A Little Rant and Categories of Developmental Disorders

Hello to you all my dears. Thank you for reading my blog, it means a lot to me. I know most of you are from BW (for now at least), so before I'm listing the categories of developmental disorders, I'll rant about something that happened this week. I've said it before, but my father and I don't always get along and if there's something he refuses to accept, it's that I have developmental disorders. He often tells me that I'm lazy and that I need to grow up and often tells me things that really hurt and kind of show that I'm not welcome. Other people keep telling me they would have cut contact with him long ago and they keep on asking why I don't stop going to my maternal home, because I live on my own after all.

We managed to find a place for me when I was 20, a year before I let myself get tested on disorders.It's a classroom in an old school building that was being rent to prevent people from destroying it or using it as a squat building. The rent is cheap and it's a lot bigger than your average dorm room and other places being rented out to students, in short, a perfect place for a student, right? Well, not in my case.

It's just a big one room place that lacks outline and it has no structure. There also isn't a sense of safety at all, so it really clashes with my needs and it kind of feels like I'm drowning. I'm also not very comfortable with my neighbours, so I try to avoid most contact with them. It's not their fault though, they're all kind people and fairly understanding and they actually do want to get along with me, but being 'normal' noisy students that like going out and socializing, they're the complete opposite of me and I find it difficult to hang out with them. All this causes me to avoid my place most of the time, only sleeping there and staying in my room on my days off, but after school or my internships and at a certain time on my days off, I would flee back to the safety of my maternal home, which in fact isn't all that safe at all, but to me it's saver than the place I live. There are a lot of people who don't understand that, but fortunately there are also people close to me who do understand it.

Now here is what happened 2 days ago. Like any normal Tuesday evening after dinner and doing the dishes with my younger brother, I was on my laptop checking out BW when my dad started nagging at me yet again. He angrily told me I should get my priorities right, that I should quit playing with childish dolls and that I should grow up. Just the day before he told me I was ruining my social life because I wasn't on facebook enough. When I tried to tell him I was being social on BW and most of the players I know of are above 18 (or at least above 16), he just told me to shut up. I shouldn't talk back to him or else I just could pack my bags and leave because he was sick and tired of me talking back. In the world he lives in, everything is as he says it is, so if he thinks something is childish, it is childish and nothing else. Personally I think he himself is childish, because his egotistical behaviour reminds me of a toddler throwing a tantrum to get things to be his way. To make it worse, it's always me he treats like that, but when my brother who is only 2 years younger than me is playing FIFA on the playstation, my father never complains. After my mother's passing my father has always favored my younger brother and I've always had the feeling I'm not welcome (I don't remember what it was like before, because he was always working the whole day and we'd only see him from dinner at 5-6 pm until we want to bed at 7-8 pm and in the weekends. He got fired because of a reorganization at his working place when my mother was ill, choose to be with his family, but never got a job again afterwards). Well... the disorders I have are often heriditary and I'm pretty certain I've gotten them from him and after my stories about him, my psychologist thinks I'm probably right, but he doesn't seem to believe in disorders, so he'll never let himself get tested.

Categories of Developmental Disorders:

Well... enough of ranting about my father. Here's a list of categories (neuro) developmental disorders, split up according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM for short. I'm very certain it's a mix of the in 2013 released DSM-5 and the older DSM-IV, since I can't find an accurate list of categories of the DSM-5. I've seen the DSM-IV-tr (tr stands for text revision) in my psychologist's office and I'm very curious about it, so I kind of want to ask her if I could borrow it, but I've seen that the DSM-5 costs almost 150 euros, so I'm very hesitant about asking her...

I'm translating it from Dutch, so the disorders may or may not have the proper English name.

Intelectual Disability (ID) or Intelectual Developmental Disorder (IDD): Formerly known as mental retardation, the most well known disorder belonging with this category is the down syndrome.

Learning Disorders:

This category includes things like dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Motor Disorders:

A newer category that includes Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), Stereotypic Movement Disorder (SMD) and tic disorders like the Tourette syndrome.

Communication Disorders:

This includes language disorder, speech sound disorder, childhood-onset fluency disorder and the newly classified social (pragmatic) communication disorder.

Eating Disorders in Childhood:

Meaning it's a disorder in eating habbits before 18 years old and not caused by wanting to be super thin to look like models. This category includes Pica and Rumination Syndrome.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD):

Formerly known as Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), includes classic autism, atypical autism, Asperger syndrome, Rett syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-nos), Multiple-complex Developmental Disorder (McDD) and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder (CDD)

Attention Deficit and Behavioral Disorders:

This includes Attention Deficit [Hyperactivity] Disorder (AD[H]D), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Conduct Disorder (CD).

