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Regarding our discussion of ADHD diagnosing, I thought some of you would find this interesting: many of us have been told or believe that the common practice/thinking is that the criterion that adhd symptoms must be evident in at least two of three settings (home, school, work) and that a child should have sufficient symptoms of ADHD by both parent and teacher report before they can qualify for the diagnosis. This is not necessary apparently. A manual that I read advised that if both reports do not endorse a diagnosis (and it pointed out that when the parent report endorses it, the teacher report almost always does too but often times the problem is you have a teacher report that endorses it and a parent report that doesn't), clinicians should count the number of adhd symptoms reported by the teacher report, and then add to it any additional symptoms endorsed by the parent report, which were not reported by the teacher. In other words, the clinicians were not advised to look at why the child may be symptomatic in one setting and not the other, they will not be reluctant to diagnose if the child is showing symptoms in one setting but not another - rather they will just add all of the symptoms reported and get the diagnosis that way.
Interestingly, the manual did mention to be careful of parents shopping for an adhd diagnosis, but did not express the same concern regarding teachers... Again there seems a general bias against parents in these manuals... That teacher's reports, motivations etc are considered more credible, more reliable, particularly if there are any discrepancies. There is never any concern expressed about the appropriateness of the educational environment, etc.