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November: Passive-Aggressive Defiance

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Children Without Labels

The language that we use to describe children who are not doing well in school has taken a dramatic turn – in many ways for the better, in some ways for the worse.

In yesteryear, kids who were doing poorly in school or didn’t behave well would have been labeled as no-good, lazy, smartass, defiant, daydreamer, or just plain dumb. Punishment consisted of hitting them, yelling at them, shaming them, blaming them, lecturing them or writing them off.

Kids were repeatedly told that they were bad, stupid, would never amount to anything, were not college material, would end up in jail. Thank goodness, for the most part, we have eliminated this verbal abuse.

But how much progress have we made when we replace the old labels with psychiatric diagnoses that call children ‘disordered’, ‘deficient’ and ‘disabled’? Lest we forget:

ADD stands for Attention Deficit Disorder.

ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

ODD stands for Oppositional Defiant Disorder

LD stands for Learning Disabled

Personally, I would rather see a kid described with behavioral symptoms, such as:

Doesn’t focus, Has short attention span -

Can’t sit still, Always in motion -

Doesn’t listen, Has a mind of his own -

Needs more time to ‘get it’, Learns better by doing rather than reading

I would much prefer to imagine a kid as a budding Robin Williams - with his own unique personality - rather than a kid with a deficit, a mental disorder, a brain abnormality, or a need for medication.

Now, I don’t want to rule out the possibility that labels may be an aid in understanding a problem or coming up with an appropriate course of action. But the danger is that a child becomes his diagnosis. For instance, Jason becomes an ADD child vs. a child with ADD.

Don’t think that little twist makes a difference? Think again.

Make it personal. Would you want to be described as an orderly deficient person or as one who has trouble with organizational skills?

To label kids with psychiatric diagnoses should be our last resort - especially when that diagnosis leads to dependence on psychiatric drugs as the primary choice of treatment.

Though in our culture pill popping seems to be the way to go to solve many a problem, it is too often the easy choice rather than the wise choice. Alternative ways of helping kids learn and control their impulses are slower and far more complex – often requiring modifications in parenting styles, in expectations, in routines, in learning environment, in diet, in activity and more. But, most importantly, creative solutions require an appreciation of strengths and weaknesses as well as the patience to allow a child to progress at his or her own pace.

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