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Two parenting letters that made me cranky, for different but equally idiosyncratic reasons
1. Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband and I live in Manhattan and are expecting our first child (a girl) in the fall. I am a white woman from California; he is Southeast Asian and has lived in NYC his entire life. When he was in elementary school, he and his younger sister were part of a scholarship program at one of the city’s best private schools that gave them full tuition as first-generation students being raised by a single immigrant mother. Thanks to the extensive support they received, they were able to attend top universities on full scholarships, and my husband still credits his school for setting him up for success in the tech industry. He has said that when he attended, he “always dreamed” that one day he could give his child the same experience he had. He wants us to put our names on the list for the feeder preschool his sister sent our nephew to, which I understand is necessary to do now because of the high demand for the elementary school.
Our nephew did thrive at the preschool and is now absolutely loving second grade, and I’ll be honest, he’s having experiences that I could have only dreamed of at my underfunded public school. We could also likely afford to send our child to this school, but I feel hesitant about it. The public schools we’re near aren’t great, but they’re more economically and racially diverse, and I really don’t want our child to be an out-of-touch private school brat. On the other hand, I have heard horror stories about the public high school and middle school admissions programs in the city and the toxic culture at even some of the best public schools. I feel like sending my kid down the private school pipeline is not at all in line with my values or how I envisioned raising a child, but the alternative worries me. I just don’t know what to do.
—School Dazed in NYC
Dear Dazed,
I have a lot of thoughts, but I don’t have an answer. Because there is no good answer. I was committed to sending my child to public school: She started out in a magnet elementary school in our urban school district as a kindergartener, and eventually graduated from a magnet high school after four years there. (To give you an idea of what our school system is like, the “alternative” aspect of that high school—to which, like all the magnet schools here, one must enter a lottery to gain entrance—was, and still is, “academically oriented.”). In between those public school bookends, however, there was a lousy private school (which we picked because it was more affordable, nearer home, and way less exclusive than other private schools—and also because it took a while for us to understand how lousy it actually was) and a period of homeschooling. As committed as I was to keeping my kid in public school, I had to take her out of it halfway through first grade—at the urging of her own teacher!—because the school was in chaos after its fragile stability came undone. (Long story, obviously. For a fuller treatment, you can read the chapter titled “Enough Friends” in my 2005 nonfiction book The Middle of Everything.)
I tell you this because I feel your pain. Our public school system, nationally, is broken. The situation in NYC is particularly impossible, infuriating, and heartbreaking (I’m from New York; I was educated in that public school system, in Brooklyn, lo these many years ago, during its so-called Golden Age). And I hate everything about private schools. I couldn’t wait to put my kid back into a public one. If I had a do-over, I would try another public elementary school before giving up. (But I might have had to give up anyway, I recognize that.)
I don’t know what you should do. But I do know that you have to make the decision that you believe will be best for your child in the long run, taking every possible factor into account. I get the feeling that you’re leaning toward your husband’s plan but that you feel guilty about it—or that you don’t feel like you’ve got a good enough argument to counter his. I will say that an argument about the importance of your child being in an economically and racially diverse environment should not be understated—it is hugely important. I believe that my own kid, all grown up now, is the admirable person she is in part because she did not spend her entire life pre-college surrounded by people whose life experience was like her own—because for so much of her education, she was a white girl in a majority-Black school, a college professor’s kid in a school where the majority was eligible for an income-based free lunch program, a kid who’d lived in the same house all her life who had friends whose families did not have stable housing. But I also remember the period of time when I felt that our public school system could not be trusted to educate her.
Part of what I’m saying is that whatever decision you make now need not be a permanent one—that, indeed, few decisions are irrevocable. But I’m also saying that you and your husband might think broadly about all the possibilities and all your reasons for proceeding as you eventually choose to do. And that you should be open to changing your mind if that decision doesn’t end up sitting well with you.
