Just sick! Service dog not allowed in school!

[PapaMouse]

I certainly hope you're not suggesting that people who are not a danger to themselves or others should all be medicated to keep their behaviors outside the norm "under control." For all you know he's been assessed and they've decided on a non-medicinal method of dealing with his difficulties.

8^[

I am suggesting that if a person has a mental problem, they should take medication to help with that problem. Harm to themselves or others has NOTHING to do with it. It is an illness and therefor requires medication. If you have a migraine it is not harmful to you or others, but some Tylenol sure helps you to feel better. If meds are not required, then the person is not "ill" enough to need "special" treatment and therefore a little parenting and discipline is needed.



In short, if someone is going to gripe about their kid not getting special treatment for their illness, then the child should be on meds for that illness. That's what the meds are for.

But then again, is that not what the world is after anyway. Claim our kids all have some kind of mental problem so we can drug our kids with Ritalin or Zoloft or any of the other BS drugs they have now. Lets drug everyone so they all think the world is rainbows and lollipops.

[EeyoresButterfly]

But there are meds for it that help keep the person calm and under control.

Not for autism. They are only just beginning to understand the mechanisms in the brain of children with autism that lead to some of the behaviors. The kid talked over his mom, so what? There is much worse behavior that a kid can engage in. With proper intervention, this need can be addressed. We do it all the time in the EIBI room (autism) in our early education building- by the time they are in kindergarten they can be mainstreamed for most of the day.

I do NOT agree that special kids belong in special needs. IMHO, this is the same closed minded attitude that kept many children out of schools period in the 60s. Having special needs learners in the classroom benefits ALL students. The special needs learners learn quite a bit more academically and socially from being with their neurotypical peers. This decreases the chances they will have to rely on tax payer support in their adult life as they are more likely to have the skills to lead independent adult lives. Children in the regular ed classroom benefit from the added diversity and are more tolerant of kids with special needs. Furthermore, many kids also benefit academically because the strategies used to teach kids with special needs such as cooperative learning maximize learning for ALL students.

If the child needs a different curriculum, there are always resource rooms within the schools that provide the child with that curriculum during those times in the day when it would be inappropriate for them to be in the regular classroom. The federal law requires schools to provide students with the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) and special schools are considered to be one of the most restrictive options and should only be used by parent choice or in the most extreme cases of disability.

[Mayonnaise]

I am suggesting that if a person has a mental problem, they should take medication to help with that problem. Harm to themselves or others has NOTHING to do with it. It is an illness and therefor requires medication. If you have a migraine it is not harmful to you or others, but some Tylenol sure helps you to feel better. If meds are not required, then the person is not "ill" enough to need "special" treatment and therefore a little parenting and discipline is needed.

In short, if someone is going to gripe about their kid not getting special treatment for their illness, then the child should be on meds for that illness. That's what the meds are for.

I don't deny that if someone has a problem they should get treatment. I'm merely put off by your assumption that all treatment must be pharmaceutical in nature to be valid. If a person has trouble, of course they should get help... but help doesn't always mean pills. Should dyslexics be denied assistance in school unless they are taking pills for dyslexia?

8^[

[EeyoresButterfly]

I am suggesting that if a person has a mental problem, they should take medication to help with that problem. Harm to themselves or others has NOTHING to do with it. It is an illness and therefor requires medication. If you have a migraine it is not harmful to you or others, but some Tylenol sure helps you to feel better. If meds are not required, then the person is not "ill" enough to need "special" treatment and therefore a little parenting and discipline is needed.



In short, if someone is going to gripe about their kid not getting special treatment for their illness, then the child should be on meds for that illness. That's what the meds are for.

Not every medical condition is treated with meds. Type II Diabetes, cholsterol, and high blood pressure all may be treated with diet and exercise first. Injuries may be treated with PT, surgery, and braces instead of just doping the person up on morphine. ADHD is best treated with a behavioral intervention. Even though drugs like Ritalin may help, behavioral programs should be tried first as medicine is not always necessary, and behavioral programs teach the child to control their own behavior.

Don't forget that many medicines also have very negative side effects. Drugs commonly used for ADHD are currently being studied for higher suicide risks in kids. We still don't know the long term side effects of medicine on developing brains. There is no "magic pill" for children with special needs. Most of the disorders we see in special ed do not respond to any kind of pharmaceutical treatment, ony intensive intervention on the part of the educators. To suggest that popping a pill will make it all just magically go away does our children a grave disservice.

[PapaMouse]

I do NOT agree that special kids belong in special needs. IMHO, this is the same closed minded attitude that kept many children out of schools period in the 60s. Having special needs learners in the classroom benefits ALL students. The special needs learners learn quite a bit more academically and socially from being with their neurotypical peers. This decreases the chances they will have to rely on tax payer support in their adult life as they are more likely to have the skills to lead independent adult lives. Children in the regular ed classroom benefit from the added diversity and are more tolerant of kids with special needs. Furthermore, many kids also benefit academically because the strategies used to teach kids with special needs such as cooperative learning maximize learning for ALL students.

If the child needs a different curriculum, there are always resource rooms within the schools that provide the child with that curriculum during those times in the day when it would be inappropriate for them to be in the regular classroom. The federal law requires schools to provide students with the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) and special schools are considered to be one of the most restrictive options and should only be used by parent choice or in the most extreme cases of disability.

