What parents and experts say about the children who just don’t fit in.

Home The Daily Kitten Cat Chat Forum The Newsroom What parents and experts say about the children who just don’t fit in.

Viewing 19 posts - 1 through 19 (of 19 total)
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  • #10911
    Dee from Tampa
    Participant

    #57964

    Bright kids never fit in.

    #57965
    HuddysMama
    Participant

    I NEVER fit in, but I attribute that more to my inherent weirdness than anything else. 🙂

    #57966
    Instinct
    Participant

    Read about half the article before I decided that these people are really something. “Should you be worried about your child”… puh-lease, I’d be worried if my child DID fit in because it would mean that he was a conformist who didn’t think for himself.

    As for ADD, I have been told numerous times that I am probably ADD but I just look at is as a different way of approaching life. So I do three or four things at a time, I don’t see how that is bad. My ADD actually helps me jump to solutions by allowing me to quickly look at all sides in my head as it jumps around.

    Fit in… that’s just another way of saying “sheep” 🙂

    #57967

    There is going to be a seminar in Las Vegas called Why I love my ADD. Man I wish I could go. Had the conversation with the teacher about whether or not my son has been tested for ADD. I am more than willing to work with the teacher. But he does not need to be told that he has some disorder just because he is different. Yes, my son is weird. And I am so proud of him for it.

    #57968
    PipasMumSpain
    Participant

    I have always been quirky… I am a civil engineer, speak five diferent languages and at the age of 32 I am an expert in International procurement.

    At the end us quirkies rule the world!!!

    #57969
    Shelley
    Participant

    Just as a side note, to be truly diagnosed with ADD takes more than a questionaire and a quirky (Geeze I love that word Pipa’s Mum!)attitude. I have a son who is ADHD and even though it was a pain while raising him, I wouldn’t trade him for the world. All of the teachers were annoyed with me because I wouln’t medicate him. I hated the way everything they gave him turned him into a zombie. I mean it just wasn’t normal for a nine year old boy to come home from school and take a nap!!! Yay for weirdness!!

    #57970
    Sylmiafelixsmama
    Participant

    They want to label all the kids who are active with ADD or something. They want to overmedicate the kids when maybe some of the issues have to do with the parenting? I mean, I see a kid screaming it’s head off in the grocery store because it can’t get what it wants and the parent does nothing about it. It is running around screaming and crying. All I want to do is pay for my groceries and get the freak away from it. That is the kind of parent that needs help either way.

    #57971

    Thank you Shelley! Medicating children into zombies is not the answer. All it teaches kids is that the answers to life’s problems come in pill form. We see how well that has worked. Far too many creative people are destroyed because they have been labeled and medicated. Later they turn to self medication because they haven’t found the pill that holds the answers…. Ok, that’s not going to stay fluffy if I keep going. that may just have to be the blog topic for today.

    #57972
    MeezerRoboto
    Participant

    You know, I will have to claim the same as many here. When I was young, I was down-right weird. I suffered a lot of pain due to the fact that I did not “fit in,” and also due to the fact that I had a really hard time focusing in school. At this point in my life, it’s pretty obvious to me that I’ve always had a pretty clear case of ADHD with a touch of lysdexia. And the fact of the matter is that now, I’m better for having learned to work around my weaknesses rather than taking medication. I see the world from a perspective that most people (or robots ;-D) cannot, and I embrace such things.

    Instinct, I will now tip my hat to you, as you hit the nail squarely on the head. These “disorders” are strengths when treated appropriately. My son is brilliant, moody, and lazy. As Meezer Mama said, they would like to label him as having ADD and pump him full of meds, but I believe that would cripple him as the wonderful person that he promises to become. If he was labeled as having “Disorder-X” to explain whatever said ill behavior, he will use that as an excuse and a crutch to be lazy. If he is taught that these are weaknesses that he can work through to augment the strengths that come hand-in-hand with them, he will eventually be able to do things that not even you or I can now.

    Besides that, Meezer Boy has a whole lot more focus than Mama or I had growing up, and he is no more apathetic about school than I was at his age. As we have learned from Spiderman, “Great power comes with great responsibility.” Sometimes, that means that we will suffer because of our God-given privelages. It’s still worth it, and it is irresponsible and ungrateful of us to take a bunch of wacky-pills to make it all normal.

