Word: adhd
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...appropriate public education for a disabled child, but most also say that public funds should not be used to pay for residential schools like Mount Bachelor. Such programs, they say, are overly restrictive and unproven, and virtually all their students - who typically have depression, substance use, behavioral problems or ADHD - can be safely treated within the community...
...spotting it better in kids who do. That makes it look like the condition is on the rise when it's not. All you have to do is find a schoolteacher or principal and ask them that question. They would say they've never seen so much ADHD, autism, OCD as in the past. I think we're overdiagnosing it by maybe 1%. Now you look around and there are five shadows - kids with disabilities - in every class...
Which suggests a classroom technique for ADHD kids: Don't overly tax their working memory. Rapport, who used to be a school psychologist, says the average teacher doesn't understand how ADHD kids process information. "If you go into a typical classroom," he told me, "you might hear, 'Take out the book. Turn to page 23. Do items 1 through 8, but don't do 5.' And you've just given them four or five directions. The child with working-memory problems has dropped three of them, and so he's like, 'Page 23 - what I am supposed...
When I asked Rapport whether there's a cure other than breaking down instructions, his answer was a bit depressing: no. ADHD is incurable. Drugs like Ritalin are a common answer for controlling the condition, which affects about 3% to 5% of children, but Rapport notes that they have proven to be only a limited solution. In the short term, they can facilitate a child's ability to read - undoubtedly a crucial benefit - but Rapport says longitudinal studies have failed to show that Ritalin or other psychostimulants have consistent long-term behavioral effects. (Even if they did, another question would...
Such research is in its infancy, though, and if you have a child with ADHD, it's important to understand that he processes the world in a different way. He might be (literally) running circles around you, but that may be his way of paying attention...