kids being labelled to avoid responsibility

archamedes

archamedes

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One thing i really hate at the moment is the way people are trying to label their kids with ADHD or autism to excuse their behaviour. for instance, my wives cousin has a daughter and she is very badly behaved. Everytime she answers back, throws a paddy or doesn't use manners we get "oh thats because of her adhd." What a load of [PLEASE DON'T TRY TO BYPASS THE SWEAR FILTER]. I am sorry but it seems to be a common excuse now to just blame kids on some made up condition to justify feeding them with sugar, e numbers and not bothering to dicipline them. When i was young I was hyperactive, turned out orange juice was the cause and i was told never to drink it, problem solved. If i was born in this day and age they wouldnt even look into that, it would immediatly be "no he has ADHD."

My son does actually have very slight traits of autism, in that he has to do things a particular way, has a routine and likes to know whats happening. But if he misbehaves we don't blame the autism for it and we feel its something he will outgrow, I don't even think it is utism half the time, i just think its his way of dealing with things.

Well the other day the wifes cousin was round and her kid wanted a drink, so in order to get it she turned around and said "I want a drink get me one."

So i said "manners don't cost anything you know." The cousin turned around and said the tired phrase "oh she can't help it thats her adhd."

I finally snapped and said

"for gods sake stop blaming everything on adhd. It doesn't prevent YOU from teaching her frikkin manners. My son has small elements of autism and he uses his pleases and thank you's all the time. If you bothered to dicipline your kid rather than treating her like a god dammned special little snowflake and give in to what she wants all the time, then she wouldn't be this rude unruly little brat she is. sorry for my outburst its my rage i can't help it."

Well that caused an atmosphere and she soon left after that, but the wife was like "why did you do that?" i told her that i had enough of hearing about this adhd excuse all the time. The kid is plonked in front of the tv and dvd player all day, waited on hand a foot and she even admitted that she doesn't like seeing her kid upset so she doesn't tell her off and gives her what she wants. The kid is 5 years old and has an ipad for christ sake. It really boils my tits when i hear this all the time, when will people realise that these labels only came out in the last 15 years or so and it seems people are using them as an excuse all the time to avoid blame or responsibility.

A child cannot be energetic or naughty anymore the MUST have ADHD, what crap.
 
archamedes said:
If you bothered to dicipline your kid rather than treating her like a god dammned special little snowflake and give in to what she wants all the time, then she wouldn't be this rude unruly little brat she is.
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Seems a familiar story as far as I can tell. Well done for telling them the truth, doubt they'll listen though.

Nice rant btw :annoyed:
 
Your wives cousin daughter does not represent the whole demographic of misbehaved/ADHD/Autistic kids.

Fair enough, you can be annoyed at this child at their manners but it naive/ignorant to plainly state : "people are trying to label their kids with ADHD or autism to excuse their behaviour"
 
PMK said:
Your wives cousin daughter does not represent the whole demographic of misbehaved/ADHD/Autistic kids.

Fair enough, you can be annoyed at this child at their manners but it naive/ignorant to plainly state : "people are trying to label their kids with ADHD or autism to excuse their behaviour"
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but i have seen the same pattern and general attitude in a lot of other parents/kids that have it we know. The wife used to work in child care and she saw a lot of this first hand. "oh you need to let johnny do as he wants otherwise he will have a strop." Funny, because little Johnny did as he was told and behaved when he was at playgroup, when someone with authority didnt give in to him. there was even a bbc documentary on it and child psychologists say that there is no real scientific backup to prove ADHD is an actual condition.

As i said when i was a kid orange juice used to send me mental, 6 weeks as if i was on speed. I was stopped from drinking orange and my behaviour improved dramatically and i was no longer diagnosed as hyperactive. Do you honestly think that would happen now?
 
