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Response to Chaya Gopin's entry on overdiagnosis

When my then 4-year-old grandson had finished a year of nursery school with less than satisfactory results--the most serious behavior reported being that he would pick up one of the nursery chairs and hold it upside down over his head, which the teacher saw as a threat to hit someone with it; when we asked him about it at home, he said he was pretending it was a hat--his parents were called to a conference at which an outside "expert" recommended that he be sent to a specific school for "autistic" children, the majority of whom could be mainstreamed after a year. Aside from the stigma that would be ever after attached to the child, I could only think that, if the majority of these "autistic" children could be mainstreamed after a year in a special school, the majority were probably misdiagnosed. His parents refused, and found a more helpful preschool, and he is now in first grade in a yeshiva that provides various forms of therapy, including psychological and occupational, and will probably be ready for a mainstream yeshiva by third grade. His obvious problem is having trouble focusing and listening to instructions; an outside evaluation said he might be developing ADHD.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on December 2, 2007 6:09 AM.

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