A couple of months ago we got the call from the teacher of our 6-year old son saying that “he may have ADHD”.
“Oh”, we said, “how’s that.?”
“Well,” they said, “he’s finding it difficult to focus in class compared to the others.”
“So, what should we do?” we said.
“Take him to see this specialist at Auckland Hospital”.
“Ok” we said.
After we filled out a long questionnaire and submitted it, my wife took our son to see the ‘specialist’. After 30 minutes of talking about the questionnaire to my wife the ‘specialist’ then diagnosed our son with ADHD and suggested that we put him on Ritalin. Job done! Note, the ‘specialist’ NEVER spoke directly with our son.
The ‘specialist’ gave us some material on the symptoms of ADHD and as I read through them I thought “this could apply to my other son, to me and pretty much every f**king person I know!” Needless to say, our reaction was not positive.
Not wanting to drug our 6-year old boy we then spent more time with him trying to understand the problems he was going through. We also took him to a child behavioural coach for an assessment. Her view was that his vestibular system was slightly underdeveloped but that with some hearing and balancing exercises this could be corrected.
We have followed this programme and I’m happy to say that his performance both at home and at school is much better. Most importantly, he’s happy and he’s learning. We’ve also included my parents in this and they also see improvements. He is very ‘hands on’ and loves building things with his Grandpa. As it turns out, this happens to be a great way to teach him mathematical fundamentals.
This got me thinking though. Both the school and the hospital would have led us to putting our 6-year old on Ritalin had we taken their advice. This is really scary when you think about it. It would have been so easy for our child to all of sudden be dosed up on something that we didn’t fully understand.
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders whether or not there is another agenda at play here. I’m not saying that the teacher or the ‘specialist’ are bad people, but perhaps the system has been designed in such a way to allow this to happen. Or perhaps, we as adults are just too ready these days to find quick fixes.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I have started my research on this and would love to hear from others who have experienced this themselves or who are knowledgeable in this area.
Some useful links below.
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/adhd/what-is-adhd
https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/natural-remedies
https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/02/doctors-quick-prescribe-drugs-adhd.html
https://www.naturalnews.com/023334_child_children_brain.html