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You might find gems from your childhood that you never knew existed.
Like your psych evaluation.
I was flipping through things, moving them wherever they belonged, and my eye caught on seeing my name. So I checked it out, finding that it was from the shrink my parents brought me to, addressed to my pediatrician. It was a good read, especially for those of you who've known me since elementary school.
( Some choice quotes: )
Then he went on to predict a lot of problems down the line, and the best way to keep me on track.
So my overall impression is "Wow, I didn't realize that I was that weird." And I was a little proud of it, in a way.
And then another part of me was a little disappointed in the psychiatric field for giving diagnostic names to typical behaviors, making them disorders. In my mind, children are supposed to want to play all the time. They're supposed to be excitable and hyper and have the attention span of goldfish.
Don't get me wrong, I think that severe cases might indicate something is wrong. Like in my case, I agree that hyperlexia was cause for concern, since it was possibly affecting my social development.
But I also feel that people tend to use diagnoses as a crutch. Like parents with kids who misbehave in public and don't discipline them - it's not bad parenting, no, he can't help it because he has a disorder. Sometimes I watch these kids and think "That's because he's four. Of course he's going to want to grab shiny things." You can't diagnose predevelopmental kleptomania after he grabs something off a shelf, it's "I want that because it sparkles."
If your kid is shy around strangers, that doesn't mean he has autism.
If your child doesn't want to play softball like you did, that doesn't mean he's dissociative from parental figures and needs to be put on drugs to 'correct' him.
The list goes on and on.
And don't even get me started on psychologists who diagnose everything under the sun on a normal kid to acquiesce to parents. Or the pharmaceutical industry.
Seriously. Everything's a disorder nowadays, and that undermines the people who actually need help. Like a mass, societal 'cry wolf.'
And the sense of personal responsibility. If you or your kid has a disorder, there's nothing you can do, right? And everyone accommodates you? It's an excuse.
*sigh* Sometimes a science progresses in one direction too far for its own good.
-Haz
Like your psych evaluation.
I was flipping through things, moving them wherever they belonged, and my eye caught on seeing my name. So I checked it out, finding that it was from the shrink my parents brought me to, addressed to my pediatrician. It was a good read, especially for those of you who've known me since elementary school.
( Some choice quotes: )Then he went on to predict a lot of problems down the line, and the best way to keep me on track.
So my overall impression is "Wow, I didn't realize that I was that weird." And I was a little proud of it, in a way.
And then another part of me was a little disappointed in the psychiatric field for giving diagnostic names to typical behaviors, making them disorders. In my mind, children are supposed to want to play all the time. They're supposed to be excitable and hyper and have the attention span of goldfish.
Don't get me wrong, I think that severe cases might indicate something is wrong. Like in my case, I agree that hyperlexia was cause for concern, since it was possibly affecting my social development.
But I also feel that people tend to use diagnoses as a crutch. Like parents with kids who misbehave in public and don't discipline them - it's not bad parenting, no, he can't help it because he has a disorder. Sometimes I watch these kids and think "That's because he's four. Of course he's going to want to grab shiny things." You can't diagnose predevelopmental kleptomania after he grabs something off a shelf, it's "I want that because it sparkles."
If your kid is shy around strangers, that doesn't mean he has autism.
If your child doesn't want to play softball like you did, that doesn't mean he's dissociative from parental figures and needs to be put on drugs to 'correct' him.
The list goes on and on.
And don't even get me started on psychologists who diagnose everything under the sun on a normal kid to acquiesce to parents. Or the pharmaceutical industry.
Seriously. Everything's a disorder nowadays, and that undermines the people who actually need help. Like a mass, societal 'cry wolf.'
And the sense of personal responsibility. If you or your kid has a disorder, there's nothing you can do, right? And everyone accommodates you? It's an excuse.
*sigh* Sometimes a science progresses in one direction too far for its own good.
-Haz