    At my fluffiest,

    Meezer Roboto

    #57973
    BoogerMercurysMama
    Participant

    I have a son that is extremely smart & has always made good grades. His first grade teacher told me to have him checked for ADD & ADHD because he would finish his work before the class & he would make noises, not talk but noises. I told her to try giving him something else to do while the rest of the class finished their work. We had already noticed at home that when he was bored he had a tendency to make noises. She tried it and it worked. Towards the end of that school year she recommended him for our school system’s program for children with gifted learning abilities which he attended one day a week. He was in the program until he started high school.

    I have always taught him not to look down at anybody that did not seem to learn as easily as him, but to offer assistance to other students when he could. I can say that now as a high school student he fits in with good with everybody else.

    #57974

    Having taught all kinds of kids, those with genuine ADD and ADHD, those whose parents label their kids in that way in order to avoid discipling them, kids with genuine Tourettes Syndrome (that one is really scary), kids with dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia, kids with various degrees of autism (another scary one)I can truly say that they are just kids. If you have enough patience and intelligence you can usually get through to them. The problems generally arise because parents won’t recognise the type of help their children need (not drugs but sometimes lessons in smaller units or classes, specialist teachers etc.) or because the state decides that the kids can cope in a huge comprehensive, alongside 28 or 30 others in a class, and won’t fund the extra care they need.

    Now that I am in a small (well tiny actually) private school we can genuinely treat each child as an individual and we get wonderful results with almost all our children.

    #57975

    Meezer Boy is in the gifted and talented program. We teach him that having an IQ score in the 99th percentile doesn’t make him better than anyone else. That is a gift that he has. Other people have other gifts and the world would be boring if we all had the same talents.

    PollysMum, I wish there was something like that in our area. The private schools in our area are basically just places for rich people to park their kids. That way they can brag about how much money they are spending.

    #57976

    Private schools in UK thrive because most of the state schools are so awful that people like me will work all the hours God sends and then a few on top of that to be able to afford a private education. Teachers are now quite well paid over here (although we still lag way behind all the other professions) but my whole salary each month went to keep my daughter in her private school. If she hadn’t managed to get an Art Scholarship and an Academic Bursary, we couldn’t have afforded it.

    #57977
    Vicki
    Participant

    I fit in once in my school life, and that was when I was in fourth grade. I was sent to what was then known as a ‘major work’ school in which the students were of diverse backgrounds racially, socially, and economically, yet the common thread was that we were all gifted. In fifth grade, I moved to an all-black suburb of Cleveland where I just did not fit in (and I’m black! Okay, I may have light skin, but I’m still black.). On top of everything, I hit puberty in sixth grade, so trying to navigate my new surroundings while newly hormonal and seeing my mother change into a beast once I hit puberty screwed me up for a long time. I’m still screwed up to this day, and I don’t speak to my mother to this day; as far as I’m concerned, if she wants a relationship with me, she needs to repent for being a racist, sexist, homophobic witch and start loving me the way I need to be loved. :sad: I wish this area would show emoticons like the main cat area does.

    I apologize for spewing such bile; that was unChristian of me. If anyone wants a snack, feel free to follow me to the TDK Café.

    #57978
    paulajeanne
    Participant

    Vicki, what sort of writing do you do? Your comments are so well styled and I wondered if maybe you write in the food industry.

    #57979
    Vicki
    Participant

    I do not yet write professionally, but I hope to do so one day. I write fiction, poetry, and inspirational pieces.

    #57980
    paulajeanne
    Participant

    Vicki, have you been published? Would like to read some of it. What kind of fiction?

    #57981

    I agree with some parents and school systems taking the easy route with kids that aren’t of the norm. They would rather define them into categories, titles, and use drugs to control the issues instead of dealing with the way to actually teach the kids. I remember the state school system in California demanding that my brother be put on Ritalin to attend school and my parents did not believe in private school(s). He is still screwed up because of this, IMHO.

    Vicki, sorry to hear that your mother reacted that way to your growing up. Its harder for some people to deal with their children growing up, and they find inappropriate ways to handle it. 🙁

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