ablchild adhd

A Sweet Victory

My name is Erika Neely. I am a 33-year-old single African-American woman. I am raising a young male who is 13 years old. His name is Bradley Ballard. In 1996 my son entered Kindergarten in the public school system. He already knew how to read and write from attending a Montessori School so he became easily bored with what was being taught in his class. Instead of the school advancing him, they saw him as a problem. His teacher reported that he kept getting up from his seat trying to help the other children. This was, in her opinion, bothering the children and disrupting her class. Why are teachers always trying to dumb down children? I was told that these behaviors were abnormal and that he needed to undergo a psychological evaluation. The school referred me to a psychiatrist on May 28, 1996. When I went to this psychiatrist he told me that my son's behaviors were abnormal. I was then instructed that he would have to take Ritalin. That same day I was given a prescription for this drug. I told this psychiatrist that I would not be giving my son any drugs. He then told me that I would regret it later and that he would become a problem to society. I told him that I would just have to regret it later. The pressure that was placed on me caused me to doubt my motherly intuition. By no means did I want to inhibit my child from being the best that he could be, but at the same time, I just had a feeling that this was not right.

When I went back to the school they were continuing to pressure me and were calling me every day. I was told that my son had ADHD. I was not at anytime told that this label was a mental illness. I was not informed that there was no test to validate that my son had it and that it was completely subjective. Even though I was not told these facts I still had the earlier feeling of something not being right. I then started to question the school. I asked them what the symptoms of ADHD were. They told me it was not being able to stay on task, not completing assignments, etc. I told them that my son is on task and on grade level, and in many cases above grade level, and that he completes all of his assignments. They sat around that meeting looking at each other because they didn't have an answer. Then in September they held ANOTHER meeting and decided that it was not ADHD but it was EBD emotional behavior disorder, which is a different label and another mental illness. At this point, they told me that since my son would not be taking Ritalin, they would have to place him at an instructional school that would deal with his behaviors and would be a better fit for him. I asked them what behaviors were they referring to because I knew that my six year-old did not have any abnormal behaviors. They told me that he would probably only be in this school for a semester so not to worry. I told them that I did not agree with what they were doing to my child.

With all the pressure placed upon me by the school, I ran to California to get away from all the mess. When I got to California the label followed us as well. In California, the special education class that he was put in consisted of children with real physical handicaps. Some of these children were missing limbs, eyes, had multiple sclerosis and were in wheelchairs. Surprisingly, there were no children labeled with any subjective disabilities in his classroom. His teacher asked me why my son was in her classroom. I told her that I didn't know the rationality for it and she said that she was going to see about getting him placed back into regular education. It never happened, and I ended up moving back to Chicago.

Back in Chicago, I placed him back into a different public school system from the one I had originally left and they at first did not pick up that my son was labeled EBD and placed him into regular education 7^th grade classroom.

His teacher reported that my son would finish his work quickly and talk too much, causing distractions. She failed to look at the fact that my son was too quickly completing assignments and was extremely bored with repetitive learning. She was not giving my son anything to keep him busy or motivated and therefore he had to sit and wait around until the next assignment was started. She looked at his previous school records and she noticed that under these it showed that he was classified with EBD. She reported to the principal that my son did not belong in her class.

It is my belief, that the teachers are using this as a form of discipline, and that by labeling these students with subjective disorders, they have the means of systematically placing them in classrooms where they do not have to teach them. It seems that if a child is subjectively labeled, they are viewed as a problem, and in effect stereotyped as unable to learn.

I tried to work with the school before they moved him back into special education but they were listening, but not effectively hearing anything that I had to say. I felt like everything was being repeated over again. This whole ordeal made me an emotional wreck. I did not know what to do or who to turn to. I was helpless in stopping the chain reaction that had started when my child was labeled by the school district. I lost my job at a radio station in December 2002 because I had become so depressed and felt overwhelmed over the belief that I couldn’t help my son.

I personally had a very difficult and unhappy childhood, and extremely negative experiences in public school. My son’s situation forced me to remember that the public school that I had attended as a child, did a very similar thing to me by labeling me learning disabled and sticking me in a classroom where I was not being taught. There were many teachers that told my mother that I was not capable of learning and not worth the effort of teaching. They said that I would not amount to much. What stays with me is that I always knew that what they were saying was a lie. It was these statements that made me all the more determined to prove these same teachers wrong. I accomplished this goal when I went on to become a first generation college graduate. I proved the fact that I did not have any learning disability. In fact, I have been told today that I am an overachiever. I achieve at everything I do.

LAST MONTH I TURNED ON THE MONTEL WILLIAMS SHOW AND I SAW A MOTHER WHO’S SON HAD BEEN LABELED. I WENT TO HER WEBSITE AND WOW WAS I BLOWN AWAY, CONFRONTED WITH THE TRUTH OUT IN THE OPEN, IN BLACK AND WHITE. I contacted Patty Weathers and was given a lot of information about the misidentification and mislabeling of children and how special education is used as a dumping ground for children categorized with subjective labels. I also received information that showed that I was not the only parent pressured to put my child on Ritalin by the school. I used this for ammunition in a letter, which I sent to my son’s school. I had the fortunate opportunity to travel to Washington D.C. and share my story with sympathetic legislators who were genuinely concerned and helpful.

My son, Bradley, has been labeled for 7 years, and for 7 years I have been trying to fight the system by myself. As a direct result of seeing the Montel Williams Show and presenting the facts to my son’s school, I, in turn, received the best news of my life. The school has taken the subjective label EBD off of my child and removed it from his records. Bradley Ballard will be officially placed back into regular education.

I am very angry with the school because they not only misrepresented the issue, but they misinformed me and emotional harmed my child. Parents should be able to trust their children’s school and feel secure that it would not place their children in harms way.

Though I am thankful to God for leading me to the truth, I realize that there is much more work to be accomplished. I know that my son is gifted and creative and should truthfully not be in regular education where there are little challenges, inquisitiveness is frowned upon, and rote memorization is encouraged. Since my story has unfolded I have looked into the facts and have learned that schools are profiting off of these subjective labels, and children that are many times gifted are being systematically destroyed. There is an abundance of special education dollars going to children subjectively labeled with mental illnesses, yet there is little if any dollars set aside for the gifted children. What is to become of these children?

Erika Neely, Vice President, California

erika_neely@yahoo.com

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