Anno
wear are you girl we need you lol....

how is it dealt with OCD ADD and D/ecia in the USA ...we need an educasion expert in on this i counting on ya lol

celtic

Sorry, but I am no expert in this area. We depend on Doctors and medication and psychologists and behavioral theories to deal with any type of learning disablities and "disorders". I am beginning to believe, more and more, in home education. Oops, don't tell my bosses I said this!

Really, I am not an expert - I just believe we (education) are not dealing with issues very well. We try, but we just are not equipped (or funded) to work with kids out of the norm. And like I said before, what is the norm?

anno
well don't know about the other ladies but ya an expert becouse you are in the adult edu field, if not an expert then at lest we all know you know more about the current stuff in edu. makes ya more of an expert than me

celtic

Okay, I will tell you what I know. Not much! LOL

ADD or ADHD is generally treated with medication. Ridelin is still the most popular drug. In some cases it works beautifully and kids have great outcomes. For others, it causes a lack of appetite (or worse) and can be frustrating for the child. Classroom teachers are not trained to deal with severe cases of ADD and often these children become behavioral problems. Classrooms are unfairly packed with students, especially in very rural areas and in large metropolitan schools. Ah, a bit of my frustration is coming through here.

ODD (oppositional defiant disorder - I hate this name) again is treated mainly with drugs.

OCD (compulsive behavior like Dianne's counting) is usually treated by professionals, not schools. I think it is important to have therapy for this (and most disorders) but schools generally do not have problems with these students, so little is done by the schools.

Making everything even more difficult is the fact that seldom is a student diagnosed with only one disorder. There are so many kids with mulitiple diagnosis, or alphabet soup disorders , often they only get help for one and the other gets ignored.

Okay, that is all I got, girlfriend.

Us OCD'ers are too busy counting, etc. to cause problems.

My first son was diagnosed ADD and put on Ritalin. He hated it! It took a while for them to get the dosage right but he was hallucinating and it was awful. His teacher wouldn't let him come to class without it. He settled down after a while but today, he's still fast paced and keeps his leg moving when he's sitting.

unles di the OCD effects behaviour....the desks may have to re-arranged lol.

OCD and addiction is reallie common. No not all OCD are addicted but addiction is classed as another type of obsessional compulsive disorder....the obsesion and compulsion being directed towards drugs...they get clean, but still very troubled then obsesife and intrusive thinking starts......Their is a certine "type" of mind set and thinking that addicts desplay...thats diffrent from problemed or very heavie drinkers...I got a thousand funnie stories to tell on that area....funnie as they are they never funnie to the person at the time (well rarely)

but back to you di spacificallie does it effect behaviour like cleaning obsesisly?

Do you mind being asked thse types of questions?

celtic

Oh, Dianne, if it does cause you to clean compulsively, would you mind visiting my house someday? Soon? Even sooner?

Wow, I know lots about this topic due to the fact that two of my kids have been diagnosed and treated.

My daughter is 19 and has been on medication since second grade for ADHD. Now professionals are saying there's no difference between ADD and ADHD and I totally disagree because my son has ADD and thier symptoms are very different.

ADHD has the hyperactivity component. Both are treated with the same types of mild altering drugs. Yes, they are mind altering. No getting around it.

During the time that doctors and teachers were suggesting medication, I was totally freaked out. No kid of mine was going to be medicated. I was very ignorant. I read, visited doctors, psychiatrists, educators, etc. and came to realize that there was no harm in trying. If it didn't work, then no more medicine. Ritalin was tried and it worked like a dream for school, but it altered her appetite and sleep. Theough much thought and consideration, we chose to stay on the medicine because she felt better on it and was able to sit still, learn, and it improved her relationships too.


My daughter also has learning disabilities. We learned this very early on in her education so she went to a private school for kids with learning disabilities from grades 6-12. It was a godsend. She had no more than seven kids in her classes, often only a few. These kids are bright, they just have issues they make their learning slower, harder, more complicated.

The school she attended taught through many applications. They did lots of hands on learning. Some of their tests were given in bigger print, separated into sections, even able to take tests orally. The point is that the kids absorbed and learned fabulously. They just learned differently than being lectured to. Most school systems lecture and expect kids to absorb.

