deimos3428 wrote:Please, my pet pig could solve that one for x!  Mind you, he only spoke French.  

(NB:  The following joke only works with a rudimentary understanding of numerals in French.)

A lemur farmer had a pig that he claimed could solve mathematical questions.  When his friends expressed disbelief, he demonstrated.

Lemur Farmer: Pig, what is three times three?
Pig continues to eat slop, but mutters the correct result several times:  "Nuff nuff nuff nuff".
Lemur Farmer: Pig, what is eleven minus two?
Pig continues to eat slop, but mutters the correct result yet again:  "Nuff nuff nuff nuff".
Lemur's Unimpressed Friends:  Oh come on, the answer is always nine.  Pigs just make sounds like that.  It doesn't know math.
Lemur Farmer:  Fine.  I'll prove it.  Pig, what is two times four?
(Lemur then gives the Pig a sharp kick!)
Pig: Runs off squealing the correct answer: "Weet! Weet! Weet!".

DAMN!! I was bidding on and winning items tonight on ebay, well all was fine when I hit the place bid button on the last item was bidding on, I got sent to the sign in page. AAARRGH!! The 24 hour sign in thing. Damn again. LOL.

FormCritic wrote:Hi, Guys:

  I wrote a long post about ADHD, Ritalin and psycho-stimulants.  

  Then, I deleted it as needlessly pedantic.

  As a special education teacher, the best advice I can give you about ADHD is not to take amateur advice....including mine.  Don't take my word for it....

  Instead, get the advice of licensed physicians.  Follow their advice.

  (For instance, I would never have presumed to diagnose ADHD based upon my teaching credentials...and I certainly would never have put such a diagnosis in writing...an impossibly stupid thing to do.  I would have gently and tactfully referred child and parents to the school psychologist.)

I would say the best advice is from a personal physician or personal psychologist, not one hired by the school.  It eliminates any conflict of interest there.  Mark, as a teacher yourself, you know that the goal of many teachers (like any other job out there) is merely to get through the day. If a kid or two learns something, fine, but a lot of teachers (once again, as in any profession), are there to collect a paycheck. Often those are the ones that use would enjoy a classroom full of zombified, obediant children at the cost of perhaps having a couple kids disrupting the class.   I know personally of a couple of school administrators that would be over joyed to rule over a school full of these type of students, as it would make their day of doing very little much more enjoyable.  

My wife and I were often on the receiving end of advice from teachers and school administrators about how to control our high spirited daughter, and their suggestions contained a lot of amateur medical advice....to which we would inform them that's what medical school was for, and they needed to get a degree or get out of the business of giving medical suggestions.

   Two personal opinions from an amateur (me) that you can take or leave as you see fit:
  
1)  It is ironic that this discussion strand includes people heaping scorn upon the Wisconsin parents who would not seek proper medical treatment for their daughter's diabetes because of the parents' pig-headed opinions.  Think that over....chew on it a bit......

If I stopped taking my insulin, I would be dead in a couple of weeks; if I don't give my child Ritalin, there is a very good chance he grows up completely fine and productive.  There is a huge difference between life altering medicines and mood altering ones.  By ANY sane stretch, my middle brother in the 70's was ADD (only they called it hyperactive back then). He had every single ADD signpost, and we often laugh that if Ritalin had been as heavily prescribed back then, he would have been on it, but GOOD.  He somehow got through without it though.

    It seems equally strange to speculate that a group of children involved in criminal activities might be suffering from ADHD....and then blame their treatment for the criminal behavior.

It's actually not entirely odd.  Many times, the treatment is worse than the disease.  I'll pull back the curtain a little, my youngest brother suffered through mild depression in his last few years of high school (due to many different factors). After several consults with respected psychiatrists and therapists, he was put on some mood altering medicine (lithium and something else) that was there to "perk him up".  After several months, he told us years later, the medicine made him much, MUCH worse, to the point he was seriously considering suicide (whereas before he had just been mildly depressed).  He found out later that many patients on this anti-depressant had instead killed themselves (?).  On his own, my brother stopped taking the medicine, and almost immediately got better...the suicidal thoughts disappeared completely, and eventually he got rid of his depression (or at least controlled it) by going to group therapy instead of taking drugs....a course that worked for him much better than the supposed "anti depressant" drugs he was taking.

2)  When consulting physicians, it is still good to be skeptical.  Cross-check the advice of different physicians...particularly if one of them tells you ADHD either does not exist or that it can be treated by quack medicine involving vitamins or colored glasses.  

