At what point do you start to wonder what's going on....
DS2's teachers have complained he doesn't pay attention and we should talk to his pediatrician. Well this morning I had yet another conversation with a mom in DS2's class. She just moved here and she too was referred and was asking about pediatricians. I now know of 6 boys in DS's class that have been referred to the pediatrician this year to be evaluated for ADD.
My son is younger than yours (4, nearly 5) and is still in pre-school, but we had a similar situation. The teacher called us in for a conference to tell us that our son didn't pay attention in class. Um, he's 4? I asked a lot of questions about his behavior and specifically about his behavior in comparison to several other 4 year old boys (not by name, but I know that they are 3 other boys in his class that have birthdays within a month of his). Her answers helped me see that my son's behavior was not typical just because he's a 4 year old boy, but outside of the norm and we are currently having him evaluated.
I would first ask his teacher what her expectations of the kids are, if those expectations are in line with developmental milestones for 6 year old boys, and if your son's behavior is far outside the others in his class. To me, it sounds like she's having trouble managing her class but it might be the case that at least some of the kids, maybe not your son, have ADD and really should be evaluated.
This is excessive. Can a teacher even make that kind of suggestion without consulting a counselor or principal?
I'd be starting some discussions with people, the teacher and a higher up in the school.
When I was teaching we were told numerous times that we ARE NOT ALLOWED to tell parents they need to take their children to a doctor (especially not for something like classroom management issues).
Often times medical issues and medications are discussed alongside IEPs and 504 plans, but the teachers (and that extends to any school employee) are NOT allowed to refer or suggest medical attention.
Yeah that's way outside the norm, I'm thinking this is a teacher/expectations issue.
This.
We talk about kids a lot and whether we think they should be referred for testing for attention issues. However, we're not actually qualified to diagnose, so it could be that she has questions about kids, so she's just being safe. However, a lot of teachers (IME) don't know what to do with non-compliant kids (aka: 6 year old boys), so what is normal behavior looks like attention issues. I would not worry much about it unless I was seeing similar issues at home.
A referral to a pedi doesn't necessarily mean medication, but that seems to be the implication here. I would certainly not jump to needing to medicate without a full eval. We ask parents to get testing done, but only after a pretty extensive, documented observation on our part (and we're talking 2-3 kids a year out of 60)
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
When my kids have had problems in school - the FIRST thing the schools did was to have an in school evaluation done. Because if a child is having in school issues - they may need an IEP. IMO - an IEP should come well before medication.
And a classroom teacher referring kids to a pediatrician?? NOT EVEN A FUCKING PSYCHOLOGIST TO EVALUATE IF THERE'S AN ISSUE? but STRAIGHT TO A FUCKING PEDIATRICIAN? Which seems to essential say - just med the kid up. No fucking way.
This is what how I am interpreting this.
Maybe the teacher isn't experienced (or too old-school??) to know the difference, in which case she needs to be schooled immediately.
My kid has an IEP. I asked for more testing at our last meeting and they told me in the meeting I had to take him to pediatrician to be dx if there was a language/reading processing issue.
Post by CallingAllAngels on Oct 15, 2015 10:22:36 GMT -5
We are having attention/focus issues with my 5 year old since she started kindergarten. The school won't evaluate unless there is an academic concern (which there isn't), so they said that if we were concerned about ADD we should see our pediatrician for an evaluation. However, they made it very clear to us that it was our choice to do that.
I just wanted to add that we've noticed in our preschool that the boys are consistently commented on as problematic at a far higher rate than the girls. I've seen the girls pull plenty of their own shit, so I think the teachers just have different expectations, which is really messed up.
To be fair girls go undiagnosed despite having AD(H)D at a high rate which can impact their success later for this exact reason. The different expectations hurts both sides just in different ways.
At what point do you start to wonder what's going on....
DS2's teachers have complained he doesn't pay attention and we should talk to his pediatrician. Well this morning I had yet another conversation with a mom in DS2's class. She just moved here and she too was referred and was asking about pediatricians. I now know of 6 boys in DS's class that have been referred to the pediatrician this year to be evaluated for ADD.
At what point do you start to wonder what's going on....
DS2's teachers have complained he doesn't pay attention and we should talk to his pediatrician. Well this morning I had yet another conversation with a mom in DS2's class. She just moved here and she too was referred and was asking about pediatricians. I now know of 6 boys in DS's class that have been referred to the pediatrician this year to be evaluated for ADD.
At what point is it the school and not the boys?
How old is he? What grade? How long has the teacher been teaching?
I have had to explicitly tell teachers (usually grade 1), that it is not ok for them to suggest parents take their child to the doctor without speaking to me first.
My kid has an IEP. I asked for more testing at our last meeting and they told me in the meeting I had to take him to pediatrician to be dx if there was a language/reading processing issue.
At what point do you start to wonder what's going on....
DS2's teachers have complained he doesn't pay attention and we should talk to his pediatrician. Well this morning I had yet another conversation with a mom in DS2's class. She just moved here and she too was referred and was asking about pediatricians. I now know of 6 boys in DS's class that have been referred to the pediatrician this year to be evaluated for ADD.
At what point is it the school and not the boys?
How old is he? What grade? How long has the teacher been teaching?
this is the first year it has been a problem. he's in 4th
My kid has an IEP. I asked for more testing at our last meeting and they told me in the meeting I had to take him to pediatrician to be dx if there was a language/reading processing issue.
Do Peds in the U.S. do educational psych evals?
No.. and that's what so ridiculous. So I take him to the Ped who refers us to educ psych to do the testing when the school has an ed psych on staff. She was apparently qualified to give him IQ tests and evaluate him for autism but not for learning disabilities???
this is weird. Our pediatrician specifically told us that the schools/teachers are unlikely to suggest having kids evaluated by their pediatricians and that they basically are told not to suggest it.
It seems like a teacher issue to me if she's the one suggesting it and I'd go over her head.
this is weird. Our pediatrician specifically told us that the schools/teachers are unlikely to suggest having kids evaluated by their pediatricians and that they basically are told not to suggest it.
It seems like a teacher issue to me if she's the one suggesting it and I'd go over her head.
This varies by district. The one my Mom taught in had this as an unofficial rule. My local district doesn't and teachers will suggest testing.
No.. and that's what so ridiculous. So I take him to the Ped who refers us to educ psych to do the testing when the school has an ed psych on staff. She was apparently qualified to give him IQ tests and evaluate him for autism but not for learning disabilities???
It's the same here...Peds do ASD diagnoses, they would do ADHD too, ODD, OCD, probably some other stuff...educational psychologists do LDs, Giftedness, Mild Intellectual Delay, they can also do ADHD as part of a larger screening (like we would never ask them to test for JUST ADHD but it can come up within the parameters of testing for an LD, for example).
Parents here take their kids to do private ed psych eval because of the waiting time for school board staff (usually sits at one year).
Post by UMaineTeach on Oct 15, 2015 21:05:51 GMT -5
I've referred parents to a Dr. before, to get an opinion about a referral to EI. The EI system we have going on responds to parent self-referrals; responds to Dr. referrals, but takes forever to respond to a school/daycare referral.
If we (me and parents) are meeting and agree there might be a problem, I'll tell them it will be faster to call this # yourself or talk to the Dr.