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Education journalist Peg Tyre's new book tackles falling grades, ADHD
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They get expelled from preschools five times more than girls and are diagnosed with learning disorders four times as often. In her new book, "The Trouble With Boys," journalist Peg Tyre explains why schools are failing our sons and in this excerpt, she takes a hard look at the rising rates of ADHD among boys.
Chapter eight
Pay attention: Your son, his teacher and ADHD
As six-year-old Kai Farquhar tells it, he ran into a bit of trouble in first grade. Mostly, he wants you to know, he likes school, “especially P.E., library, music, and art.” He likes to read, too — and his parents will proudly tell you that he devours books at a fourth-grade level. So what’s the trouble?
“I can’t complete a journal entry,” Kai confesses, his blue eyes and thick eyelashes growing moist. Why not? He thinks for a minute, then looks down at his hand, which often starts to ache when he writes for a long time. “Oh, man!” he says, flexing his fingers. “I just get sick of doing it!” What happened when he didn’t finish his journal? The teacher, he says tremulously, “would give me a look.” A look? “She’d be doing her papers and I’d be not doing my work and she’d give me a look.” He shakes his mop of brown hair as if he’s still amazed that he survived it.
Kai’s parents are a little frightened of the teacher, too, but for other reasons. For the last eight months, they’ve been caught in a vise: They believe their son is a bright normal boy, but the teacher and the school think Kai has an attention deficit and should be on Ritalin.
Kai’s problems, such as they are, are a relatively recent development.
Kindergarten and the first half of first grade were a breeze. Back then, Kai’s teacher had nothing but wonderful things to say about him. Shortly after Christmas break, though, Kelley and Tim Farquhar, who live in a suburb outside Kansas City, noticed that Kai was struggling to get his math and writing homework done. “Writing has always been a problem since he can’t really control his pencil yet,” says Kelley, who works in a bank. She gives a little laugh. “He’s got the handwriting of a serial killer.” He’s also bored to death with the drill-it-till-you-kill-it approach to math homework. “The same problems, with the same numbers over and over again,” says Kelley. “We’ve had lots of tears — both his and mine.”
When Tim, a stay-at-home dad, picked Kai up from school, the teacher began signaling that there was trouble. “He’s not getting his work done,” Tim kept hearing. “The teacher said, ‘He’s daydreaming. He’s out in left field,’ and ‘even when I stand on top of him, he’s not paying attention.’ ” Tim started to worry.
Soon, the teacher started sending Kelley and Tim notices that Kai had a “red day,” meaning he hadn’t finished his work in the allotted time, he was talking to other kids, or he was acting silly. “None of those infractions seemed all that serious to me,” says Kelley. Tim, though, decided to sit in on class one afternoon and try to get a sense of the problem. “I couldn’t help but notice that all of the kids who were having ‘red days’ were boys,” he says. Around that time, the teacher and the school nurse began a steady patter of “suggestions” urging Kelley and Tim to “get Kai tested.” Kai is Kelley’s only child, but she knew what that meant. She had heard plenty of other parents talk about taking their children for an evaluation, getting a diagnosis of ADHD, and then trying various medications.
“I wondered if it was really necessary,” says Kelley. She stalled, but the “suggestions” grew more pointed. It’s against the law for school personnel to pressure parents into giving a child attention-enhancing drugs, but Kai’s school got the message across.
“The teacher would say, ‘Kai had a bad day today. Have you taken him to the doctor? You know, [Kai’s classmate] is on Ritalin and he’s been having mostly good days,’ ” says Tim, his voice filled with anguish and self- doubt. “Growing up, you’re taught that a teacher is an authority figure. And you figure she probably sees lots of kids. They act like you just don’t know what they know because you’re an inexperienced parent. They act like they know what’s good for your kid more than you do.”
Kelley and Tim resisted.
Finally, in the spring, they broke down. They asked the teacher for a note detailing Kai’s problems. She listed Kai’s frequent daydreaming and failing to complete his journal. Then Kelley, Tim, and Kai went to their local pediatrician. The doctor spent 10 minutes examining Kai, read the teacher’s note, and handed Kelley and Tim pamphlets for different ADHD medications. “Sounds like ADHD to me,” she told Kelley and Tim. “Take a look at these and see which one you want to put him on.”
The couple looked around the examining room. Logos for popular attention deficit drugs were emblazoned on the notepads, the pens, the posters, the pencil holder jars, the Kleenex box, the doctor’s own stethoscope, and the little hammer she used to test Kai’s reflexes. They grabbed up their son and backed out of the office.
That afternoon, Kelley called a renowned hospital in Kansas City and put Kai on the waiting list to get a second opinion. He’ll be evaluated — in eight months. Tim is dreading it already: “I feel like we’re all getting sucked into something we don’t think is right for Kai.” It seems to him that the school doesn’t have enough tolerance for typical boy behavior. “But at the same time you worry because maybe there is really something wrong with my kid.”
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