I think a lot of the problems come from the "one size fits all" type of society we live in.  We place labels on everything to understand it better: Liberal, conservative, Yankees fan, enviormentalist, Republican, Democrat, etc.  Thus, we expect the same result from, say, Ritalin given to a wide cross section of kids, some of which might not need it. This is totally amateur speculation here, but I'm sure Ritalin works for some kids (just as anti depressant medicine saves some people's lives). The problem seems to be that a teacher has an unruly, disruptive kid, that kid is prescribed Ritalin, and becomes a model student.  "Wow", the teacher thinks, "What if Billy, John and Betty ALSO were able to become model students?  They are sometimes disruptive, unruly, and interrupt the class with their antics?".  So the next parent teacher conference, they suggest to the parents their kid acts exactly like another kid in the class, who had ADHD, and now that kid is a model student because they are on Ritalin, maybe they need to look into that?  

I totally respect your work, Mark, which is why I was interested in hearing your opinion. My aunt was (is still) a special education teacher for 40 years....in the Rio Grande Valley where many kids are poor, hispanic and transient and their parents don't often get the medical help necessary for them to function in society. I'll have to ask her the next time I see her how many of the kids are/were on drugs like Ritalin and did they help.  I know she's loved her job for all those years even though it seems to me like she's worked twice as hard as any teacher I've ever had or known.

One fact to consider:

   Ritalin is a psycho-stimulant.  It does not "dope" a child.  Psycho-stimulants increase brain activity.

    This is counter-intuitive, but it is also true.

Oddly enough though, lots of those on Ritalin tell of muddled thinking, emotionless behavior, and feel sometimes as if a "curtain" has been raised between them and the real world. Many that are doing well in school because of such drugs still end up dropping them because they report being "dead" to the world and wanting to "feel" again.  A lot of the kids that lived with us told us this in almost the exact words I used. One girl said it was if a different person was in her body doing things each day...which would personally creep me the hell out.  I think it's interesting how many of the girls that came to live with us started doing better in school, and in their behavior, simply because of personal attention that was paid to them by my wife and I. In all cases their home life was awful; Ritalin seemed (to us) just a convenient one size fits all fix it up for a lot of the single moms and dads raising them, when just a little caring and personal attention would have brought the same result.  Instead of helping the kid, give her a drug and she'll get better seemed to be their mantra.

Mike B.

ADD is complete and utter crap.  Never existed until the pharm companies invented a drug for it.  Like most drugs today, it was a solution looking for a problem, so they invented one.  Now they write spiff checks to doctors for every scrip of Ritalin they can write.  So every kid that crosses the office threshold has ADD.  And every adult is depressed about it, and needs a pill for that.  Cuz that's another bonus check---CHA CHING!

It's also a nice little excuse for every parent and teacher in the western hemisphere who doesn't actually have the slightest clue how to relate to, discipline or work with children.  As in -- I can't deal with you, and it can't POSSIBLY be MY lack of parenting/teahing skills, so something must be wrong with YOU!  Here take this tranquilizer while I go watch TV.

Best and most accurate depiction of how to deal with ADD was the South Park ep concerning this.  Absolutely hilarious and dead on.

Kids are high spirited and have no attention span......................BECAUSE THEY ARE KIDS, for the LOVE OF PETE!!

Was that a pedantic enuff rant???  

My experience is limited to the professionals I work with.

  I guess I have no idea how teachers and other school professionals act in other regions.

  Ritalin is supposed to have a calming effect on people with ADHD.  

  The basic theory behind the use of psycho-stimulants is that the symptoms of ADHD are a result of low brain activity.  Because their brains are less active, they have less ability to concentrate and are easily bored without more intense stimuli.  Increasing brain activity is intended to give the patient increased abilty to concentrate during less stimulating activities...such as work or school.

   (This is why, for instance, a child with ADHD might play a video game all day but not be able to pay attention in class for even five minutes.  The same child might be supremely gifted at concentration while the male parent is standing over him...since the threat of imminent consequences is a form of increased stimulus.)

   Increased brain activity has the effect of reducing hyperactivity and impulsivity (the main ADHD symptons).

   When a physician's advice is followed, psycho-stimulants are successful in treading ADHD 80% of the time.  The other 20% presumably have symptoms which derive from other causes, including parenting, environmental concerns or other disabilities.