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Similar story with x son in law and grandson age 10 and can not even add 2+2. he gets everything he wants from everyone (except me). The x son in law doe's not discipline him at all saying its essayer to give in. I have laid the law down when he visits us, my way or the highway and he now knows not to cross granpa. At one point the son in law called me and asked me to go easy as he was afraid of me, I told him good at least one person is getting through to him.
Later the son in law asked me to baby sit on a regular basis and straighten him out and educate him, giving it a lot of thought I said no. The reason I told him was it is not only him that has to be straightened out but you also and listed the things he would have to do. He made excuses for why he could not...Discipline him spend time playing with him etc.
So it was no. If I do this the first thing that will happen is he will complain to his farther and mother about me passably making up stories that you will believe and if I do get him straightened out he will still be the same with other people that make excuses for him.
I also told him you think its bad now, its going to get worse as he gets older. There is a battle as to who runs the house and sad to say the 10 year old doe's.

Sorry rant over this subject gets right up my nose.
 
Excellent rant. I for one completely agree, any excuse is used these days in place of the truth (bad parenting) for the majority of missbehaved kids. My brother was hyperactive when he was young and that still didn't stop our parents from keeping him in check with regard to manners, behaviour and respecting his elders (which in my mind is the biggest problem these days)... just meant he was harder to catch than me. :D
 
archamedes said:
As i said when i was a kid orange juice used to send me mental, 6 weeks as if i was on speed. I was stopped from drinking orange and my behaviour improved dramatically and i was no longer diagnosed as hyperactive. Do you honestly think that would happen now?
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How? What's this unique property of orange juice that has the ability to make you behave as if you were 'on speed'?

I have plenty of scepticism about the diagnosis of ADHD (and dyslexia, incidentally), but I have even more when people say that a single type of food can cause hyperactivity.
 
AFAIK, there is/was a colourant in a lot of soft drinks - not pure orange juice - that has been blamed. Tartrazine?
 
yes back in the day mid 80's early 90's i was tested for a whole range of foods (that i commonly ate) and it was the E numbers in orange that caused it
 
MartynK said:
AFAIK, there is/was a colourant in a lot of soft drinks - not pure orange juice - that has been blamed. Tartrazine?
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Yep I'd go with colourings too, apparantly I was the same with Smarties. :D

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP.
 
Someone had to say it.

I fully agree. Im sure there are kids out there with real problems, but most of it is as you say, just bad and lazy parenting.
Its another reason why this country is going downhill fast. People wont accept responsibilty and prefer to blame something or someone else instead of dealing with the underlying problem.

We are breeding a nation of people who dont repect authority, have no reagard for rules and think they can get what they want, whenever they want it.
One of the many reasons why I have no intention of having kids any time soon.
 
The above sums up my daughters views (she is a teacher). She is sick of being the one expected to discipline & babysit children who are taught no boundaries

There is no excuse for a lack of discipline & certainly not to hide behind "poor little Johnny has adhd/autism etc etc therefore he is excused from normal behavior"
 
Keebsuk said:
A lot of it boils down to parents who cba to spend time with the children and teach them some manners.
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Very true.

My son is 20 months old. The other week we were at the supermarket and my son was, as usual, sitting in the trolley. There was another little boy of similar age running around the aisles pulling everything off them like it was a great game. His mum came up to him to put something back and said "Look, there's a nice little boy sitting in the trolley. Why can't you do that?".

I felt like asking her how she thought my 20 month-old GOT in the trolley in the first place. I'm sure if you asked my son what he wanted to do (and he had the skills to answer ;) ) he'd be MUCH happier running round the aisles pulling interesting looking packets of things off the shelves, but I see my role as his mum to teach him discipline and to PUT HIM IN THE TROLLEY so he can't run around annoying other shoppers.

It's really not rocket science! But some parents seem to think it is.


TriggerHappy said:
How? What's this unique property of orange juice that has the ability to make you behave as if you were 'on speed'?

