here<\/a>.)<\/p>\nBut despite the testing, the principal still refused to believe that our son didn’t have ADHD, a function, I believe, of this man having been hired too young and with no prior experience as a principal, and because of his own family’s experience with ADHD dating back many years.<\/p>\n
Our experience has convinced me that we as a society need to ask ourselves whether it’s truly possible that one in 10 (or more) North American kids has ADHD, or whether this epidemic (as some have called it) is actually a result\u00a0of poor classroom management, educators’ attitudes, age bias, family stress, the expanded definition of mental illness over the past 50 years, a trend toward overanalyzing feelings and behaviours to the point of medicalizing “normal” kids, or some combination of all of these things.<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, I think ADHD is real, but it’s been massively overdiagnosed in children, and educators don’t solve children’s true problems, whatever they may be, when they lean on ADHD like a crutch.<\/p>\n
In other words, teachers and principals need to be careful not to bring their own biases to bear on how they look at disruptive kids, and they need to look at the entire child and not just his or her misbehaviour in the classroom.<\/p>\n
But to do so, they must also pay more than lip service to the idea that parents are partners in education. They actually have to believe it and act on it. Right now, they tend to look at parents as being either part (or the cause) of any problems they perceive in a child, or they treat parents as glorified PR agents who can’t bring themselves to admit that there’s anything wrong with their kids.<\/p>\n
As the authors of the UBC study conclude, “The potential harms of overdiagnosis and overprescribing\u00a0and the lack of an objective test for\u00a0ADHD strongly suggest caution be taken in assessing children for this disorder and providing\u00a0treatment. Greater emphasis on a child\u2019s behaviour\u00a0outside of school may be warranted when\u00a0assessing children for ADHD to lessen the risk\u00a0of inappropriate diagnosis.”<\/p>\n
Hopefully, their research will spur more discussion in this direction.<\/p>\n