Defecation Disorders:

Includes several cases of nocturnal enuresis and in some cases encopresis.

Other Disorders in Childhood or Adolecence:

Includes several disorders that don't fit into the description of the other developmental disorders, like Seperation Anxiety Disorder (SAD), Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and Selective Mutism (SM).

I know there are more disorders than those, but in the DSM book, these are categorized as developmental disorders. In time I will dedicate at least one blog post to each and every above mentioned disorder, so you can find out more about them. But if you're interested in any other disorder that is not mentioned in here, do feel free to ask me and I'll see if I can tell you more about it.

4 Statements on Developmental Disorders

Here are 4 statements on developmental disorders that I often see in my country. I'll tell you why I agree or disagree with them.

Children with a developmental disorder are less smart than normal children.

Though in some cases this may be true, because their brains aren't developing properly after all. But there are also a lot of cases in which children with developmental disorders are a lot smarter than the average child. Especially children with a disorder classified under autism. Children with autism have a great interest in things they like and often like to learn and collect information on those subjects, making them really knowledgeable about them. And if they are like me and have an interest in learning, there's a really big chance that they have basic knowledge about almost every single thing that you can mention, to the point of knowing facts that may seem completely useless to other people. This doesn't mean all children with autism are smarter than normal children and it certainly doesn't mean that all children that are smarter than the average child have a developmental disorder.

Children with a developmental disorder are socially inept.

This certainly is true for most of the children with a developmental disorder. They find it harder to talk to other people, especially when they don't have the same interests. There are also children that keep to themselves a lot because other children don't understand them. Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are often too hyper and rowdy for other children and some of them don't know how to deal with their anger or when they feel they have been wronged, often causing them to have little outbursts of anger and start fights with other children. This often leads them to be the child other children least like to play with and they are often last to be chosen as a partner. Other children with a developmental disorder may seem to be able to interact fairly well with other children at school or with the children in the neighborhood, because these children are close to them a lot of times. But there's a fairly big chance that it's the other children that take the initiative to play and when the child with the developmental disorder is left alone, they will find it hard to approach another child themselves.

Children with a developmental disorder have less chance on a successful career.

I think there's nothing less true than this. Sure, there are careers that aren't suited for people with developmental disorders, but doesn't everyone have a job they aren't suited for? As long as it's a career they have interest in, a career that needs the qualities they have and a boss that is willing to make some small adjustments to make the right environment, lots of people with developmental disorders can become amazing career people.

Nowadays almost every child can be labeled with a developmental disorder, specifically ADHD.

Here's yet another statement from which I think is not true.

While it's true that more and more children with developmental disorders are being recognized, but this is only normal because of the continuous research on developmental disorders. Nowadays we know more about developmental disorders than we did 20 years ago and 20 years ago we knew more about it than 50 years ago. Where 50 years ago you would just be an annoying hyperactive child that wouldn't listen to its peers, now there's a chance you may be recognized as a child with ADHD. Especially the sneaky and not always very obvious ADD is easier to recognize with today’s knowledge.

And a lot of children that appear to have ADHD, don't really have ADHD. A big part of their hyper and boisterous personality is partly to blame to their upbringing. Every healthy child has a great amount of energy and need a lot of movement, but half of the day is spent sitting still in class, having to listen to boring lectures of teachers and doing work in which they may not be interested at all. After school, lots of children will sit down and watch tv or play video games rather than going outside to release their excessive energy. Though video games often have proven to be a great stimulus for the brain, children sit still all the while and the energy they have left, will show in their behavior as a form of hyperactivity. Then there's also the diet. Almost everything has sugar in it nowadays and sugar gives you energy. Children that already have a lot of energy naturally, will have even more energy the higher their sugar intake is. And some artificial food colorings don't do any good for hyperactivity as well. Don't take this as criticism on your parenting though, you're probably just doing the same as what most other parents do nowadays: giving your children more freedom than you had as a child.

