This is very interesting, especially if you have children or grandchildren who have been diagnosed with ADHD. I had no knowledge of any of this, and I’ll bet you didn’t either!
To my surprise, the therapist explained that not only did he not have ADHD, he had retained some of his primitive reflexes and this was a really common issue that is often misdiagnosed as ADHD. And these retained reflexes could be responsible for a lot of the things that were getting him in trouble at school and at home. Wait, what?
Reflexes are muscle movements that happen unconsciously to certain stimuli. For example, you pull away your hand if it gets burnt on the hair-straightener. Babies are born with a set of these reflexes and they are called ‘primitive reflexes’ because they originate from the most primitive part of the brain.
They are hard-wired into our system to protect us from harm in infancy and to prepare us for later development changes like sitting and crawling. In fact, that’s why these steps are so important in a baby’s development. (My son crawled briefly but was up running at 10 months old).
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What struck me is that often, a child is labelled as having behavioural problems or being disruptive in school when in fact, they can’t help themselves.
Our therapist explained that my son involuntary might kick his feet under the desk, while sitting in school. It seems like he is being ‘difficult’ or ‘disruptive,’ but the reality is that the poor love doesn’t even realise what he’s doing – it is involuntary.
In the school line, he might look around, and slightly lose balance because of another reflex called the Symmetrical tonic neck reflex (ATNR). It looks to the teacher like he is pushing in the line when, in fact, he has just fallen forward. The more it was explained to me, the more I realised how this was impacting every part of my son’s life.
…
Here is more information on retained reflexes
Read the entire article; I think you will find it as interesting as I did.
UPDATE: I was contacted by the President and Founder of CogniTune, LLC
(“Smarter Health”)
, who asked me if I would provide a link to their article, “12 Best Adderall Alternatives: Natural Over the Counter ADHD Substitutes”, and I agreed to do so. If you are interested, please clink this LINK.
Stella's Place 
The Weston Price Foundation has a lot of information about ADD/ADHD in their Wise Traditions periodicals.
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this is not what the schools are experiencing on the whole.
mostly the issues are cultural and gender related as more boys have ADHD diagnoses than girls.
many Hispanic boys are allowed to roam around and not stay seated and still while in schools in their native countries…the girls do not have these impulses and typically are fine to remain in a chair for a longer period of time…but they do socialize with talking and laughing in class while the teaching is being administered to a class. Much of the issue is a home and native cultural issue, that makes it very difficult for younger kids to control themselves in a rigid, sit still under authoritarian dictates with punishment and humiliation as the expected consequence….which, BTW, is not enough to cause them to learn any self control of behavior for a LONG time in their growth development…In fact, acting out in defiance is a normal reaction …..
The AD part is the issue, not so much the wild activity behavior…..altho that disrupts a “sit still and pay attention for an hour while a teacher drones on about stuff the kids are not interested in anyway” environment…..AD means they have trouble FOCUSING on a subject…or conversely, they are hyper focused and cannot transition to other thoughts or activities very easily….the focus part is often the cause of administering prescription drugs….which prevent natural development to allow behavior modification to begin to take affect when they are helped with those issues….but to tranquilize them to accomodate a phone environment such as our public schools demand is absolutely the wrong approach…but is acceptable to school teachers and administration because it makes it easier to “manage” an overcrowded classroom with 23 kids instead of an optimal population of 8 to 11 kids….and then combine that with them moving about a school building class to class from sitting quietly into a crowded noisy hallway and back into a quiet classroom….more transitions than they can manage.
Drugs are not the problem….our overcrowded and inept “professional” teachers and administrators and our TOTALLY IGNORANT school board members are the issue….and politicians have NO CLUE as they are just focused on activism for votes or taxation for more funding of a sinking Titanic School Environment.
Teaching is a skill
Education is a business.
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typo….a phony environment…not a “phone” environment….although that pretty much describes the middle and high school situations completely!
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Did you read the article? It brings up some very interesting medical issues that those who have a child diagnosed with ADHD might want to explore.
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Poor little kids aren’t allowed to be kids anymore. A lot of schools don’t even have recess anymore.
I grew up in a family of 10, and while the girls were pretty behaved, the boys were all wiggly and fidgety! Boys will be boys, but that doesn’t figure in with the “gender” crap they try to foist on even little kids these days!
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By the way, that really is an interesting read! Glad it can be worked out without the drugs!
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I think ADHD, like autism, is an overly broad term, covering more than one condition with more than one cause. I posted an article on the General Discussion thread about a possible autism link with bacteria.
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The descriptions in the article above make me wonder about Conner, although of course he is too young for such a diagnosis, and hopefully it won’t come. But joshua’s comments absolutely describe my experiences with my oldest son in school.
