Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be being diagnosed excessively and misrepresented in schools, education and medical experts said in a panel discussion held yesterday in Taipei.
During the discussion, titled “Lack of concentration is nobody’s fault: Children should not be canned as in a cannery,” the audience listened to teachers, doctors, experts and mothers talking about how children with ADHD are perceived and treated in school.
Taiwan Child Development Association managing supervisor Chang Ming-hui (張明慧), who has a daughter that has been diagnosed with ADHD, said that not a day goes by without her daughter turning her house into a mess or her son complaining about his little sister’s naughtiness, but her daughter “also teaches him new things, such as how to be adventurous and bold.”
Joanna Feng (馮喬蘭), executive director of the Humanistic Education Foundation, which hosted the discussion, said that children with ADHD are often labeled at school by teachers as troublemakers, while the positive effects of the disorder, such as courage and curiosity, are highly undervalued.
What makes the discrimination in educational settings more worrying is that ADHD is now being widely misused by schools to blame parents of disobedient children for not taking them to a child psychiatrist or making them take medication.
Lee Chia-yan (李佳燕), a family physician who has a son with ADHD, said that dozens of her child patients had been asked by teachers to see a psychiatrist because the teacher “suspected they had ADHD.”
However, Lee often found that many of the children suspected of having the disorder simply misbehaved or disrupted the class for reasons that were either not understood or overlooked by their teachers or parents.
“It’s ridiculous for a parent to take a preschooler to see me just because the teacher believes the kid’s desire to play outdoors is too strong. What else do you expect a preschooler to want to do?” Lee asked.
“I’ve also heard complaints about children’s psychiatrists prescribing ADHD medication after holding only a brief consultation with a patient,” she added.
Lee asked whether excessively diagnosing and misrepresenting the disease is a phenomenon stemming from adults’ impatience with restless children.
“What is ‘normal’ anyway? Medication might tame restless children, but it might also deprive them of their creativity and limit their potential. I believe that if we trust our children and refrain from controlling them too much, they will find their own way to balance themselves,” Lee said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai