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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
I am French. My son has mild ADHD, as yet unmedicated, and has an IEP at a MoCo public school.
He is treated so much better here than in France. We have raised both our children, only one of whom had ADHD, in the same disciplined so-called "French" parenting culture that the article claims partially explains the dearth of ADHD diagnoses in France (and produce better-behaved children).

French pedopsychiatry and educational philosophies lag light years behind the US and Scandinavian countries. The French public education system expects children to mold themselves to traditional narrow-minded teaching methods (lots of desk time, listen to the teacher's lecture, no differenciation, etc). While academic standards are much higher than in public schools here, they produce excellent results on the "normal" children only, of whom I was one. The State could not care less about the minority of other children (gifted, twice exceptional, learning-disabled) who thrive in a different learning setting. There is no integration of these children in this kind of set-up, and indeed there is rampant discrimination and bullying of these children in the public classrooms. When my son had to be educated in France, I put him in private school.

This is not to say that one should medicate first, think later. I see that the US is going completely overboard with lax parenting and over-medication of childhood ills. Part of the problem is that early diagnosis tools label many young, immature children who end up "being cured" or "growing out of" their syndrome. Rubbish. Once ADHD, always ADHD (or Aspergers', or ASD). These are obviously mislabeled kids that skew the statistics.

However that may be, clearly this article is not giving you the full, dreary, picture. I particularly take exception to the causal relationship the author attempts to establish between a more structured environment and the emergence of true ADHD.[/quote]

+1  Perhaps we can learn from each other and find a better way for both approaches.[/quote]

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