I have plenty of scepticism about the diagnosis of ADHD (and dyslexia, incidentally), but I have even more when people say that a single type of food can cause hyperactivity.
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I used to be the same with Tizer. Turned out there was an E-number in it which made me red and blotchy and hyperactive. Likewise for the coating that used to be on Penicillin :D

Good old 1970's E-numbers!

(What about if they put E-numbers back in food, kids would be more hyperactive and would run off their fizzy drinks and McDonalds and obesity could be cured in one fell swoop :p )
 
one thing i have noticed the poor council estates are full of people with adhd (top up the benefits thank you very much, new iphone) and the more upper class posher estates probably may have the odd one, but we could put that down to spoilt little brat syndrome. Thats probably an unfair judgement really, but i wouldn't be surprised.

And confusing adhd with being a disability is wrong, its not, if anything its a behavioural problem
 
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Really well put - the OP has it spot on. Its always everyone else's fault!!

I am sick to death of kids not teaching kids how to behave. I have a 3yo and a 8 month old and yes, the 3yo can be naughty at times but we all were. When he is naughty he does get punished and yes, I do smack. When used properly it does more good than harm.

Some people we know pulled out of going to see friends 45 mins away as their toddler doesnt like being in the car too long??? Since when did a kid rule the house.

I hate soft/lazy parents, those that do not discipline kids, those that plonk them in front of the TV all day and do nothing constructive with them, those that blame 'behaviour problems', and those that wrap them up in cotton wool and dont let them live like we did.
 
Back in the late 70s I developed a persistent all year round hay fever type allergy. Eventually I was referred to an allergy specialist, particularly food allergies. The doctor was actually a psychiatrist, which was his main job, at the then asylum in Basingstoke, and the food allergy thing was a sideline. He had written a book on the subject - Not All In The Mind, and he gave me a signed copy.

He told me about a mother who had been sectioned and put in the asylum after inexplicably and repeatedly smashing up her home. Just started out of the blue. She had been inside for a couple of years. He started his food allergy testing on her, eliminating food for a period. After a while she stabilised and reverted to being a normal person. He then started to feed her carefully, and saw her return to her violent ways after eating certain specific things. Amongst the things that caused it that I remember were sausages and tomatoes. Once he'd isolated all the dangerous foods and made her aware of them she was eventually discharged and resumed a normal life.
 
MartynK said:
AFAIK, there is/was a colourant in a lot of soft drinks - not pure orange juice - that has been blamed. Tartrazine?
Click to expand...

When my eldest daughter was younger, we could always tell if she had had fizzy drinks round friends houses as she used to be bouncing off the walls, we have very few fizzy drinks in the house even now. The other problem is the energy drinks that kids love, red bull and such likes why the hell do they need them and certainly not at 8 in the morning before school, if they need these at that time of the morning, send them to bed earlier.

All that is needed is some simple disapline at home and ground rules, a lot of the problem kids just need some good old parenting rather than being mollycoddled and being allowed to rule the roost.
 
I think that ADHD is massively overdiagnosed and is normally just naughtiness caused by lack of boundaries,inconsistent parentingand/or occasionally too much junk food or artificial flavourings. It is normally diagnosed by psychiatrists or paediatricians who see the child in their clinic for half an hour at the most. If they were to spend a few hours observing parents and children in their homes they would see that the childs problems were caused by their environment and parenting.

I hate the fact that children are put on drugs that affect their brains when this is totally unnecessary. I have found that most children diagnosed with ADHD will sit down and pay attention when given something interesting to do and an adult paying them positive attention. This shows that they dont have an attention deficit disorder. I am a retired psychologist and am doubtful if more than a few per cent of children diagnosed have anything wrong with their brains.
 
