Labels Without Testing

Everyone has an opinion on labels. Whether pro or anti, both sides have to admit that labels, at their heart, describe a specific set of characteristics, which make them useful in specific settings. The question becomes whether or not one can, or even should, use those labels in their appropriate settings without the testing to back them up.

Learning Something New

I do love learning new things. It's a wonderful feeling, and I get to feel like I'm doing something to help Mad Natter, even if all I'm doing is thinking up new things to bring up to his doctor when we go in for his med review. This week, though, learning has created a bit of an issue for me. I learned some new things about Mad Natter, and I learned a few things about how his care has been horribly wrong despite best efforts, and while I do love learning new things, it's made me stop and think and try to reconcile.

Finding our Joy

A quick bit of history for those not in the know: Mad Natter started preschool at 3. It was about three weeks in (at two days per week) that we started hearing rumblings about perhaps ADHD. Skeeve and I knew there was something amiss, but we didn't know precisely what. All we knew was that our child, from the age of 2.5, no longer seemed to meet a certain subset of developmental milestones - anything doing with delayed gratification, impulse control of any kind. Once he got into preschool, and things needed to be done on a schedule that wasn't 100% his own making, we learned that he had a distinct inability to follow directions on top of the impulse control.