—Michelle
Link
************
2. y 4-year-old son is gifted, no question about it (he already knows his multiplication tables). He may also be on the autism spectrum, have ADHD, and/or sensory difficulties (it’s so difficult to tease that apart from normal 4-year-old behavior). But my question is less about that and more about how I make sure we don’t get trapped in an information silo. In trying to learn more about my son’s giftedness and potential neuro-divergence, I’ve joined Facebook groups for “twice-exceptional” (2e) and gifted students and met with a consultant who helps connect families to resources. We’ve also moved him to a small preschool that only accepts gifted students and were planning to keep him there through 1st grade. At first this felt really helpful. Look at all these other people whose kids have issues like mine! They’ve already figured out some of the best providers/evaluators in the area!
Lately, though, I’m beginning to worry. It seems like because all these parents run in the same circles and see the same providers, there’s a real risk for pseudoscience to sneak in and take hold.
Thankfully, these people are not anti-vax (that I’ve seen), but there is so much talk of things like primitive reflexes, auditory processing disorder, school refusal (as if it’s a disorder), oppositional defiant disorder, etc. So many of them homeschool and really believe that’s the only school situation that could work for 2e students. How do I know what things are real (though maybe not well-known in, or dismissed by, the general population) vs. what has gained steam within a particular community with no reality checks? I’ve tried to do some of “my own research” online, but anything that has even a modicum of research behind it has legitimate-looking websites and vocal proponents. Help!
—Gifted and Troubled
Dear Gifted and Troubled,
Keep the focus on your individual kid and what you think he needs. That may not always be what the “average,” “typically developing” kid needs, or what one particular community of parents has decided that their kids need. As you say, behaviors you observe now may be early signs of diagnoses that would benefit from particular interventions—or they may be particular things about a little person who is still developing on their own growth curve. You have to keep watching how your kid develops, what his needs and strengths and coping mechanisms etc. are.
Four is really, really young for you to know in what environments and under what conditions your child can learn. I also think it’s too early to be making sweeping statements like “My kid can only learn in homeschool!” There’s so much variation when it comes to how schools approach and support kids who learn differently. Avoid the temptation to be rigid in your thinking, believing that once a certain label (“2E”) gets applied to your kid, there is a one-size-fits-all ideal or correct approach—to education, or to anything else.
Community has been really important to me as the parent of neurodivergent kids. But I tend to be really wary of those who seem a little too invested in the idea that there is just one “right” environment or one particular approach that will allow kids with particular needs to thrive. Remember that the loudest people in a group aren’t always correct, and that their kids aren’t yours. No one else knows your child like you do. Focus on getting to know and understand your son and how he learns to the best of your ability, and together with trusted healthcare providers, therapists, educators, etc., continue to discuss how best to meet his needs and support his healthy development.
—Nicole
Link
My husband and I live in Manhattan and are expecting our first child (a girl) in the fall. I am a white woman from California; he is Southeast Asian and has lived in NYC his entire life. When he was in elementary school, he and his younger sister were part of a scholarship program at one of the city’s best private schools that gave them full tuition as first-generation students being raised by a single immigrant mother. Thanks to the extensive support they received, they were able to attend top universities on full scholarships, and my husband still credits his school for setting him up for success in the tech industry. He has said that when he attended, he “always dreamed” that one day he could give his child the same experience he had. He wants us to put our names on the list for the feeder preschool his sister sent our nephew to, which I understand is necessary to do now because of the high demand for the elementary school.
Our nephew did thrive at the preschool and is now absolutely loving second grade, and I’ll be honest, he’s having experiences that I could have only dreamed of at my underfunded public school. We could also likely afford to send our child to this school, but I feel hesitant about it. The public schools we’re near aren’t great, but they’re more economically and racially diverse, and I really don’t want our child to be an out-of-touch private school brat. On the other hand, I have heard horror stories about the public high school and middle school admissions programs in the city and the toxic culture at even some of the best public schools. I feel like sending my kid down the private school pipeline is not at all in line with my values or how I envisioned raising a child, but the alternative worries me. I just don’t know what to do.