In classes here in the Netherlands children are also treated less strict. Would you get your fingers hit with a ruler 50 years ago or just simply sent to the hallway to reflect on your actions when I was a grade school kid 15 years ago, believe me, for a child that was shameful and embarrassing back then. But now just pointing at a child when they do something wrong can lead to angry parents, saying the teacher did their child wrong. In the 3 years I have been standing in the classroom as a trainee, you had to warn children at least thrice before sending them out of the classroom and even with those warnings, many children were not sent out of the classroom. Personally I think this leads to the children not taking you seriously, because why would you stop doing what you like when there aren't all that much consequences if you don't. When I was in grade school, we would think twice before talking all the time, but now classrooms seem to be noisy all the time, only quiet when the teacher is angry or when everyone is seriously working, but once one child is distracted and starts talking to another, the whole class seems to take that as an okay for them to talk.

My opinion on these statements are based on facts found on the internet and in booklets on developmental disoreders I own, stories from people with experience and my own experiences. And like I said, it's my opinion, I'm not forcing you to think the same as me.

About Developmental Disorders

A developmental disorder isn't something that is there from one day on the other like a broken leg. It's something that in most cases you were born with or something that has developed in your early child years. A baby with a developmental disorder may be more quiet on the overal than a normal baby, but this doesn't necessarily mean a quiet baby is a baby with a developmental disorder.

A developmental disorder is caused by aberrant growth in certain parts of the brains between 0 and 18 years old. The stimulus and information processing in the brains is being disturbed by this. Because the brains work in a slightly different way from 'normal' people, people with a developmental disorder will often show some behaviour that is slightly different from 'normal' people.

Causes of aberrant brain growth:

Though it's still not very certain what causes the aberrant growth of the brains, in a lot of cases it has proven to be heriditary. If you have a developmental disorder, there's a 30% chance your brother or sister has one as well. And as a parent with a developmental disorder, there's a 50% chance of your child having a disorder as well. If you have a child with a developmental disorder, but you nor your partner has one, there's also a chance one of your child's grandparents has one.

But smoking, use of alcohol or a high bloodpressure during the pregnancy have also proven to be risk factors that higher the chance of your child having a developmental disorder.

And personality and temperament can also strengthen the symptoms of a developmental disorder. Some children are naturally more impulsive, more active or more of a dreamer than others and combined with their developmental disorder, it will really show up in their personality.

Effects of developmental disorder:

Children with a developmental disorder are slightly different from other children. They may show different interests or slightly different personality traits at an early age. Children are quick to pick up when a child is different and to children that are insecure about themselves, children that are different are an easy prey for teasing or even bullying to hide their own insecurities.

Children with a developmental disorder might also hear things from people around them that they themselves can't help it, like "You're such a lazy child, you never do anything." It's not like they don't want to do anything, they are unable to do it. They are often in need of more guidance than the averrage child, even with tasks that we find so common in daily life, especially when it comes to how to behave in public. "You never listen to anything I say to you." is also a thing that is often said to children with developmental disorders. It's not that they don't want to listen, they do listen, but often it goes in one ear and out the other. This is something that happens in the brain not because they want it to happen, but it just happens.

Later on in life, people with developmental disorders may struggle with social contacts, their study, their work and even with turning the house they bought or rent into a place called home.

Treatment of developmental disorders:

Unfortunately there is no cure for developmental disorders, but with the right help, life can be made a lot easier for children and adults with developmental disorders.

Here in the Netherlands, when you suspect your child to have a developmental disorder, you can ask at your child's school for a referral to a specialist. When you're an adult, you can ask your doctor for a referral instead. I don't know if it works that way in every country, but I think you could at least try to ask and if they can't give you a referral, they most likely will have more information for you on how to get an appointment with a specialist.

After several tests and interviews with you about your child's behaviour, you will get a diagnosis. This may or may not be a developmental disorder. In case of a developmental disorder, you will get the option to give your child medication designated for the specific developmental disorder your child has. Please do discuss with the specialist if this may or may not be the right desicion for your child in your opinion.

As a parent you can get special training on how to live with your child with a developmental disorder in a way that greatly improves your child's skills to addept to society, especially on a later age.

And there are also special training for children with developmental disorders that will improve their ability to socialize with other children, especially outside of school.

This will not 'cure' their developmental disorder, but they will function better in society. And though some people may seem to show less of the symptoms as they grow older, even with treatment over 50% of the children with developmental disorders will grow into adults with developmental disorders.

Introductions

About me:

Hello there, my name is Rianne and I'm an averrage young woman from the Netherlands, except that I'm a little bit different. I have always known that I was a bit different as a child.