   The most common reason for the failure of psycho-stimulant treatment is failure to follow a physician's advice.  Families often sabotage ADHD treatment because of ordinary negligence (the parents are often suffering from ADHD as well) or out of a sense of guilt over having to "drug" their child, or a hostile attitude to mental health treatment.  Concerns over real or perceived side effects are also a major issue.

    Most often, the side effects of psycho-stimulants are an indication of problems with dosage, the need to acclimate to the drug or the search for the most effective drug.  These are indications of the need for more treatment, not less.  Families often choose to abandon therapy without taking steps to overcome initial complaints, concluding that psycho-stimulants don't work.

    In a number of studies involving psycho-stimulants, parents have chosen to withdraw their children from the studies because of severe side effects.  Often, the parents who reported the most severe side effects were the ones whose children were receiving a placebo.  In a study in Sweden, for instance, the rate of severe side effects among placebo users was something like 70%.

    ADHD has likely always been with us.  Everyone can think of a kid in school who displayed the symptoms.  

    Diagnosis of ADHD is consistent worldwide across cultures, nationalities, races and geography.  Doctors on all continents report similar symptoms and a consistent rate of diagnosis of 3.5% of the population.

   Among adults, ADHD symptoms are often concurrent with other problem behaviors such as alcoholism, drug addiction, extramarital affairs, crime and other undesired behaviors.

   Although research continues, recent vertical studies have tended to indicate that patients who receive long-term treatment using psycho-stimulants make striking progress.  The theory is that the use of the drug allows the development of new pathways in the brain that aid in self control.  (In short...the drug trains the brain to operate at a higher level.)

   Specifically within the United States, ADHD is diagnosed at a 9 to 1 rate in boys as compared to girls.  This may be the result of less intense manifestation of symptoms in girls.  (They act out in different ways.)

   Also, African Americans are significantly less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD....possibly as a result of cultural expectations and possibly because ADHD tends to be masked by other social or health problems within that group.

   Although there are many exceptions to the rule...and the rates of diagnosis are changing...in the United States the typical ADHD patient is a white male from an upper middle class family.  (Possibly because this is the group most likely to seek medical diagnosis for a mental health problem.  They are also the most likely to perceive the possible long-term negative consequences of failure to get treatment as early as possible.)

   Thus...in the late 90's, the state with the highest per capita use of Ritalin was........Utah.  

This is counter-intuitive, but most things about ADHD are counter-intuitive.

I'll drop it now.  

Mark

Thus...in the late 90's, the state with the highest per capita use of Ritalin was........Utah.  

This is counter-intuitive, but most things about ADHD are counter-intuitive.

It may have been for one year. For instance, in 2002 it had the 44th most per capita use among the 50 states. The year it ranked highly was probably anomalous, reflecting a high degree of % reporting, the state just newly allowing it (relative to other states), or something along those lines.

brute wrote:The textbook knowledge given seems to clash with the real life examples. As a father of two young children, I found both to be very disturbing. While I am completely against the ADHD / Ritalin duo, the posts here at least have shown us parents of young kids something to be wary of.

It's like anything....YMMV.  There are no magic bullets or miracle cures in this world.  I've heard anecdotal stories of Ritalin working wonders on unteachable kids.  I've witnessed clueless school administrators trying to foist it on kids who clearly don't need it.  The best advice for a parent is to weigh all the options carefully, and keep a close relationship with your children.  The problems come when parents want drugs to do their parenting for them, and/or teachers don't want to get their hands dirty actually doing their job.  The solution seems to be having a active, open relationship in your child's life.

I will still go down saying Ritalin and drugs like it are terribly over prescribed, though.

Mike B.

FormCritic wrote:I'll drop it now.  

Hey, welcome back, or something!  Thanks for the informative post.

Way off-topic, but a local TV station came on with a Weather Alert.  The weatherman said something like "Don't worry; we aren't interrupting the program you are watching.  We are interrupting commercials.  Now about the tornado watches in the DFW area . . ."

Granted, they have the little "tornado watch" icon on the screen of the TV, but if it becomes a "tornado warning", I don't care if CSI:NY is interrupted by the weatherman.  I do care if my TV viewing pleasure is interrupted by my roof being torn off . . .

Plaag wrote:A web comic I read twice weekly 'Looking for Group', this latest page I had to mention: http://www.lfgcomic.com/page/137

ShaneG.

Thats just too funny...........  
OK not TOOO funny, just funny enough.  
I ended up going to the first page and read for a while.
I am saving that link for later.