—School Dazed in NYC
Dear Dazed,
I have a lot of thoughts, but I don’t have an answer. Because there is no good answer. I was committed to sending my child to public school: She started out in a magnet elementary school in our urban school district as a kindergartener, and eventually graduated from a magnet high school after four years there. (To give you an idea of what our school system is like, the “alternative” aspect of that high school—to which, like all the magnet schools here, one must enter a lottery to gain entrance—was, and still is, “academically oriented.”). In between those public school bookends, however, there was a lousy private school (which we picked because it was more affordable, nearer home, and way less exclusive than other private schools—and also because it took a while for us to understand how lousy it actually was) and a period of homeschooling. As committed as I was to keeping my kid in public school, I had to take her out of it halfway through first grade—at the urging of her own teacher!—because the school was in chaos after its fragile stability came undone. (Long story, obviously. For a fuller treatment, you can read the chapter titled “Enough Friends” in my 2005 nonfiction book The Middle of Everything.)
I tell you this because I feel your pain. Our public school system, nationally, is broken. The situation in NYC is particularly impossible, infuriating, and heartbreaking (I’m from New York; I was educated in that public school system, in Brooklyn, lo these many years ago, during its so-called Golden Age). And I hate everything about private schools. I couldn’t wait to put my kid back into a public one. If I had a do-over, I would try another public elementary school before giving up. (But I might have had to give up anyway, I recognize that.)
I don’t know what you should do. But I do know that you have to make the decision that you believe will be best for your child in the long run, taking every possible factor into account. I get the feeling that you’re leaning toward your husband’s plan but that you feel guilty about it—or that you don’t feel like you’ve got a good enough argument to counter his. I will say that an argument about the importance of your child being in an economically and racially diverse environment should not be understated—it is hugely important. I believe that my own kid, all grown up now, is the admirable person she is in part because she did not spend her entire life pre-college surrounded by people whose life experience was like her own—because for so much of her education, she was a white girl in a majority-Black school, a college professor’s kid in a school where the majority was eligible for an income-based free lunch program, a kid who’d lived in the same house all her life who had friends whose families did not have stable housing. But I also remember the period of time when I felt that our public school system could not be trusted to educate her.
Part of what I’m saying is that whatever decision you make now need not be a permanent one—that, indeed, few decisions are irrevocable. But I’m also saying that you and your husband might think broadly about all the possibilities and all your reasons for proceeding as you eventually choose to do. And that you should be open to changing your mind if that decision doesn’t end up sitting well with you.
—Michelle
Link
2. y 4-year-old son is gifted, no question about it (he already knows his multiplication tables). He may also be on the autism spectrum, have ADHD, and/or sensory difficulties (it’s so difficult to tease that apart from normal 4-year-old behavior). But my question is less about that and more about how I make sure we don’t get trapped in an information silo. In trying to learn more about my son’s giftedness and potential neuro-divergence, I’ve joined Facebook groups for “twice-exceptional” (2e) and gifted students and met with a consultant who helps connect families to resources. We’ve also moved him to a small preschool that only accepts gifted students and were planning to keep him there through 1st grade. At first this felt really helpful. Look at all these other people whose kids have issues like mine! They’ve already figured out some of the best providers/evaluators in the area!
Lately, though, I’m beginning to worry. It seems like because all these parents run in the same circles and see the same providers, there’s a real risk for pseudoscience to sneak in and take hold.
Thankfully, these people are not anti-vax (that I’ve seen), but there is so much talk of things like primitive reflexes, auditory processing disorder, school refusal (as if it’s a disorder), oppositional defiant disorder, etc. So many of them homeschool and really believe that’s the only school situation that could work for 2e students. How do I know what things are real (though maybe not well-known in, or dismissed by, the general population) vs. what has gained steam within a particular community with no reality checks? I’ve tried to do some of “my own research” online, but anything that has even a modicum of research behind it has legitimate-looking websites and vocal proponents. Help!
—Gifted and Troubled
Dear Gifted and Troubled,
Keep the focus on your individual kid and what you think he needs. That may not always be what the “average,” “typically developing” kid needs, or what one particular community of parents has decided that their kids need. As you say, behaviors you observe now may be early signs of diagnoses that would benefit from particular interventions—or they may be particular things about a little person who is still developing on their own growth curve. You have to keep watching how your kid develops, what his needs and strengths and coping mechanisms etc. are.
Four is really, really young for you to know in what environments and under what conditions your child can learn. I also think it’s too early to be making sweeping statements like “My kid can only learn in homeschool!” There’s so much variation when it comes to how schools approach and support kids who learn differently. Avoid the temptation to be rigid in your thinking, believing that once a certain label (“2E”) gets applied to your kid, there is a one-size-fits-all ideal or correct approach—to education, or to anything else.