Okay, so now she's in a small college and doing well. Again, small, but nothing like her old school. This is your typical college but they do have support for kids who need it jsut like all colleges must offer. She learned to be a tremendous self-advocate at her old school so she's gone for tutoring, meetings with teachers, asked for more time when testing, etc. Some kids would suffer in silence, but the beauty of my daughter is that she knows who she is and what she needs. She learned all about her learning disabilites, understand them, and know what she needs to succeed. It's who she is and she's totally cool with it. She works incredibly hard. Others would never put forth the effort she does to learn new things because they've never had to. She's awesome and I admire her tenacity. Her work eithic will take her very far in the work place.

Now all of this is by the grace of God because we were fortunate to be able to send her to that school. It cost more than 20 grand a year. Our son was going to college cheaper. Anyway, that's part of my point. Many children do not have this type of opportunity. They have to put up with the public school system which says they meet the needs of each child, but it's impossible.

Now, my son wasn't diagnosed with ADD until he was in high school. He's the kind of kid who did well enough, listened, got along well with others, was loved by others and just got by being a good kid and doing his best. So why have him tested?- oh yeah, I forgot to mention all the education testing my daughter went through. She had several batteries of tests done by three different specialists before we agreed to medication. Anyway, we had him tested because he said he couldn't stay focused, couldn't study, his mind wandered, etc. Sure enough he was diagnosed with ADD and an auditory learning disability which apparently often go together. He tried medication and the first day he was on it, he got in the car when I picked him up and said, I felt like I could have written forever in English. It was Adderal. It made a tremendous difference. He quickly became an all but one course straight A student. No kidding.

But here's the rest of the story. He didn't like the way her felt when he was coming off the medicine. He felt all pent up and bothered whicih is totally out of character for him. He told the doctor and she told him to take another dose mid to late day and that would carry him to bedtime. Remember, he's in high school so he's speaking for himself.

He didn't want to do it so he stopped taking it completely. He finished high school without taking any medication except when he had to take tests, especially the SATs. His doctor told him he could use it when he wanted and that's what he did.

Now he's in college and decided he needs to take it again. They switched him to Ritalin and he's taking medicine again. Only on school days. Says he can't tell a big difference so he probably needs a little bit of a bigger dose but I'm leaving it up to him.

Here are some things I've learned through the years. When our doctor put my son on his medication, she told him he might not always want to take it. He's very creative. He's our film major. She shared that his mind is quick and able to carry many thoughts at once which is beneficial to a person in a creative field. She offered that he may only want to take it when he needs to learn new information. Interesting, huh?

Oh gosh, I could talk forever on this topic, but I'll take a break.

here's one more thing before I go. I know a young man who turned 18 and said he didn't want to take his medication any more. He'd been taking it since he was six. He no longer takes it and is absolutely fine. Now don't you wonder what his childhood might have been like had he not been medicated?

This is a very complex topic.

The problem lies in having a slight touch of ADD too. I might start cleaning and get distracted and start another chore and forget the one I started! So, I can have several projects going at one time and none of them get finished.

My husband wishes I was a compulsive cleaner! He's really anal about everything being in it's place. I'm not. We both try to compromise.

I don't mind these questions at all and I never knew there was a connection with addiction. I better be careful, huh?

This is interesting...I thought I was just a typical scatter-brained artsy bohemian nut. You just described me, Dianne. I get distracted very easily. Maybe that's the way writers are. People used to call these symptoms interesting..maybe even creative…maybe even intelligent…
Am I wrong or am I right?
When I think back on my son's behaviour he was a jump up and down hyper kid. He was bored with school, couldn't concentrate, the clown of the class…and didn't make college.

Now he is the top manager in one of the biggest real-estate companies in Muenich…and is bringing in those mulas. Figure? His charisma and charm is his big asset. I wonder if I had suppressed his natural "liveliness" with drugs; if he still would have been himself.

I got to admit, I was never sure it would turn out all right. And we were often worried about him. If we had know about ADDS then, I probably would have put him on medication, just like you did, Dotsie.