Favorite 0 Featuring Dr. Jeff Chamberlain, MD · August 22 2011 at 11:01 am

Dr. Jeff Chamberlain discusses the dichotomy of a child being thought "gifted" by the parents and having ADHD by the teachers. Hey what's up? Barnaby...

Dr. Jeff Chamberlain discusses the dichotomy of a child being thought "gifted" by the parents and having ADHD by the teachers.

Hey what's up? Barnaby here, in this HelloLife moment we are going to talk about a really interesting and contradictory sort of a scenario as regards ADHD. Dr. Jeffrey Chamberlain, family medicine specialist, you see a lot of kids that are beset by ADHD probably in the course of your practice right?

Yeah I do.

Okay so here's the question: The parents say, "Doc, I think my child is gifted but, the teacher says 'I think he or she suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder'."  Can it be both?

It can be both, a lot of kids with ADHD are gifted in a lot of ways, a lot of times they're creative, they're active, sometimes they're very socially good with other people because they're very active.  So that could be the issue, it could be that the teacher is upset because maybe the kid is interrupting class or something like that, but the parent likes the fact that the kid has a great personality when they're around people.  Sometimes I've see conflict with that, usually what I recommend is finding out, one is do they really have ADHD or not and then what are the things that are causing problems and can we do interventions to help not make those a problem, but still keep the personality and creativity that the child has.

Well it seems if the teacher labels the child ADHD, then the teacher is going to say 'there's a trouble maker or someone who's disruptive to the flow of the class' and the child might be treated differently, so even if you as a parent think no no no my child is gifted, maybe you should just get the child tested, put the issue to rest, and know the truth once and for all.

Yeah, getting testing, because if it shows it or not you can bring that back to the teacher.  The other thing is I recommend working with teachers, sometimes in situations like that we as parents want to just butt heads with the teachers, but kind of talking to them and letting them know your concerns and talking trying what are they concerned about, and coming up with a plan.  Because if the kid's having a problem in school or having problems paying attention or interrupting class, we as parents don't want our kids to have these problems and so trying to work with the teachers figure out what can we do to make things better, and are there simple rewards systems or things we can do to really help our kid improve and by cooperating with the teacher is the best way to do that.   Even it might be hard sometimes, it's the best thing to do.

Well yeah you can't naysay they teachers years of experience, looking at all kids in all different situations and just saying 'alright, I'm going to take your suspicion and we'll delve a little deeper.

Yeah and sometimes when we as parents are wrong, sometimes we see our kids with rose colored glasses so we have to keep that in mind.  Maybe the teacher's wrong, maybe we're both right, or maybe I'm wrong and I need to make some changes myself. 

Excellent, well I'll tell you what, it's yours to do with as you please now because it's all about delving into HelloLife.net for the information that addressed the questions that are vexing you and then taking the appropriate actions.  So come back often because really the product is evolutionary, we are always trying to figure out what might be some of the hot button issues, the viewers of HelloLife.net, and we address them with professionals like Dr. Jeffrey Chamberlain. So check back!

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