Community has been really important to me as the parent of neurodivergent kids. But I tend to be really wary of those who seem a little too invested in the idea that there is just one “right” environment or one particular approach that will allow kids with particular needs to thrive. Remember that the loudest people in a group aren’t always correct, and that their kids aren’t yours. No one else knows your child like you do. Focus on getting to know and understand your son and how he learns to the best of your ability, and together with trusted healthcare providers, therapists, educators, etc., continue to discuss how best to meet his needs and support his healthy development.
—Nicole
Link
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And it's bad for your kids.
Of course, if LW is using "good school" to mean "high test scores" then they can rejoice - high test scores are little more than a proxy for parental income and education, and clearly these kids have parents with high levels of at least one of those.
(And no, I don't believe for one minute that the more prestigious private schools of NYC have a better environment than public schools. Bad in a different way, perhaps - but on that note, while LW is correct that high school admissions and omg middle school admissions in NYC are a mess, there are plenty of perfectly good high schools in the city. And middle schools too, but yeah, those are the weak link in the system. Your choices are not private school or bust. Actually, the only person I know who was really dissatisfied with her kids' public high school sent the first two to Staten Island Tech. Which I told her was a bad idea from the start. She seems okay with the third one's school.)
2. JFC, does LW2 have no ability to evaluate sources? If you want to know if something is a recognized diagnosis, you check the DSM. If you don't have a copy of the DSM then you go to a website run by an organization you recognize, like the NIMH or the CDC. If it's not in the DSM that doesn't mean it's not a valid condition, it just means it's not in the DSM - google to see if there's any scholarly articles on the subject, then read the abstracts to see if they make sense.
It's not actually impossible to tell science from pseudoscience, at least not when it comes to well-recognized diagnoses like Auditory Processing Disorder. Basic critical thinking skills and reading comprehension, that's all you need, and perhaps a simple understanding of statistics and arithmetic.
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Consider the decades of disagreement between people with chronic Lyme disease and the respectable doctors and medical researchers who believed Lyme disease went away after a month of antibiotics. There were research articles that made sense (to a person who didn't start reading them with some suspicion of their basic premise), and the ones published in respectable scholarly journals generally showed that patients who complained about having chronic Lyme really had anxiety and depression and other problems that could explain their complaints. Do you believe that because it's respectable science? Or believe the people with more direct experience of the problem, who are complaining on websites that they're worried and miserable because doctors don't take them seriously?
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Like, if the question she as asking was "Is this in the DSM?" I would agree with you, but if the question she's asking is "are people using this diagnosis going to provide care and advice that is based on the best current knowledge and useful for my child?"... it gets a lot more complicated very fast.
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You're right, and a lot of people don't realize to what extent it's a question about the doctor rather than the diagnosis.
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She seems unclear on the distinction between saying that your child has been diagnosed with auditory processing disorder and saying that you won't vaccinate your child because of autism.
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(Auditory processing disorder, after all, isn't in the DSM-5. But reactive attachment disorder is, and echo chambers that have bought into that one have killed kids. So you really can't just go by some kind of clear, simple standard to know what's safe. And going by what your doctors tell you only helps if you know your doctors aren't caught in the echo chamber.)
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If you get your kid a diagnosis for something that is "just normal variation" but it gets the accommodations that make them thrive better... is that bad? At what point does sort of getting a medical label for everything your kid does, like can be endemic in 'twice gifted' sort of circles, cross over from "using the system to help your kid" to "collective Munchausen's by proxy"? How can you tell if using the diagnosis actually is a net good for your kid?
Like I don't have answers for LW but I'm glad she's asking. (Probably my only answer is to keep asking; as long as you keep asking those hard questions, and looking for answers even if you don't like them, that will be insulation from echo chamber effects.)
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Because that's the part of the letter that annoys me. She's lumping in things like auditory processing disorder with antivax sentiments instead of taking literally three minutes to see if some official webpage mentions it.
