Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Doctor shopping for 2e?

mykids, back to your original question, I would not pursue a faux-diagnosis to get services for my child. There are several reasons that I think it's a *bad* idea:

1) There are students who genuinely have ADHD diagnoses and who need appropriate accommodations and services for their diagnosis. When families "game the system" to get their own children who aren't ADHD a diagnosis simply for the sake of getting accommodations etc, they are creating a perception of mistrust and doubt among other parents, school staff, etc that ADHD is a diagnosis-as-a-path for kids who's parents want to push and get extra privileges for their kids, which in turn makes it just more difficult for the kids who *need* the services to get the appropriate services. This isn't saying your child doesn't need *something*, but if he does not have ADHD, he does not need services and accommodations provided for students with ADHD. And it's quite possible he needs the same *type* of service - but he doesn't need them because he has ADHD.

2) You're essentially saying it's ok to fib the truth to get what you need. This isn't a message I'd want to send to my ds. Granted, your ds is very young and is probably not aware of what you'd be doing to get him the services, but it's *his* school record, and I feel that the information that is provided by parents to the school for the student's record should be truthful.

3) The diagnosis is going to go into his school record. You might find it cropping back up at you in future years and wishing you'd never had it in there. This has happened to us, with a ds who actually *had* an ADHD diagnosis when he was young. We later found out it was an incorrect diagnosis, but it still keeps popping up as a point of discussion in school team meetings etc.

4) This is what I believe to be *the* most important reason not to get the fake diagnosis - more so than my reasons 1-3 above. When you get that fake diagnosis and get him into whatever program it is you want him in, you've temporarily moved away from figuring out what's really going on. Yes, he may be happier and work better and achieve higher in a small group setting with a lot of structure and with teachers who are willing to "call him on it"... but many, if no most students with any type of challenge or without any challenges will work better in that type of environment. So you've accomplished a temporary goal but lost sight of the long-term goal of understanding what's really going on, which will in turn give you the opportunity to work toward solutions that will work for the long-term.

I'm also still curious, and you don't have to answer these questions here, but I am going to ask them once again simply because I think the answers can be very helpful to you in thinking through whether or not there is some type of to-date undiagnosed challenge going on that's resulting in the behavior challenges you've seen: Were the psych evals you had either neuropsych evals or "psych educational" evals, and did they include testing beyond ability+achievement? Were the subtest scores even across the board for the ability testing and achievement testing? Did the achievement test scores fall as high as your ds' ability scores? Were behavioral surveys of parents *and* teachers included in the ADHD screens? If the answers to any of those questions is no, it's possible there's an undiagnosed challenge out there.

My other question is what does your ds say about what's up? If the barrier to getting him into gifted services is underachievement or a teacher recommendation due to behavior challenges... and your ds is telling you the only issue is he's bored... jmo, it seems it would be a lot easier to help show your ds the benefit of challenging himself to behave and complete the work he's tasked with so that he can get the recognition he needs to get into the gifted program than it will be to spend the time/$/effort to get a fake ADHD diagnosis.

I would honestly be surprised if you can just walk into a dr's office and get an ADHD diagnosis. I know there are drs here who are more likely to give a diagnosis than others, and drs who are more quick to prescribe meds than others once a child has a diagnosis... but even those drs who are more likely to give out ADHD diagnoses are looking for specific symptoms and behaviors and looking for the behaviors to happen in more than one setting (i.e., at home and at school for instance). Even if a parent walks in and gives a bunch of fake symptoms as reasons to suspect ADHD, you aren't going to be able to fake the answers a teacher gives on a behavioral survey.

Sorry for the long reply - it sounds like you really don't want to pursue the fake diagnosis but also sounds like you are needing some type of help at school for your ds. I hope you're able to figure out a way to get him the help he needs and also get him placed appropriately for his intellectual abilities.

Best wishes,

polarbear

eta - I was posting at the same time you posted your last reply my kids, sorry I didn't see it first!