So it is better for the special child to be in normal school and be picked on and teased by the other children. I an not saying that it right, but we all know it happens. Why not have the child go to a school with others like them, less chance of teasing. trust me, speaking as a person with slight mental problem, growing up in a normal school with kids, teens, picking on you because you think a little slower, or you talk a little slower, it is not a great thing and does cause even more mental problems down the road. The sleepless nights and mental tourcher of the things said and done to me, things like being spit on in gym because I run a little slower then the others.

Did I take meds for it? Yes. and they helped a lot. I was able to think clearer and do my class work easier. In fact to this day I still take non prescription meds to help.

[EeyoresButterfly]

Your experience, while valid to you, is not representative of the experiences of every special needs child. Most children do not have conditions helped by pharmaceutical interventions.

I'm sorry you were teased. Kids with special needs will be teased no matter where they are, it is the responsibility of the school to teach them to function in a neurotypical world, and to teach the other children what is and isn't acceptable behavior when it comes to dealing with those with special needs. In the school where I am doing my teaching for my master's degree, we have many special needs children. All the kids have been taught how they are to act towards all of their peers- regardless of need. I'm not saying that teasing never happens, but the vast majority of children are very accepting of the special needs kids in the school. Most kids with special needs want to be in the regular classroom. We were just talking in one of my grad classes today how many kids in middle school do not want to go to resource rooms or have any kind of obvious interventions because they want to be seen as normal- in their eyes and the eyes of their peers. Research has repeatedly shown that children with special needs consistently perform better when integrated with neurotypicaly peers to at least some extent than if they are completely segregated.

[PapaMouse]

Not every medical condition is treated with meds. Type II Diabetes, cholsterol, and high blood pressure all may be treated with diet and exercise first. Injuries may be treated with PT, surgery, and braces instead of just doping the person up on morphine. ADHD is best treated with a behavioral intervention. Even though drugs like Ritalin may help, behavioral programs should be tried first as medicine is not always necessary, and behavioral programs teach the child to control their own behavior.

Don't forget that many medicines also have very negative side effects. Drugs commonly used for ADHD are currently being studied for higher suicide risks in kids. We still don't know the long term side effects of medicine on developing brains. There is no "magic pill" for children with special needs. Most of the disorders we see in special ed do not respond to any kind of pharmaceutical treatment, ony intensive intervention on the part of the educators. To suggest that popping a pill will make it all just magically go away does our children a grave disservice.

We are not talking about Diabetes, cholsterol, and high blood pressure, (which BTW there are meds for) we are talking about MENTAL illness's.

And I agree 100% that ADD is best treated with a behavioral intervention. So bust the kids ass and teach them not to act out. But for the REAL cases of ADD/ADHD the person should be on meds to help control the illness.


Are you really saying that a person with an illness should not take meds to help with the illness? So they should roam the earth their whole life with this illness controlling them. Or is that so that when they do something wrong they can just blame the illness?
















I think this thread needs to be locked before it gets out of hand. You may believe that meds are bad and that a person can control their illness. But reality is that Doctors and meds are there for a reason.


So I leave you to your beliefs and I'll stick with mine. Just remember when that child with ADD grows up and kills a family of 4 over road rage one day, a little pill could have stopped it along time ago.

[Mayonnaise]

Are you really saying that a person with an illness should not take meds to help with the illness? So they should roam the earth their whole life with this illness controlling them. Or is that so that when they do something wrong they can just blame the illness?

I think this thread needs to be locked before it gets out of hand. You may believe that meds are bad and that a person can control their illness. But reality is that Doctors and meds are there for a reason.

No one is saying that if pills work for someone they shouldn't take them. But pills do not work for all problems, and just because a child isn't prescribed a pill doesn't mean that they are not in need of special help. I point you back to my dyslexia example above.

8^S

[EeyoresButterfly]

PapaMouse: I'm obviously not getting my point acrossed the way I meant.

I am not trying to imply that meds are not a viable solution for mental illness. Absolutely there are instances where they are literally live savers. However, I also don't think that you can make blanket statements that "all people with mental illness" or "all children with special needs" should be on meds. Some people are able to benefit from other types of interventions, and some need medication. As I've said, for many of the special needs that are in our schools, there is literally no medication available at this time because they are not even sure what the cause of it is. There are no medications for dyslexia, mental retardation, autism, etc. Furthermore, the existing psychotropic medications have not been thoroughly studied on children and some have very negative side effects like increased risk of suicide. In these cases, the risks need to be weighed against the benefits. Not every doctor or parent is comfortable with the risks involved to the child and will choose not to put their child on meds. This is their right, and they cannot be denied services for it.

I do support the use of medication when it will help. This past semester I had a child in a classroom with a diagnosed case of ADHD that was pretty severe. The parents refused medication, and it was obvious that it was affecting the child's schoolwork. The child needed some kind of medication in the short term while working on a behavioral intervention, which is how the medicines are designed to work. ADHD medicines are not designed to be a lifelong intervention. They are merely to remediate the symptoms in the short term while long term behavioral interventions are put into effect.

I hope this clarifies my position.

ETA: A person with ADHD is not sociopathic and not significantly more likely to kill others than the neurotypical person. Kids who flip out like that generally have some form of sociopathy that can and should be treated with medication.

[PapaMouse]

No one is saying that if pills work for someone they shouldn't take them. But pills do not work for all problems, and just because a child isn't prescribed a pill doesn't mean that they are not in need of special help. I point you back to my dyslexia example above.

8^S

I know I wish I had been/was taking pills for my Dyslexia and I wish I had known what it was while in school so I didn't think I was just stupid and couldn't spell or read. But since I was not, then I am thankful for the "special" treatment I received from a teacher.