How many ADHD kids does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

hahaha. when u have a child with adhd, this joke is particularly funny.

i have about 7 students total with adhd and about 4 more with add

i have to go to training seminars to learn how to teach kids with add, adhd

i pray i can do something for my son now so we won't have those kinds of problems at school, though he is 5 and is looking like he has some attention issues ... we will see..

i think add/adhd is mostly an excuse to medicate your kid.

key word : kid
if a kid WASNT hyper and bouncy, i'd be getting it checked out.

everybody i ever went to school with could be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. None of them ever paid attention, unless they enjoyed what they were doing.

Doesn't mean you have a disorder, it means the teacher sucks at making learning enjoyable. I've had teachers that were amazing at their job. I've had teachers that sucked.

Anyone can learn anything if they want to, what influences that want is if it bores them to tears or not.

They told me my son was ADHD ... His Kg teacher actully fucking told me she wouldnt let him back in her class till he was checked out .. W T F is THAT all about .. I wanted to punch the bitch in the throat! WE got him checked out they put him on meds and I hated that fucking shit because it made him all zombie.. he didnt learn a damn thing in the bitched class and in the next grade we took him off and did ok , the year after he did great and LOVED his teacher. He hasn't been back on the meds since... I found out my Uncle sufferes from it and I prolly have it too .. atleast I act like it 80% of the time rofl

I'm sure it's a legitimate disorder, but one I also feel pretty certain is way too often misdiagnosed. I agree with Vex...if a kid acts like a kid they seem to be labled ADD...but I also think the parents need to start setting parameters for their kids, and not letting them run the households. Too many kids today live with adults who have no idea what in the world it means to 'parent'.

^ much agreed. One of the 1324346 reasons i won't have kids, is because EVERYONE ELSE seems to suck ass at parenting. I wouldn't want to shelter my kid, but they are impressionable little people, and easily influenced by their surroundings, which sadly, would be other brat kids. Parents have turned into pussies now. When i was young and i acted out, i got spanked, or punished. and im not talking a slap on the hand, or a "stern glare". Parents nowadays seem to damn near ignore their kids.

add and adhd are legitamate disorders i didnt think so until i started teaching and saw it first hand iof my students, 90 % LOVE math, math happens to be their favorite subject i love it and my enthusiasm carries over to the kids now 8% feel eh about math but love other subjects and the other 2% have attention disorders, i do agree with shay a lot can be done if there are active parents that dont sit their kid in front of the tv from the time he gets home from school till its time to go to bed, and so on but for now i find it amazing how i do have some kids with awesome personalities but can not stay seated or quiet they need to sing or whatever... and they get swats from our principle, but they still can't control themselves, they just dont have the ability to sit still. Its an all around cultural result from how our society is headed.

Well, my daughter can be rather spastic, but the first person to suggest she gets put on drugs for it will promptly be told to go fuck themselves. She's a kid, like Vex said. She can sit beside me on the computer and be mellow as can be, doing her Playhouse Disney or some of the learning progs we have for her even, and yeah she fidgets around. In school she does have a hard time staying in her seat I guess, and prefers to get up and walk around talking to her friends. I think that just has more to do with her outgoing personality than her attention span tbh. She loves people, and can't understand why some kids seem to act funny when she says hi! out in public. That's what kills me. They look at her like she's from another planet, yet all she's doing is being polite. She'll learn soon enough; fuck 'em all.

I agree that add and adhd are legitimate disorders, and while I really don't know what to say about 'swatting' children with honest to god learning disabilities, I think that's probably an idealogical matter or something that is, perhaps, better not to get into.

I also think there are many many wonderful parents of children with add/adhd who do everything they can to help their child thrive *points to Rikr*

I know ADHD far too well than I would like to. I have 5 kids with major ADHD and I have it myself. Well, at least they call what I have ADHD now -- when I was a kid, they hadn't dreamed up that label yet, and said what I had was minimal brain damage. Gotta love that label; it sounds like I was dropped on my head or something. :/

ADHD is a bullshit remedy to get kids doped up on drugs. It is not healthy. Look at it from a world perspective, Italy for example, uses like 10% of the medication ( a really low low rate) per person that the average joe in the USA uses... and they live longer.

I bet I would have been diagnosed with ADHD, actualy I'm 100% sure I would have been. But I grew up in a backwater town way up north, so kids being obnoxious and what not is pretty much typical.

Unless you are a foster parent or something, tell them no.

1) Mothers when told their child is sick rarely beleive so.

2) Mothers when shown the truth about their children rarely believe so.

3) Teachers over estimate their own importance and education.

4) Pharmaceutical companies control much of the medical colleges and grants for people to study other remedies.

5) America is driven by the almighty dollar.

agree with Maso ! and Math owns all other subjects!! ** refer to number 3 on his list!