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And the sad fact about ODD is that autistic Black children are far more likely to be diagnosed with ODD than correctly diagnosed with autism, and it has severe ramifications in how they’re perceived by others and treated by the educational system. Even if a condition is real, the ways in which it’s diagnosed or misdiagnosed can cause massive issues, and clinicians and scientists aren’t free of bias.
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and I read the wikipedia entry
and went
o.O
(I had heard of this racist, colonialist bullshit several years ago, but I had forgotten about it in the intervening years)
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I love this phrasing, it's so evocative. Can I borrow it occasionally?
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as a former kid of color whose parents
wastedspent inordinate amounts of money to keep me out of NYC's public schools I feel like I should have an emphatic response to #1 but I really don't know. Different kids are different. But I feel like LW can affect whether or not her kid is an "out of touch private school brat" even if she sends them to private school. I dunno, though. There are people who have called me an out of touch private school brat, maybe with more justification than I wanted to admit to at the times.contemplates
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However, the opportunities (academic, afterschool, networking, internships) that are available to private school kids far outstrip those available to public school kids - and they are HANDED to private school kids, whereas in public school you have to research and struggle and do most of it yourself.
Public schools are SO much more diverse; but privte schools have the same racial, ethnic, religious problems and issues. Private schools are BAD with disabilities, regardless of what kind they are, unless they are specifically for that one disability. eg there is a private school for autistic kids in NYC - but the school I work at has zero autistic kids; ADHD kids get transferred out or quit extremely quickly; I am the only person on campus who walks with a cane and therefore cannot access many parts of the campus.
I think like anything else, it really depends on what the kids need. If your kid needs the opportunities, a private school is better. If you kid needs to be socialized, a public school is better. If you want the prestige (lol) of high test scores or an "impressive" school name - private school, but that might not be what's best for the kid. Etc etc.
I know folks who went to competitive public schools and thrive; and those who dropped out and got their GEDs. I know folks who went to private schools and thrived; some dropped out etc etc.
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(Autism evaluation in NYC starts at two years old for early intervention purposes. It is free through the state/county. There is no reason for kids to suffer through the wrong type of education or care when there are so many options that can be accessed if you only KNOW the services are there.)
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I wish people with neurodivergent kids would remember that neurodivergent adults exist. How about seeking out accounts of what it's like to have auditory processing disorder from people who've been coping with it, and looking at their techniques and coping mechanisms to see if they might help your kid? I think you're wildly unlikely to find anyone who has ever actually identified as having "oppositional defiant disorder", though you may find people who were traumatized and abused as children in the name of that diagnosis.
Maybe looking at how ND adults talk about diagnoses they received as children (or claimed for themselves as adults) could give you some context on which ones are useful and which ones are shiny labels for shitty treatment of children. Maybe noticing that ND adults exist could also help you not be a terrible parent as your kid grows up and continues to be weird. (Maybe you might even notice some things that run in your family that you never thought of as weird or diagnosable, and some coping mechanisms that are useful for you too. My brother recently got an autism diagnosis in his 40s, after his toddler got one. I was not surprised. (I don't have an autism diagnosis, but I am somewhere in the same ND neighborhood and have known that for a long time. It's all over my family, just rarely named or discussed.))
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People make useful tools out of all kinds of things, I guess!
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However, the very few people I've known who've had kids with that diagnosis - their kids weren't simply misbehaving, even in an outre fashion. They were outright hazards to themselves and others, doing things like deliberately reaching into a campfire because an adult told them not to. IIRC, though, those kids all (and "all" means some number less than five) had a trauma background, and I think either all or nearly all of them had an abusive bioparent or two abusive bioparents with their own history of trauma and/or severe mental illness. (Which is how they ended up adopted out of foster care - and you don't need to tell me that foster kids, regardless of race, are vastly more likely to be misdiagnosed as having mental illness, even as they're also more likely to display some of those mental illnesses.)
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however, friend's kid has found SCHOOL very traumatic right from the get go
so either the Pathological Demand Avoidance arises from friend's kids autism and ADHD
or the Pathological Demand Avoidance arises from the trauma of dealing with other kids at school who were not in the least bit neurodivergent friendly
or from dealing with teachers who expect the response to "JUMP!"
to be "How high?"
and not "Why should I? Justify yourself!"
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