my office is not a punishment by any definition!) Look at all the kids you know. With which age group does the kid in question compare? Does this 10-year-old remind you of other 10-year-olds? Is he more like the 5-year-olds? QUESTION: >How do you recognize a kid who's missing a developmental >stage due to (apparent) *absence* of parenting? REPLY: I don't have an easy/quick answer for that one. It takes me a very long time to do a proper psychological profile on a kid (and his family). The only thing I can say right now is that saying things like, "It's always the parent's fault!" is a waste of time. It ignores the many instances where it isn't the parent's fault, and it turns off the parents who really need to be turned on to good parenting skills. PARENTING versus NEUROLOGY COMMENT: >One of the things occasionally thrown in the face of ADD >families, in some locales, is "It's all poor parenting." REPLY: True ADD/ADHD is a neurological condition that is not the result of poor parenting. There is data to suggest that some of the other "psychiatric" disorders are chemically based or inherited. Again, poor parenting would not be the cause. QUESTION: >Yeah, in that circumstance, how could you TELL if a kid >has a neurological [ADD/ADHD] condition. REPLY: It takes a lot of time to do a proper diagnosis. Bert Warren wrote (and I agree completely): >>I prefer my current position working in the schools, where I >>have time to see the child in the classroom, talk to the >>teacher, look at the reports, speak to the parent, etc. I don't know how the folks who work for clinics/hospitals can function. They see the kid for 15 minutes, make a diagnosis and write a prescription. It amazes me. I spend hours spread out over several days before even thinking about writing a report and making recommendations for a kid. THE ROLE of the SCHOOL QUESTION: >I wonder whether school could supply some of this [non- >academic services] again if schools were smaller? Everything has advantages and disadvantages. Smaller schools would mean more individual and personal contact between the staff and the kids. It could also mean fewer services. For example, I'm allocated to my school 5 days per week because of the size of the school. If the school were smaller, I might be assigned there 3 days per week. The budget problems effect everything! There is a formula to assign staff based on the number of students in a school because there simply isn't enough money to place a school psychologist in every building 5 days/week. The same is true for all the service providers in schools. At the high school level, smaller schools might mean fewer choices for the kids in terms of classes. If the school has 3 foreign language teachers, there might not be a place for a computer teacher. I think we need to find some middle ground between a school that's so large the kids get lost and so small that all the services aren't available. I really like the idea of neighborhood schools: the school should reflect the surrounding neighborhood in size, orientation, and culture. COMMENT: >Another friend envisions a set up in which the school is >connected to small family service centers, mental health >clinics, after school education and day care and job >training and ....etc. REPLY: There have been a number of programs all over NYC that did something similar. A decision was made that the schools today need to be more than just academic training factories. Many different types of services were offered - not just between 9am - 3 pm, but all day and on weekends. These schools were a huge success. Then the funding ran out and the projects were closed. As a society we need to make a decision. What function(s) do the schools serve? Are we ready to expand our concept of "school" to include things like day care, social services, health services, etc.? Are we ready to pay for this sort of thing? SCHOOL RECORDS QUESTION: >How can a parent be sure they've seen all the files kept >on their kid? REPLY: First, check with all the people I mentioned in my previous message (central CSE office, school special ed office, teacher, dean/assistant principal, medical, evaluation team, etc.). If your child is old enough and verbal enough, as him/her for the names of the adults whose office the child has visited. If a kid's been in my office, the odds are that I have something to help me remember that particular child. It may be nothing more than a color coded index card, but you do have a right to see even that type of record. A sneaky thing that some schools do is keep 2 folders on each kid: the official one for parents and the one for school staff. You need to ask everyone if there is a second "working" folder on your child. My standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. But I beleive that school records are covered by a federal "sunshine" law which means that parents have a right to see and copy (at a reasonable fee) everything in their child's folders. There is some confusion about my personal notes if I don't place those notes in "a folder" (I'm a psychologist and I am allowed to keep ceertain things confidential even from the parent). __________________________________________________________________________ This article has been downloaded from the ADD Forum on CompuServe, and may be distributed freely as long as the contents of the file are unchanged. Because the CompuServe ADD Forum is new, we are frequently asked how to join CompuServe and get on the forum. Call 1-800-524-3388 and ask for rep #464. Outside the US/Canada call +1-614-457-0802.