During grade school I would use some expensive words that most of the children my age didn't even know what it meant. My most vivid memory of an example would be in 4th grade when I was doing a talk about gem stones, something really contrary to the pets or sports most of my classmates picked as their subjects. I had said that the stones would be polished to make them prettier, but the teacher told me I shouldn't use a word like polishing when I didn't even know what it meant, but I did know what it meant, so I gave him a look of 'what do you mean?', but it seemed like my classmates didn't know what it meant. Mind you, in English polish is used a lot like in nail polish or shoe polish, but in Dutch, the word 'polish' (polijst) isn't used a lot, we use words that would literally translate to 'lacquer' (lak) instead.

I would also often talk in a slightly poetic way. An example from my memories from grade school would be from I think it was the 6th grade. We had gone on a trip to the zoo and in the shark aquarium I had seen a hammer head shark that kept hiding in the depths of the aquarium, so you could rarely see it. Back at school I told them I had caught a glimpse of it before it disappeared in 'the deep blue' at which the whole class burst into a laughter. Using expensive words or poetic ways of talking caused me to be teased quite a bit. Fortunately it didn't go further than teasing and such, I've heard a lot of worse ways of bullying during grade school.

I also had my own outlook on the world. I loved going around on my own and discovering things. When the meadow behind our house had turned into a barren wasteland with lots of muddy heaps, because it would be turned into a civil area, I would almost go there on a daily basis, crossing the ditch in between with our little rowboat. I was an explorer and the world was mine to discover. I also prefered documentaries about animals and nature over children programms at an early age.

My mother passed away to cancer when I was twelve and my father wasn't the best type of parent around, leaving me with a difficult period as a teenager and in secondary school. Blaming my different personality, my lack of interest, my absentmindedness, etc. on the loss of my mother and my slightly difficult teenage time, I lived on in my own way, never giving up, but fighting completely on my own to overcome my difficulties.

But by the time I reached twenty and after some group therapy to deal with the loss of my mother and with the difficulties I had with my father, nothing had really changed.

When I was twenty, I had a relationship with an older, divorced man whose son was diagnosed with the syndrom of Asperger. He had told me several times that I sometimes did or said things that were typical for people with autism. I never paid it much attention, until later on when we had already parted ways. I was now studying to become a teacher's assistant and with studying about the development of children, we inevitably had to study about developmental disorders as well. I would sometimes joke about how much some symptoms were typically me, but after a classmate of mine gave a presentation about ADD, I told my class "I think I will let myself get tested on ADD" and not very surprising at all, my whole class agreed, especially my coach. And guess what the outcome was, I indeed had ADD or attention deficit disorder.

Knowing what the medication you would get to get you to pay more attention, I refused the medication at first and opted for special training. But it never came to that, because they were always at impossible times for me. A year later I got into a total slump again, struggling with school as well as with my daily life. I got help, something I find really difficult to ask for, I got medication and things were starting to look up again. But after half a year of medication, I was drowning in all my problems yet again. The psychologist that was now treating me, had always wanted to test me on Autism Spectrum Disorder as well, because in the previous tests, I also scored quite high on that disorder. But she had to interview a close family member for that. Knowing how my father, who kind of refuses to believe that I have a disorder, would react, I refused for him to come. In the end my aunt came and she could tell the psychologist some things about me that I myself hadn't noticed were quite different about me. The result, I had Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in combination with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Why a combination? Because I show symptoms of both disorders, but I also lack some of the symptoms in both disorders. Unlike the person with ASD who prefers to stay in the safe haven called home, I like to travel like the adventurous person with ADD, as long as I'm guaranteed a certain feeling of safety. And where the person with ASD really likes to keep things in order to the point of being a bit obsessive about it, I'm a bit messy and completely disordered like the chaotic mind of a person with ADD.

The way I talk about it, might make it seem like it all happened a while ago, but I was only diagnosed with ASD back in April this year. Now I'm still struggling with my life, but with the right diagnosis and some help of the people around me, I'm looking forward to a much brighter future.

Why this blog?

Why this blog and why would I want to raise the awareness of developmental disorders? The answer to that is simple. Developmental disorders are being understimated and not recognized enough. Though there may be a lot of teacher that recognize developmental disorders as early as during kindergarten, a lot of parents don't want to recognize disorders in their children. Very understandable, because disorders are taboo. Children with developmental disorders are often less smart than normal children, they can't interact well and they have a less bright future with fewer chances at good jobs, right? And with the current tests, doesn't every child get a lable nowadays? Nothing is less true than this.

In this blog I will give you information about developmental disorders, tell you why I find we should be more open about developmental disorders and from time to time I will tell you about my own experiences and hardships in life because of my developmental disorders.