The ADHD Question

I will state from the outset that I was diagnosed with ADHD at the same time as my son was diagnosed with ADD. I have to say that it was a huge relief, to at last have a reason for my son's behaviour, but also it made my life make a lot more sense.

My point in this are twofold, the attitude of some schools in the UK to ADHD and other similar issues, such as those on the ASD spectrum, and the parents who jump on the bandwagon of ADHD because they can't be bothered to discipline their children.

On the first point, the attitude of schools, here in the UK, ADHD is recognised to a degree but it isn't really understood in some mainstream schools. To get any understanding of the issues these children face you have to go to the Special Needs schools. I know this because my daughter works as a teacher in one and I've seen for myself the difference in how these children are treated.

However, these children all have either severe learning difficulties or behavioural problems that mainstream schools can't cater for. My son didn't come under that category; in fact, he was tested at seven and a half and was found to have a reading age of thirteen and a maths age of ten. He passed his Eleven Plus, which in the UK meant he was bright enough to go to Grammar School, a quite prestigious achievement here. Sadly, he didn't complete his time there, not because of his lack of ability, but because of the fact that they didn't know how to teach him. They admitted to me that they had never had a boy with ADHD before and their Special Needs teacher had to go on a course to find out how to deal with it. She failed miserably when it came to the reality of helping my son adapt to a very highly pressured environment, expecting him to be organised, and if she pushed him enough she could mould him into the perfect little robot like the rest of the perfect little robots in the perfect school.

We took him out, he had been bullied the whole time he was there and nothing was done except to send my son to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist saw him only once because he didn't need to see a psychiatrist, a small victory for us, it did say a lot about the school. He eventually ended up at the same school as his sister, where they knew about ADHD, having more children there with it. He did well enough and I have to say with a lot of hard work from us and the schools from the time he was young, he has grown up to be a well-respected and successful member of society, as they say with a good job and a lovely girlfriend.

So, to my second point, yes, my son had issues with his behaviour, more through boredom than anything else, but he was challenging as a child, of that there is no doubt. I do, however, remember being told by one of the specialists who diagnosed him saying to me, if you hadn't been as strict with him as you have been, he would have been out of control by now. I had had relatives who had said back off him, you're always on at him, one relative said they'd have him for a week and sent him back after five days.

My point is, that all children need discipline, it doesn't matter whether they have problems or not. If you don't discipline them, then you will have problems. There were times when my son misbehaved because he was just being naughty, there were other times when he was bored or stressed so was reacting to his situation; I had to learn to tell the difference and discipline appropriately. I didn't always get it right, I tried and sometimes I failed. What frustrates me are the parents who don't bother to discipline their children at all and then say well my child has ADHD when they clearly don't. I can give an example. Along the road from me was a family, the father worked, the mother stayed at home. They had two children, a boy and a girl, every day these two children, the little girl being about two at the time, the boy about four, would be running around the streets. Sometimes they were not even dressed, they would be playing outside while the mother sat inside, leaving the door open for them because she didn't like the mess they made indoors. The little girl would often go back to the house but the boy, as he got older would cycle off all over the place on his bike.

The father would come home and have to go searching for his son, there was definitely drugs in the house but unsure as to which of the parents were indulging. The mother may have been suffering from depression, it's something I don't know, but after they moved house from our area there was an article in the paper about them. The mother was complaining that her son had ADHD and had been victimised by several schools after being expelled from two schools and suspended from his latest one, he was only six years old.

I really wanted to write an article, screaming about how hard it is bringing up a child with ADHD, trying to get the help that they need. It makes it so much harder when parents like this start jumping on the proverbial bandwagon to cover what is essentially bad parenting. It also means that those of us who have children with genuine problems are tarred with that same bad parenting brush. I’ve seen the looks on people’s faces, the one that says surely you should have some control over that child; the one from the teacher’s face that says can’t you get him to do one simple thing. The thing is I was doing all of those things and yet still judgement, for many years, lay heavy upon me. I feel vindicated now, and I know that the hard work paid off, but so many other parents are still struggling with this issue today, things haven’t really changed and my son is now twenty-nine.

Angel