Worrying About Using the Words of Diagnosis
Several years ago, the mother of one of my students became convinced that her son, a smart, quirky five-year-old, was autistic. Having known him for three years, she asked me what I thought. I told her that I had known many children on the autism spectrum over the years, but that I wasn't qualified to make a diagnosis. When she pressed me, I told her that her pediatrician, if he thought it warranted, would refer her to someone who could give her a more definitive answer. After consulting several psychologists and other specialists it turned out he was not on the spectrum, but during that period of several weeks his mother had turned her life over to autism, reading and researching, increasingly convincing herself of her own erroneous diagnosis, growing increasingly anxious and distraught, which, naturally, infected the entire family. This is why I had refused to even speculate: amateurs are often wrong.
It had been a brief, but incredibly stressful and unsettled time for this whole family, which is why I remain cautious about speaking to parents about things like autism or sensory processing issues or ADHD or any of the many other conditions with which children might be diagnosed. Rightly or wrongly, even the mere suggestion that a child is not "normal" (another nonsense term) throws an entire family into chaos. Rightly or wrongly, we live in a world in which CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Worrying About Using the Words of Diagnosis