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archamedes said:
One thing i really hate at the moment is the way people are trying to label their kids with ADHD or autism to excuse their behaviour. for instance, my wives cousin has a daughter and she is very badly behaved. Everytime she answers back, throws a paddy or doesn't use manners we get "oh thats because of her adhd." What a load of [PLEASE DON'T TRY TO BYPASS THE SWEAR FILTER]. I am sorry but it seems to be a common excuse now to just blame kids on some made up condition to justify feeding them with sugar, e numbers and not bothering to dicipline them. When i was young I was hyperactive, turned out orange juice was the cause and i was told never to drink it, problem solved. If i was born in this day and age they wouldnt even look into that, it would immediatly be "no he has ADHD."

My son does actually have very slight traits of autism, in that he has to do things a particular way, has a routine and likes to know whats happening. But if he misbehaves we don't blame the autism for it and we feel its something he will outgrow, I don't even think it is utism half the time, i just think its his way of dealing with things.

Well the other day the wifes cousin was round and her kid wanted a drink, so in order to get it she turned around and said "I want a drink get me one."

So i said "manners don't cost anything you know." The cousin turned around and said the tired phrase "oh she can't help it thats her adhd."

I finally snapped and said

"for gods sake stop blaming everything on adhd. It doesn't prevent YOU from teaching her frikkin manners. My son has small elements of autism and he uses his pleases and thank you's all the time. If you bothered to dicipline your kid rather than treating her like a god dammned special little snowflake and give in to what she wants all the time, then she wouldn't be this rude unruly little brat she is. sorry for my outburst its my rage i can't help it."

Well that caused an atmosphere and she soon left after that, but the wife was like "why did you do that?" i told her that i had enough of hearing about this adhd excuse all the time. The kid is plonked in front of the tv and dvd player all day, waited on hand a foot and she even admitted that she doesn't like seeing her kid upset so she doesn't tell her off and gives her what she wants. The kid is 5 years old and has an ipad for christ sake. It really boils my tits when i hear this all the time, when will people realise that these labels only came out in the last 15 years or so and it seems people are using them as an excuse all the time to avoid blame or responsibility.

A child cannot be energetic or naughty anymore the MUST have ADHD, what crap.
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I sympathise with your sentiment on this topic, although its one of those things you have to tread carefully with!

I don't know how many times I've been tempted to say something to one of the countless irresponsible mothers on the bus routes I use in London. Its actually really sad watching the behaviour of the mums, but even sadder thinking about how these children will turn out to be as a result of them.

I do blame computer games, tv and the millions of distractions in this modern world.....if you try to imagine yourself as a child now and think about the millions of distractions that weren't really around as much even 15 years ago, then you can possibly start to understand why there are people with attention deficit disorders (not excusing the badly behaved here though).
 
My wife teaches and is head of reception at a really nice C of E school. The school is in what I class as a good, working class area, most of the parents seem very nice. However when the children start school, these parents seem to expect my wife and the other teachers/assistants to teach their children manners etc.
My question is this. What do "modern" parents actually do with their children from birth to school age?
When my daughter started at school she could count well, knew her address, could dress herself and knew she was expected to say please and thank you. Equally we would sit with her and read stories and talk about the school day. It wasn't difficult or particularly time consuming but it was what we considered as essential in her upbringing.
It seems that nowadays the parents do sweet f a and expect teachers to cover for them.
We can't blame the children but we can blame the parents. Perhaps it is they that need educating first.

/rant off

Andy
 
Great post by Archamedes, i also notice that nearly everyone agrees as so do i. This is something that had to be said and i am glad to be part of it. If we bring back corporal punishment the teenagers might start wearing jeans around their waist instead of their ass.
 
dekeyboy said:
Great post by Archamedes, i also notice that nearly everyone agrees as so do i. This is something that had to be said and i am glad to be part of it. If we bring back corporal punishment the teenagers might start wearing jeans around their waist instead of their ass.
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I dont agree with this. There was plenty of corporal punishment when I was at school but we still did everything we could to push the clothes boundaries. I remember rolling my school skirt up at the waist to make it shorter as soon as I got away from home and being made to wash off make up at school.
 
dekeyboy said:
Great post by Archamedes, i also notice that nearly everyone agrees as so do i. This is something that had to be said and i am glad to be part of it. If we bring back corporal punishment the teenagers might start wearing jeans around their waist instead of their ass.
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:plusone::clap: Good post mate, I think the majority of "problem" kids' parents use this get out clause way too often.
 
dekeyboy said:
teenagers might start wearing jeans around their waist instead of their ass.
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the next time you see one of those teenagers tell them where this whole trouser thing came from. Most kids don't actually know they think its some cool fashion statement and mindlessly follow suit.