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I have raised four kiddos to adulthood.
variously labeled at various times in their youth developments…., bi polar, ADD, ADHD, Mild Autistic, sugar sensitive hyper behavior, Defiant Child Syndrome, and Dyslectic
.
some behavioral characteristics were present, but Psych. Help, Ritalin, Vyvanse, and a host of other presc were not the solution.
the winners were primarily Dyslexia which made for slow reading, tiring of the focused attention and difficulty of the task taking their ability to remain on task, calm, for extended periods of time….and use of Computer Monitor learning methods made it worse.
All have become highly functional and rational and contributory adults….able to chew gum and walk across a floor at the same time, and no one attempted to kill me with a hammer.
I think a lot is Helicopter Parenting and Over Attentive school “counselors” who have a need to be in control as a method of continual employment.
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Once my son’s school, at the insistence of his teacher and guidance counselor, made us take him for counseling. The first meeting was paperwork, etc. and the second meeting was them having their introductory get to know one another discussion. The third week the teachers made me come in for a mandatory meeting to tell me counseling, the counseling they demanded, wasn’t working. They had not even had one real session yet.
I told the teachers they were determined to condemn my son, and all my attempts to get help for him. That was the moment I realized completely that we were on our own, and almost all school professionals were going to be adversaries rather than allies.
They wanted to just throw him away, and I wouldn’t let them. We were mostly enemies.
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True dat but in my GGS’s case even the school’s chosen ADHD gatekeeper agreed with the professional’s diagnosis.
I believe one of the problems is that some kids coming into school had and still gave a starved environment at home. The kids receive very little stimulation, crappy diet and (forgive me for this one) don’t have a nurturing environment. That creates a feralish child who doesn’t interact with the teachers or other students, the child receives no reinforcement at home for his school work from parents unable to aporeciate the education s/he’s receiving.
I see a lot of it around, go to grade school p,ays or presentations put on by the students and see how many family members don’t show up. Ditto parent/teacher nights or classroom activities. Not looking for strokes here but if we can drive 70 miles oneway, reordering our lives for a GGS then a parent should be able to schlep a block or two after work or the soap operas are over.
I’d bet a lot of ADHD kids are thugs in training, but the school system can get Special Ed $$$$ for ADHD while thug control nets nada. They can also redistribute that money inside of the system so it’s in their benefit to find more ADHD and if you look at the program the school’s appointed ADHD investigator’s the only person who can certify the student as such. Has all the appearance of a self-licking ice cream cone.
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Thanks for this, Stella. I had not heard of these ideas. In my institution (where I have worked exclusively for the past 18 years) all ADD/ADHD diagnoses and treatment are handled only by the pediatricians. We generalists see the kids for other problems but not for that. I have always felt that ADD/ADHD was extremely over-diagnosed.
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We have a medical facility about 45 miles north of us where a PhD who specializes in ADHD and associated behavioral issues diagnosed our GGS. His school, 70 miles south of us, has a behaviorist on retainer who does diagnosis for the school district and her disgnosis, regardless of whoever else has made a diagnosis, is The Word. Of course when you bring the other professional’s diagnosis in with his and your lawyer’s business cards attached things tend to go more smoothly. Helps to bring along a Czarina who’s many years experience in developing and managing IEPs greases the rails as they know their attempts st BS are useless. It’s a battle.
We couldn’t retire to Alaska due to a certain person’s aversion to temperatures south of 72 degrees but at least we can enjoy the ‘distances between where you are and where you need to be’ issues.
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I have ADHD and I’m proud 🙂
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Ever notice how none of these kids are never diagnosed as being gifted, but as a child with a problem that must be fixed? Either the kid needs fixed, or the parent(s) need fixed, or the home environment, or whatever. It is never the teacher or the school’s problem or fault.
Wicked Son skipped many of those childhood steps that every “normal” kid has – crawling, baby talk, etc. It never occurred to the kid-fixers at the school that the problem was them, not WS (WS was bored out of his mind, actually, but so was I so that was normal).
However, perhaps now some of those previously-diagnosed ADHD kids will be viewed differently, as one who no longer has a problem but as one who has a reason, and some progress can really be made.
Thanks for the article Stella. Things might be looking up for these kids. Who knows? Labels may even fade into disuse someday.
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We must be careful not to over diagnose, because some people take their labels to heart and that impacts development too. It should never define you… just a part of you. 🙂 great topic!
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What an interesting concept. I’ve seen a few misdiagnosed kids, but I’ve never heard of these primitive reflexes. Awesome food for thought!
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