Tags and categories: is your son "Special needs"?

It’s a drama that is performed over and over again in every city across the country, somewhere between kindergarten and second grade. A child’s teachers are concerned that the child is not performing at the expected level and ask the parents to talk to the child’s doctor. The parents reluctantly bring up the subject in the doctor’s office, and the doctor speaks directly to the teacher. Suddenly, the acronyms start flowing: does the child have ADHD? What about CAPD? Maybe it’s DDS-NOS?… and all the parents are thinking is “Our child is not a label.”

That thought is not only perfectly natural, it is absolutely correct. No child is a label, and in fact, assigning a label to your child will affect how their life progresses for much of their foreseeable future. The important part for any parent to remember as they learn that their child may not be quite typical is that etiquette can, and in many cases is, a positive change for a child who is really struggling.

an honest story

A man named Michael was kind enough to share his story about his struggle with a son who needed help:

“My name is Michael and I spent a year insisting my son didn’t have ADHD. I didn’t believe ADHD was real; we’ve heard so many stories about how it’s overdiagnosed and so many kids are on Adderall and Ritalin or whatever, so , how could my son really have it? I told his teachers that he was just a kid, just a little unruly, and they could deal with it.”

“Then one day, six months into the school year, his teacher called us in for a meeting, and she basically had a breakdown in front of us. Our son already had an IEP because he had speech delays, and they had used it discreetly. IEP for our son to have seven people helping him every school day.He had a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, three assistants, and his normal teacher…and he was still completely unable to get through most days. “

“It caught us off guard, but it’s because we didn’t want to deal with the fact that our son might have issues beyond his speech delays (which he easily outgrew in kindergarten). So we started looking into it. My mother-in-law is a nutritionist, and she gave us a ton of advice on ADHD and food. We tried dozens of diets, several different levels of physical intervention…at one point, I’d wake up two hours before school so we could follow the dictionary the size of a dictionary in this four-year-old’s backpack and have him run a mile with me before he gets on the school bus. Nothing. By the time he got to school, he was uncontrollable again like he was never exhausted.”

“Finally, two years after we first heard the diagnosis, we requested a prescription. It took us a few months to find the right medication at the right level…and literally three months later, our first grader was brought out.” special education and put him in a real class with kids who weren’t problematic. Now he loves school and is scoring two grades higher in math and reading than his peers.”

“In the end, having our son labeled, openly acknowledged by everyone involved as someone who needed help, but managed pretty well once he had it, was the best thing that happened to him. I’ll never regret it.”

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