It actually originated from the american prison system, anybody wearing their prison trousers below their pants was a sign to other inmates that they are someone elses bitch and not to be touched.

I shouted out to some chav "so who do you belong to then pretty boy?" Its fair to say he didn't find it funny.
 
Davec223 said:
The other problem is the energy drinks that kids love, red bull and such likes why the hell do they need them and certainly not at 8 in the morning before school, if they need these at that time of the morning, send them to bed earlier.
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energy drinks, my pet hate! :bang::bang::bang::bang:

the students at college live on them and they are half asleep all the time, because their bodies no longer get any sort of kick from them, fine once in a while as a pick me up, pointless if you drink them constantly.

personally id have them banned from campus and ive actually banned them from racing events with our team, at the end of the day if the driver doesnt need them and they cant drink them without potentially falling fowl of urine testing, then the mechanics shouldnt be seen swigging them like morons as well..... suprisingly this annoyed a few folks.
 
I have 5 kids, its like world war three in this house sometimes, they misbehave, they get told off, the older ones think they can push it more and more (this is the society we now live in), they often play up in public and they often get told off and even smacked on occasion (not in public) but blame it on ADHD or another disorder, bo**ox, they are kids, thats life, deal with it

Im positive that I was a little angel when I was young ;) but im sure my dad would have a different story to tell, I fully agree though that in this day and age children have zero respect for authority or for their seniors

Its my fault for having 5 :)
 
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i have a son who is 10 and was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 7, it took us the best part of 3 years to get it sorted, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. We always knew something was not "right", very easily bored, absolutely no attention span, school work was suffering etc, and its been hell sometimes but he is our son and we love him no matter what. We dont get any help not even a carers allowance because we both work and earn too much (yeah right) , but that does not give him an excuse for "bad" behaviour, if he starts getting out of line i pull him back in as quick as you like, he knows right from wrong, he uses his manners and if he goes too far i dont think twice about a swift one on back of leg.

I do agree that some folk just use it as an excuse, like has been said about getting cash help etc, but some of us do know that kids need discipline no matter what.
 
ladysue said:
I dont agree with this. There was plenty of corporal punishment when I was at school but we still did everything we could to push the clothes boundaries. I remember rolling my school skirt up at the waist to make it shorter as soon as I got away from home and being made to wash off make up at school.
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Any pics Sue? :naughty:
 
if you actually look at the side of a red bull can it actually says not to be sold to anyone under 16, most corner shops and retailers are actually unaware of this. I once pointed out this to some shop keeper who was about to sell it to a 10 year old.
 
Great post on the video Jamie, Love it.
 
archamedes said:
the next time you see one of those teenagers tell them where this whole trouser thing came from. Most kids don't actually know they think its some cool fashion statement and mindlessly follow suit.

It actually originated from the american prison system, anybody wearing their prison trousers below their pants was a sign to other inmates that they are someone elses bitch and not to be touched.

I shouted out to some chav "so who do you belong to then pretty boy?" Its fair to say he didn't find it funny.
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Let's hope you continue this public service :eek:

Why does it matter where it started? Who are you to dictate what people wear and how they wear it?
 
PMK said:
Let's hope you continue this public service :eek:

Why does it matter where it started? Who are you to dictate what people wear and how they wear it?
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oh dear, do i hear a pair of trousers being pulled up discreetly before anyone notices?
 
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