http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413,125~1549~1870562,00.html
More families have children with learning disorders
By Joan Lowy - SCRIPPS HOWARD
ONE in every three American families has had to cope with a child with a
learning disability or a mental illness and most people believe such
problems are increasing, according to a poll by Scripps Howard News Service and
Ohio University.
In a national survey of 1,054 people, 65 percent said they believe learning
disabilities are becoming more common and 72 percent said mental health problems
are becoming more common. Thirty percent of poll respondents said they have had
a child under age 18 in their family -- a brother or sister, son or daughter,
niece or nephew, grandchild or first cousin -- diagnosed with a learning
disability. Eight percent said they have had more than one child diagnosed with
a learning disability.
More than 12 percent said they have had a child in their family diagnosed with a
mental illness, and 3 percent said they have had more than one child diagnosed.
"Those are staggering numbers," said Shelly Hearne, executive director of the
nonpartisan Trust for America's Health. "The implication is that we have a
significant problem out there that we are not adequately addressing."
Inevitably, such disorders take a personal toll on the children and their
families and a larger toll on society. Joan Iovino, for example, was
identified in second grade by school officials as both mentally "gifted" and
learning disabled. She liked to read Mark Twain and conduct science experiments
with plants. On certain intelligence and aptitude tests, she scored in the top 1
percentile. When it came to math, however, Iovino felt like she was in a foreign
country where everyone spoke a language she didn't understand. All but the
simplest calculations were beyond her grasp. The worst was when the teacher
would ask students at random to solve an equation.
"I would sit there and think, 'Don't call on me, don't call on me, don't call on
me,' " said Iovino, 20, of Bethesda, Md. "At the time, I didn't know why I
couldn't do this. I thought, 'What's wrong with me?' At least if another kid got
it wrong the answer was sort of close, but I was having to guess at random."
Iovino -- now an honors student at a community college -- was eventually
diagnosed with dyscalculia, which is the inability to learn to calculate. By
sixth grade, she was in a class for the learning disabled that included severely
retarded and emotionally disturbed students. Angry and alienated, she dropped
out of school the following year in favor of home schooling. No one knows for
certain why some children have learning disabilities, attention disorders,
autism or emotional disorders like anxiety, depression and bipolar. What's clear
is that these disorders appear far more prevalent in children than was generally
thought a generation ago. Whether their actual incidence is on the rise is a
matter of fierce debate among scientists, parents, educators and doctors.
There is a huge gender gap for many of the disorders. Studies have shown that
boys are three to four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls.
Boys are also two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with attention and
learning disorders. Many children are diagnosed with multiple disorders. About
half of children with attention disorders also have at least one learning
disability, and more than a third have an emotional disorder like anxiety,
depression or bipolar disorder, which is characterized by mood swings. "These
labels are like grasping at straws," said Dr. Martha Herbert, a pediatric
neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "They are getting at
some surface differences among the kids, but they don't get to the deep essence
of what's going on with them."
Prescriptions to children and adolescents for psychiatric drugs more than
doubled in the decade ending in 1996, according to a study by Dr. Julie Zito of
the University of Maryland. Prescriptions for antidepressants used to treat
emotional disorders like anxiety, depression and bipolar rose even faster than
prescriptions for stimulants used to treat attention and hyperactivity
disorders.
Another recent study of pharmaceutical industry data by Yale University
researchers found that prescriptions to children and adolescents for
anti-psychotic drugs used to treat severe mental illness went up 138 percent and
other antidepressants were up 43 percent between 1997 and 2000.
Some parents, scientists and public health advocates are convinced environmental
influences ranging from viruses to chemicals such as alcohol, lead, PCBs,
pesticides and mercury are interfering with brain development in children. "This
is an epidemic," said Jo Rupert Behm, a nurse and past president of the Learning
Disabilities Association of California. Behm's son, Sean, was diagnosed at age 8
with three learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder. "The public is
only now becoming aware of this." But some experts believe there is no
real increase in the prevalence of any of the disorders, except perhaps autism.
Rather, they say there has been a re-labeling of students who are perhaps less
intelligent or less industrious to explain their lack of academic success.
Increases in prescription drugs are because of aggressive marketing by
pharmaceutical makers, reductions in insurance coverage for mental health
counseling, and parents and teachers looking for a quick fix for unruly
students, said Arthur Caplan, chairman of the department of medical ethics at
the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
Also, parents seek learning disability diagnoses for their children so they can
get extra help or consideration, Caplan said. "They get more time on tests or it
becomes a reason to give an affirmative action look at a school admission," he
said. "It tends to be used more as an explanation or an excuse." Greg Rosenthal,
39, a software developer in Rockville, Md., whose 10-year-old daughter has been
diagnosed as both intellectually "gifted" and learning disabled, said he finds
the suggestion that some parents use learning disabilities to leverage the
educational system "highly offensive."
{Thimerosal and its heightened toxicity in the presence of testosterone are
not mentioned. Too much early diagnosis and labeling is mentioned. -Teresa}
Boys fall behind girls in grades
Classroom cultures that favor female students and an increase in learning
disabilities may explain the academic gap.
Margarita Bauza mbauza@detnews.com <mailto:mbauza@detnews.com>
The Detroit News
http://www.detnews.com/2005/schools/0501/09/A01-54261.htm
Katherine Newman <knewman@princeton.edu>
PLYMOUTH -- The nation's boys are slipping and researchers say it's time to
worry. According to the U.S. Department of Education, boys have fallen behind
girls in academic achievement. Fewer boys than girls are enrolling in and
graduating from college and fewer men have master's and doctoral
degrees. While it may look like girls have won the gender wars, some wonder
if something is amiss.
In the last 30 years, more boys than girls have been diagnosed with attention
deficit disorder and learning disabilities, and more boys have dropped out of
school. "There is serious concern about what is happening to boys," said
Katherine Newman, a sociologist at Princeton University. Experts offer a
variety of reasons for the decline. They say a disproportionate number of
boys are diagnosed as learning disabled too early in life, a label that can
later prove difficult to shed. Others argue that boys have been neglected in
a large-scale societal effort to help girls. Others blame classroom cultures
that have developed over time without accounting for the physically active
nature of young boys. "I think (elementary school) matches girls'
personalities," said West Bloomfield mom Liz Fellows.
Whatever the reason, researchers agree the trend needs a closer look, in part
because it will influence the ability of future men to make a living. "Since
the 1970s, this has not been true," Newman said. "This is a serious concern
because the possibility of a well-paying job without education has become
more of an issue." U.S. Department of Education data shows that dropout rates
among boys have increased, and more boys are being diagnosed with learning
disabilities.
Twelve percent of boys were dropouts in 2001, compared to 9 percent of girls,
according to the department. In the 1970s, dropout rates for both boys and
girls hovered around 14 percent. Males are also more likely than girls to be
identified with a learning disability. In 1999, about 21 percent of boys
versus 14 percent of girls were diagnosed as having a learning disability.
Those disabilities include visual impairment, deafness, mental retardation,
emotional disturbance and speech impediments. Disabilities can also include
diagnoses of attention deficit disorder, which researchers argue can be
misdiagnosed in boys, who traditionally behave more aggressively and can be
more distracted than girls.
Mirroring national trends, the percentage of males with bachelor's degrees in
Michigan has also fallen. In the 2001-02 year, more degrees were awarded to
women by public and private higher education institutions in Michigan. Women
received 27,629 compared to the 20,300 received by men.
Boys, girls develop differently
There is robust literature indicating that girls mature earlier than boys.
Boys have traditionally been more physically active than girls and these
characteristics are more pronounced earlier in life during the first years of
school. Differences in learning behaviors were immediately clear for Fellows,
the West Bloomfield mother of two boys and two girls. She recalls her boys
were far more rambunctious and energetic at a young age than her two
daughters. One of her sons was unable to sit down at a desk the whole time he
was in elementary school. The other, she said, was a multitasker before the
term was invented -- he couldn't focus on just one task.
In the meantime, her girls were model students -- helping others with
homework, following all the rules. She received letters from teachers about
her boys' behavior and worried about them until she said the district began
catching on. At one point, Fellows felt teachers began to become aware of the
learning differences between boys and girls. And that made a huge difference,
she said. "Boys process differently and have to be taught differently," she
said. Finding learning models that apply to both boys and girls is the key to
fixing this problem, experts say.
The classroom learning experience is much easier for girls than it is for
boys, said teacher Rebecca Chadwick, an elementary school teacher in Livonia
Public Schools. Like Fellows, Chadwick sees marked differences in boys' and
girls' behaviors in the classroom every day and understands that dealing with
those poorly could have serious consequences. Sending a child out to the
hallway or the principal's office is a common way of dealing with a child's
inability to sit still, she argues. But that child loses valuable hours of
instruction when this happens, which in the long run aggravates the problem.
