Starting Kindergarten and having trouble staying in seat

[Kristen26]

My 5 year old daughter started Kindergarten about 3 weeks ago. Her entire life she's been described as "busy" and she had trouble in preschool with staying in her seat and during rug time. I have a few concerns now that she has started school. She continues to have trouble staying in her seat during class and during lunchtime. The teacher says she gets up and wonders. She also got into trouble and I've already received a call from the principal. She and another little girl were throwing food at the lunch table at a little boy who was making faces at them. I think we have a handle on that, as she said from now on she will tell a grown up if someone is doing something she doesn't like. My 3rd issue is about a week before school started she started behaving like her hands, feet and lower legs were itchy. I tried changing to all fragance free and dye free soaps but the behavior continues. She is not making and marks on her skin and her skin shows no sign of rash or dry skin. I took her to a pediatrician who thought the behavior was related to all the stress of starting school and new classes for gymnastics and dance. (she moved up to the K class). The pediatrician even mentioned OCD and when I told her about the not staying in her seat problem she also mentioned ADHD. Too much for me....I left the appt crying. I don't want to label my child at such a young age. I'm not sure what to do to help her. It's so hard to watch her wiggle, fidgit and move around all over the place when she is expected to sit still. Any advice or suggestions I would appreciate so much!

[Shortyrn]

I have left many a Dr.'s office in tears...Your reaction is very normal.  We all just want our children to do well.  The bottom line that you have to get to is what is best for your daughter.  If she is not able to sit in seat, then she is not able to....no fault of hers or yours...it is what it is.

It took me a long time to get past the label issue too....Bottom line that I came to was that I don't care what "they" (being the school or experts) call it ....help me with it...be it therapy, medication, buddy system at school....just help.

I would suggest, to first meet with the teacher, principal, and maybe the school psychologist to get their feedback....It's not about a label....its about getting the right pieces into place to help your daughter succeed.

[allmymarbles]

Being busy and active is not pathological. There is no indication, that I can see, that she should be diagnosed with ADD. In any case, she is too young for such a diagnosis, so resist your doctor's advice and take his diagnoses with a grain of salt. Keep in mind that ADD is a medical fad and that only the smallest minority of those diagnosed actually suffer from it. And the meds they prescribe can be extremely harmful, as well as addictive. We all have different energy levels. I have a daughter like yours. She is all grown up now and tremendously productive. She is the youngest ever to have held her executive position - and the only woman to do so.

As for the itching. It could well be an allergy. I am allergic and itch if I do not take my anti-histamines. I do not develop rashes or hives, or anything like that. The next time she itches, look to her hands and see if the palms look a little speckley (sometimes mine do). To find out for sure if it is an allergy, buy some children's liquid Benadryl and give her a dose. If the itching stops - you have a cheap and accurate diagnosis.

[deanne65]

"In any case, she is too young for such a diagnosis, so resist your doctor's advice and take his diagnoses with a grain of salt"
The point with this "grain of salt" advice, however well intentioned, is that such has become entrenched in the American school system; with great frequency and at an early age! The push to label the individual, as a means of addressing the social, has led to tens of millions of children on some form of psychotropic medication, and over 550,000 children collecting SSI or SSDI for some form of "mental disability"-with long term use of neuroleptics thought to be the principal reason for chronic "mental illness". The means of altering the individual, so as to alter the social, certainly makes therapeutic sense, however, the upshot has its consequences! There is a fine balance, between the institutional and the individual, yet, behavioral specialists are still relying on some disease model or other to explain the wayward and unruly child in the classroom. which is hardly a workable definition of disease. This social engineering taking place in our schools has run afoul, but still, it serves its purposes.

[allmymarbles]

Serves what purpose? Deterioration of the psyche? Obliteration of individuality? Destruction of passion? I am 100 per cent glad I am not you. I have healthy children and grandchildren and not single one of them has ever been engineered for mediocrity. Big Brother is not benevolent. Read George Orwell's "1984," if you haven't already.

[deanne65]

You obviously did not understand my message whatsoever! George Orwell is a poor example of the kind of society I have in mind. I would say that "Brave new world" would be closer to what the psychiatrization of our culture approaches. SHEESH!

[allmymarbles]

I have ever had a problem with my native language. I think you should reread what you wrote.

[deanne65]

"I have ever had a problem with my native language". Please tell me what you found to be offensive in my critique. I don't know how much more unambiguous I could have been in my critique.

[deanne65]

I make use of sobering statistics on children who have been poisoned, I ironically mention that "therapeutizing" the (mis)behavior of children serves its "purpose", and I even mention the upshot of the present approach of social engineering, specifically, that of altering of individuals so as to serve the means and ends of the mental health enterprise, and you still think that I am being pro-psychiatry? To set the record staight, I am a psychiatric abolitionist because of the continued practices of psychiatry, and its allied fields, of coercions as cure and its ongoing excuses!

[allmymarbles]

I reread the posting to which I took exception. The problem is that you were not "unambiguous," and that what you said could be interpreted as supporting engineering for the greater good.

[deanne65]

The push to label the individual, as a means of addressing the social, has led to tens of millions of children on some form of psychotropic medication, and over 550,000 children collecting SSI or SSDI for some form of "mental disability"-with long term use of neuroleptics thought to be the principal reason for chronic "mental illness".

And you call this "ambiguous"? You obviously don't understand how quotations work to signal the reader.

[deanne65]

There is nothing wrong with social engineering per se. It is the means and ends of present psychiatric medicine, and of the mental health profession in general, that has appointed itself as our culture's social engineers. And, as I said, it has long since run afoul, with its Utopian and reductive take on the social!

[compnet]

It's often probably due to muscles feeling uncomfortable, perhaps cramping, and moving relaxes them.  There are nutrients that are needed for muscle relaxation, perhaps she is deficienct from the stress.

[allmymarbles]

There is plenty wrong with social engineering. And pretentious pseudo-intellectualism further demeans its validity.

[deanne65]

It makes no difference if you make such a sweeping statement concerning social engineering, it is still present in our culture and needful. The kind of social engineering I am talking about, the "needful" and practical kind, is of a piecemeal nature (read Karl Popper's "The open society and its enemies"), where a free and open society's democratic institutions serve to tweak the "system". What I am railing against, and a point you clearly have failed to comprehend, is the kind of social engineering that does not take into account the dynamics of a free society, and which leads to greater centralizing control and diminished autonomy of individuals. The latter is what one might witness in many totalitarian-collective societies, and in the praxis of institutional psychiatry.

[allmymarbles]

There is a huge difference between profound and obscure. I am trying to figure out which you are propounding.