Reply to Has anyone accepted a spot at a highly coveted DC Charter and then later been disappointed?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Has anyone accepted a spot at a highly coveted DC Charter and then later been disappointed?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Both can and do happen.  Overdiagnosis, underdiagnosis, those who need help not getting it, and those who don't need help getting even more screwed up than they were to begin with by the "help".

Back in elementary school were told by "experts" that DC would need an aide in the classroom, we had professional head shrinkers tell us DC would always have lifelong debilitating functional issues.  Turns out they were just some temporary developmental quirks that DC has since grown out of and DC is in fact now thriving and flourishing, on the honor roll, lots of activities, and has lots of friends.  Looking back, we thank the heavens we didn't heed the advice and medicate the crap out of poor DC as some wanted us to.  I have a family member who went that route and their child now has worse problems as a side-effect of being heavily medicated than the original problems were - some of which result in permanent alteration of brain chemistry, and not in a good way.  Psychology and psychiatrics are VERY far from being any kind of exact science or anywhere near as reliable as other areas of medicine.[/quote]

Thank you, PP.  So see, all of you ladies who've attacked me mercilessly for months, I am not crazy, and I am NOT the only one who has ever or will ever feel the way I do about this process.  I patently refuse to medicate my child (as has been suggested) or freak out over every "armchair" diagnosis (there have been many), or accept the word of some so-called "school psychologist" who can't even explain his own assessments.  Am I concerned about certain aspects of my child's development?  Sure.  Do I have to simply accept what others say because they are "experts?"  No.  I'm still on the waiting lists for respected developmental peds, we've accepted certain services at school (after having been very involved in the entire process, pushing back, challenging assumptions and asking a ton of questions) and we will continue to stay on it.  But I'm with PP - we can't just label and medicate every single child who doesn't fit some preconceived notion of "normal."  That doesn't mean I don't believe there are children who legitimately are diagnosed and legitimately need medication and services.  And while I can accept that perhaps not every preschool program is as structured as the one we are in, I am still concerned that the testing culture of the system is trickling down into the development of early childhood programs in the sense that what used to be expected of children in K is now being expected at younger and younger ages.  At least at my school, I don't think I'm imagining it.  And I fear that it is robbing a lot of kids of their childhood.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics