A new kind of low

This year's presidential campaign has been chock-full of appalling comments and episodes. The overwhelming majority of these unfortunate incidents have no real relevance to this blog, so I keep sitting on my hands and resisting the urge to "get political." This particular article, however, is tasteless, offensive, and, as I tell my children when they utter something especially unfortunate or inflammatory, really unnecessary.

"Taking Things Apart"

...along with "All About Pirates" and "The History of Snack Food," "Taking Things Apart" is an elective offered at a small high school for boys on the autistic spectrum. This is a very interesting article - check it out!

Can "green breaks" help with ADHD?

-- A small study suggests that nature breaks might help children with attention problems. I do not know what to make of this. In our experience, time outdoors does help my ADDDDDHHHHHD child focus and settle -- it's a good thing that he is wild about birding! This increased focus has never, ever resulted in improved schoolwork or even in improved focus on schoolwork. The positive changes last only as long as we are outdoors. At the same time, studying outdoors is impossible, because my son always ends up being hopelessly distracted by everything going on around him.

Read the story from The New York Times here.

Nebraska's "Safe haven" law

NPR reports that most of the children who have been left at emergency rooms under Nebraska's new safe haven law are over eleven years of age. These children tend to have severe behavioral problems and/or psychiatric disorders. Many of the parents and guardians involved are handing their children over to foster care because they have no resources to get their children the help they need. The first comment posted about this story expresses outrage over the parents' callous behavior. The second commenter speaks to the dearth of services available to children with mental illness.

I have no idea what is really happening with these families in Nebraska, but I can say that when our family faced past crises, there was little-to-nothing available until we found the TSANJ and the psychology clinic at Rutgers. I would call clinics and hospitals, begging for help, only to be told "Well, we're kind of busy" (translation: It's Friday afternoon, and we wanted to leave early.) "We have an opening available in six months;" "We only see children over age eighteen (???);" "Your child is too complex/difficult/inconvenient for us to handle." It very literally took me almost six years to find anyone who could help us, and then we were fortunate enough to be able to pay out of our own pockets for whatever was needed.

Memo to John McCain

When you have a few minutes to spare, please check out these pages. I know, I know, it's Wikipedia, but, hey, it's a start.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_Syndrome

Please note that these are, in fact, distinct and very different disorders.

Off-label use of meds in children

Courtesy of Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2202338/

Quotable quote from Slate: "Insurance companies prefer using medication to treat these [psychiatric] problems because it is less labor-intensive and, therefore, less expensive than psychotherapy. Anyway, they are inclined to be suspicious of treatments based on talking and thinking."

The paper can be found here.

It has been a while...

...since I posted anything here. I am still around, just a bit busy with homeschooling and following political and economic events. Birding seems to be taking up a lot of time around here, too.

Anyway, here is a story from today's New York Times, about what might be the next big bubble -- the NCLB bubble: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/education/13child.html?em