I soo agree with Billie about not swatting kids for legitimate disorders, I don't get it either, but I just work there, then again of course my best friend got fired cause she has a boyfriend and her divorce is not finalized yet, man i love my church except when it starts acting like a church =(

I think that about 90% of the time when they say a kid has ADD or ADDHD is either misdiagnosed or overdiagnosed. MY nephew for example, last year when he was in First grade the teacher tried to convince my brother that he had ADD since he would never pay attention in class, she tried to get the principal to force my Brother to get him on medication or he would be expelled, WTF?! is that the way it is nowadays? a techer has a problem kid so the solution is expell them? whatever happened to trying?

funny thing is he never went on the meds, moved to a different school and is doing fine..

in his case its not "ADD" its "Incredibly spoiled brat" which i think is a FAR more common condition.

yes...when my daughter was in fourth grade, we moved from a small town where she was younger than most of the kids in her class (she started kindergarten at 4, and turned 5 in October, but there most parents kept their kids out of school till they were closer to 6)
Anyway, the teachers there understood that because of the age difference she was a little more 'rambunctous' than some of the other students, but she had no problem doing the work, in fact got almost all A's through out elementary school. However, when we moved and were living temporarily in an even smaller town, the 4th grade teacher wanted to hold her back a year, saying she was emotionally below the other students. She was still getting nothing but A's in all the subjects, but the teacher was having a difficult time keeping her interested in the subjects. Had she ever expressed the tiniest bit of difficulty in understanding what was being taught, I would have had no problem keeping her back at all. Fortunately, we moved to a very large city by 5th grade, and she was finally in with more kids her age, and teachers more adept at teaching. She never had any other issues in school again.

Like anyone in any field, you're going to run into those who should be doing something different. It's just hard when you have no control over them, and your kids are involved. Parents need to be very active in their kids lives, including school. Be willing to listen objectively when suggestions are made, but knowing when to go with their gut.

Kids really do look to their parents to guide them, it's our responsibility not to fail them.

I suppose my experiences are just very different from a lot of the people posting on this thread. We all have our personal anecdotes and I guess I should thank my lucky stars that I know so many caring, wonderful parents doing the best they can to deal with their child's disabilities. It still makes me very sad to see these parents trying so hard and getting treated as though they are the worst sort of stereotypical negligent or indulgent parent because their kid has some special needs. I've had friends that have received hate mail because their child could not stop acting up in class. Hate mail, not letters of concern, just ugly, horrible, anonymous hate mail. For a society that over diagnoses, there is shockingly little tolerance in our culture for those who develop outside the typical spectrum. That's not to say I'm offended by the joke that started this thread; it was a funny joke, I laughed, but...we're making fun of little kids here.

ADD/ADHD isn't 'cured' by medications. Medication can help to make the disorder more manageable, but parents and children still have to work to fit in with typical expectations. It isn't as easy as doping the kid up, and sometimes medication is not the best solution.

Perhaps it is a matter of being in a so so school system...my school system is one of the best, particularly for children with special needs, and they are very prepared and educated in dealing with said needs. I have a friend who lives in Kansas City and her experiences in working with her school system were -worlds- different than my own.

I love responses like ADD is bullshit, and is not a real issue. Until you've walked in a parents shoes who has to deal with it day in and day out, with no signs of it letting up, I would venture to say that the comments like this hold no merit. Believe me ADD/ADHD are real. I've seen children that their parents claim this to be the diagnosis, and I know for sure that it is a child just being a child and not a ADD/HD kid.

We have a child who CANNOT FOCUS ON ANYTHING AND BOUNCES OFF OF THE WALLS every single day. We try and would love to sit and play simple board games and do simple tasks. It is not possible. He cannot focus long enough to even get started.

You may think that meds simply "dope up the kid" into being zombies. You clearly have not seen medication work as intended. ADHD medications do not cure brat-ness (ok so I made up a word here). They slow the child's mind down, to explain it in the easiest possible way, to concentrate on simple tasks, like coloring a picture.

It is irritating that the opinion is parents don't know how to raise their children and take the easy way out and medicate their children so they don't have to take care of them. I'll concede that there is probably a high % of parents that are misinformed, or too lazy to care, and give their children medication when they don't need it....turning normal kids into zombies. However, I assure you not everyone is like this.

It's easy to pass judgement when you have no actual experience in having to deal with this type of issue day in and day out.

EDIT:

Watching your child struggle with simple tasks is very heart breaking. When a child cannot focus enough to color a picture, or make some kind of small craft without getting so frustrated that it doesn't get done, it is very heart breaking. Medication is not something most parents agree with. I don't agree with it. But we had to try something. In school it would be frustrating watching all my friends accomplishing things that I would not be able to do. Medication is helping our child to focus and accomplish small tasks. He can still be a brat at times yes...but that has nothing to do with anything but him being a kid.

well said rikr

they pulled this shit about my oldest. i think it's the only time my ex and i actually 100% agreed on something. my son's problem was not ADD/ADHD ~ it was simply the effects of divorce on a child. he was acting out. the school tried to say he couldn't come back until he was on meds ~ my ex just smiled and asked to see the rule that covered that. they couldn't (go figure). for the sake of all involved, we had him tested ~ and even the pediatrician thought it was insane. 3 years later, he's doing just fine ~ without drugs.

having seen kids who are truly add/adhd, and how they are on and off meds, i totally support the need for this treatment. HOWEVER ~ having also seen the opposite, i really think schools need to stop trying to diagnose children and get back to teaching them. (a friend of mine had to put her daughter in Sylvan because the she was 2 years behind her age level. And her grades did not reflect it. they only caught it because she switched schools)

i wasn't implying adhd doesn't exist, or any parent that puts their kid on ritalin or similar is a cheap piece of shit parent. around here though, if a kid even remotely acts like a kid, they get put on meds. THAT is heart-breaking.