Comments on: Staying Sane with a Challenging Child

By: mominisrael

mominisrael — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:48:08 +0000

Lady-Light:
Thank you so much for sharing your experience with your daughter. I had the opposite; an expert incorrectly told us that our child had “classic” symptoms and while we didn’t accept it, it sent us in the wrong direction for a long time.

By: Lady-Light

Lady-Light — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:57:09 +0000

Forgot to mention in my previous comment: my youngest daughter always had problems in school; even when I taught her in 2nd grade, she was incorrigible (I had to throw her out of class once or twice). What was never diagnosed in the States was her ADHD. I even had listened to the erroneous advice of a ‘professional’ (her kindergarten teacher)to let my daughter move up to 1st grade, although I had serious misgivings. I was right. Years later, she repeated 7th grade (her own decision; she had failed only 1 course, and could have studied it over the summer).
Do you know where her ADHD was diagnosed? In Israel, when she was in high school! On Ritalin she was able to focus, and did not stay on it for long; now, she is blossoming in the IDF, of all places (combat engineering, Officer Training)! One can succeed in life with ADHD!

By: mominisrael

mominisrael — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 12:04:37 +0000

Gidon, let’s hope your gan age child will have “normal” issues.
Regarding CM, I have gotten comments as usual today. First-time commenters are moderated, but I didn’t get any notification. What error message did you get? You can email me at mominisrael at gmail dot com.

By: Gidon Ariel

Gidon Ariel — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:59:23 +0000

Annie, your comments were excellent!

My “challenging” kids are way beyond gan (the one in gan is probably waiting for later to expose HER problems!:-)

My ADHHHD kid is 9, that age 14 possible light at end of tunnel point is great to hear.

BTW, problems posting to your cooking manager blog..

By: Lady-Light

Lady-Light — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:42:37 +0000

Good post. I have a now 9-year old grandson with Down Syndrome. It was not diagnosed until his “two-week-well-baby” checkup. We were in shock, although we had known there was something wrong, because he was not developing and responding as would a normal baby.

My daughter & son-in-law have been the most wonderful, loving, proactive parents I have seen: they (after the initial shock and depression)rallied, contacted Down Syndrome organizations in their area, sought professional help and advice, became very active in their D.S. group and were actually recognized several years ago and received an award for their excellent volunteerism.

My grandson has had physical, occupational and other therapies and academic tutoring weekly from a very young age, and is now mainstreamed in a wonderful school which has experience with D.S. and other special needs children.

This summer he is in the YMCA day camp in their area, and enjoying it tremendously.

We just returned from two weeks caring for all three of our grankids, and he was not the difficult child!

In one and a half weeks he is flying with his aunt (our middle daughter) to spend a week with us in our city, where he has not been since age 4.
All in all, I love my grandson and am very proud of my daughter and son-in-law, and happy that they chose to raise this wonderful child with love and action.

By: Robin

Robin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:54:02 +0000

I agree with all of Abbi’s comments too, and have to say that sometimes the RIGHT group setting can work miracles where a parent can’t.

I also want to put in a good word on behalf of the gananot – not all are afraid to tell the parents. Some do speak up and are responsible for getting a child the help they need. In our case, my daughter’s behavior in gan (private gan, in this case at about age 3, not kg) was completely different from what we were seeing at home. So much so that the experts were shocked when they came to observe and saw what was basically two different children.

We would never have known to get Maya the help she needed without a ganenet who dared speak up, and I am grateful that she did each and every day.

M just spent a year in a gan sfati where she made such incredible progress that she is being mainstreamed into the regular system for kindergarten next year. She is spending the summer in several different structured programs because that is what is better for her – to have that structure, that peer interaction and social modeling, and that stimulation. Staying home longer can be the right choice for many children, but equally it can also be the wrong choice. As parents, we know our children best and it is our responsibility to get them what they need, whichever form that takes.

By: Orthonomics

Orthonomics — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:11:16 +0000

Great post and great comments.

By: Keith Wilcox

Keith Wilcox — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:53:27 +0000

You make very valuable points. I agree with you in that parents know their kids better than any teacher or expert ever will. To make a suitable environment for the child will keep parents and kid sane. Staying away from unhelpful advice is also a very good advice. If the parents are not so stressed, then they will be able to concentrate on dealing with the specific problem they have at hand, and it may not even be a problem after all. Thanks, I enjoyed reading your article.

By: mominisrael

mominisrael — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:37:30 +0000

Abbi, if a parent suspects the child has a serious problem, the child should be evaluated and get treatment in whatever setting is required. I wasn’t trying to say that parents can always do better than professionals–of course they can’t. I’m not opposed to special ed and wasn’t recommending keeping kids out of special ed kindergartens.

By: tesyaa

tesyaa — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:28:48 +0000

I just want to clarify an educational point. Although I have shadows for my kids in camp (because camp is unstructured and the staff is basically all teenagers), I’m not a big proponent of shadows as a way to make an inappropriate educational setting work. I’m more in favor of finding the right educational setting, where the need for a special shadow can be minimized or eliminated.