Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be being diagnosed excessively and misrepresented in schools, education and medical experts said in a panel discussion held yesterday in Taipei.
During the discussion, titled “Lack of concentration is nobody’s fault: Children should not be canned as in a cannery,” the audience listened to teachers, doctors, experts and mothers talking about how children with ADHD are perceived and treated in school.
Taiwan Child Development Association managing supervisor Chang Ming-hui (張明慧), who has a daughter that has been diagnosed with ADHD, said that not a day goes by without her daughter turning her house into a mess or her son complaining about his little sister’s naughtiness, but her daughter “also teaches him new things, such as how to be adventurous and bold.”
Joanna Feng (馮喬蘭), executive director of the Humanistic Education Foundation, which hosted the discussion, said that children with ADHD are often labeled at school by teachers as troublemakers, while the positive effects of the disorder, such as courage and curiosity, are highly undervalued.
What makes the discrimination in educational settings more worrying is that ADHD is now being widely misused by schools to blame parents of disobedient children for not taking them to a child psychiatrist or making them take medication.
Lee Chia-yan (李佳燕), a family physician who has a son with ADHD, said that dozens of her child patients had been asked by teachers to see a psychiatrist because the teacher “suspected they had ADHD.”
However, Lee often found that many of the children suspected of having the disorder simply misbehaved or disrupted the class for reasons that were either not understood or overlooked by their teachers or parents.
“It’s ridiculous for a parent to take a preschooler to see me just because the teacher believes the kid’s desire to play outdoors is too strong. What else do you expect a preschooler to want to do?” Lee asked.
“I’ve also heard complaints about children’s psychiatrists prescribing ADHD medication after holding only a brief consultation with a patient,” she added.
Lee asked whether excessively diagnosing and misrepresenting the disease is a phenomenon stemming from adults’ impatience with restless children.
“What is ‘normal’ anyway? Medication might tame restless children, but it might also deprive them of their creativity and limit their potential. I believe that if we trust our children and refrain from controlling them too much, they will find their own way to balance themselves,” Lee said.
Thirty-five earthquakes have exceeded 5.5 on the Richter scale so far this year, the most in 14 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said on Facebook on Thursday. A large earthquake in Hualien County on April 3 released five times as much the energy as the 921 Earthquake on Sept. 21, 1999, the agency said in its latest earthquake report for this year. Hualien County has had the most national earthquake alerts so far this year at 64, with Yilan County second with 23 and Changhua County third with nine, the agency said. The April 3 earthquake was what caused the increase in
INTIMIDATION: In addition to the likely military drills near Taiwan, China has also been waging a disinformation campaign to sow division between Taiwan and the US Beijing is poised to encircle Taiwan proper in military exercise “Joint Sword-2024C,” starting today or tomorrow, as President William Lai (賴清德) returns from his visit to diplomatic allies in the Pacific, a national security official said yesterday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said that multiple intelligence sources showed that China is “highly likely” to launch new drills around Taiwan. Although the drills’ scale is unknown, there is little doubt that they are part of the military activities China initiated before Lai’s departure, they said. Beijing at the same time is conducting information warfare by fanning skepticism of the US and
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is unlikely to attempt an invasion of Taiwan during US president-elect Donald Trump’s time in office, Taiwanese and foreign academics said on Friday. Trump is set to begin his second term early next year. Xi’s ambition to establish China as a “true world power” has intensified over the years, but he would not initiate an invasion of Taiwan “in the near future,” as his top priority is to maintain the regime and his power, not unification, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University distinguished visiting professor and contemporary Chinese politics expert Akio Takahara said. Takahara made the comment at a
DEFENSE: This month’s shipment of 38 modern M1A2T tanks would begin to replace the US-made M60A3 and indigenous CM11 tanks, whose designs date to the 1980s The M1A2T tanks that Taiwan expects to take delivery of later this month are to spark a “qualitative leap” in the operational capabilities of the nation’s armored forces, a retired general told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in an interview published yesterday. On Tuesday, the army in a statement said it anticipates receiving the first batch of 38 M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks from the US, out of 108 tanks ordered, in the coming weeks. The M1 Abrams main battle tank is a generation ahead of the Taiwanese army’s US-made M60A3 and indigenously developed CM11 tanks, which have
RSS