Testing troubles
Certifying a child as learning disabled too early has become a major problem,
Chadwick said. Testing children younger and younger has contributed to this
problem, she added. "The problem is that they are so conditioned that they're
going to fail in school, that they start believing it and it gets harder for
them to change," she said. Newman, the Princeton sociologist, blames the
current testing frenzy, which labels children as problematic earlier in life,
for putting boys at a disadvantage. Boys develop more slowly than girls, she
said. And though it evens out in later years, boys get more discouraged and
less comfortable with school if they've fallen off track, she said. "The
catching-up process comes too late for the forms of labeling that we invoke
in school," she said. Our system, she argues, holds a disproportionate number
of boys back in school.
But Harvard education professor Wendy Lutrell rejects the idea that schools
unduly harm boys. "It's true that they are more likely to have misbehavior
result in disciplinary action and yes, they are more likely to be placed in
special ed programs," she said. "But the idea that boys are being mis-educated
is also true for girls." Girls however, exhibit their relational issues
later, when things like boasting and speaking your mind clash with
ideas of docility and noncompetitiveness, which schools have
traditionally rewarded in girls. "Schools aren't doing great in either
score."
Fixing the problem
The last several years have seen a surge in literature on the trouble
plaguing boys. Researchers say literature started to emerge following the
publication of books like "Reviving Ophelia" and "Queen Bees and Wannabes,"
which look into the failings of schools in relation to girls. Books like
"Raising Cain" and "Real Boys" were published soon after and are making their
way onto the radar screens of educators. The books look into the emotional
life of boys and the difficulties boys and young men face in a world
that offers little nurturing and asks boys to be tough. Many others have
focused on the well-being of boys following the Columbine killings of 1999,
where two teenagers staged an ambush on their classmates, killing 12
students and a teacher. Researchers have also focused on investigating the
increased attention deficit disorder diagnoses, and the culture of
classrooms, which tend to punish temperament and things like boys' inability
to sit still.
Jennifer Davidson, an education consultant at Oakland Schools, is well
versed in this issue. She visits classrooms and schools in Oakland County,
lecturing and bringing attention to the fact that school learning
environments need to change, she said. "Educators are aware of it and are
just starting to take steps in implementing changes in school cultures," she
said. Those changes are as simple as incorporating more activity into
classrooms, which can go a long way toward accommodating the temperament of
boys. While much work needs to be done, some say the current economic
environment of budget cuts and frenzied testing have made issues like
the well-being of boys less of a priority for the average teacher. "They
really would love to implement this stuff," Davidson said.
Holly Bedwell, who has a son and a daughter in the Genesee County School
district, said she wasn't aware of research indicating boys were in trouble.
Her son is struggling more than her daughter academically but she dismissed
the idea that the school environment is to blame. "When he was in the same
grade level as her, they were doing the same," she said. "I think it has more
to do with his age and the fact that we just changed schools."
Researcher Tom Mortenson, who published the report "What's Wrong with the
Guys?" in 2002, said he's frustrated at what he feels is the lack of progress
in helping boys.
"If I could do one thing, it's go back to all colleges of education and
require them to teach teachers that boys are different than little girls," he
said. Mortenson argues that boys have been allowed to coast because "schools
have been putting all their energy into girls." "People just stopped paying
attention to boys," Mortenson said. "The women's movement has accomplished
extraordinary things. My argument has been that some energy needs to go into
the development of little boys, too."
You can reach Margarita Bauza at (248) 647-7429 or mbauza@detnews.com
<mailto:mbauza@detnews.com>
Kennedy Krieger to open new outpatient facility
Construction first step in larger expansion program at children's institute
The Associated Press
Originally published March 1, 2005, 11:28 AM EST
The Kennedy Krieger Institute plans to open a new outpatient facility, the
first step in a larger expansion program to meet the growing needs of
developmentally disabled children.
The outpatient center will be a block north of the institute's current
building, which it eventually plans to replace with a 450,000-square-foot
building that would be the centerpiece of the facilities on the 3.2-acre
site. While construction is expected to begin on the outpatient center next
year, Kennedy Krieger officials said the new facility is part of a long-term
plan that might take as long as 25 years to complete.
Kennedy Krieger treats between 10,000 and 12,000 children each year. The
current outpatient center, located on the bottom floor of Kennedy Krieger's
existing facility, has become crowded and needs updating, said spokesman
Bryan Stark.
"There is certainly a lot of growth in need in areas like autism," Stark
said. "This would give us a new facility and hopefully we will be able to see
additional kids."
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