Here’s Why You Should Be Less Afraid To "Label" Your Kid
A woman has a message for parents who feel the urge avoid the “stigma” of a label like ADHD.
It doesn’t take long for parents to start to fear for their child’s social well-being. Around the time they start going to school, their world becomes significantly larger than the one they’ve lived in before now, which was primarily within the walls of our home and maybe their daycare, with other small kiddos.
But while elementary school is an exciting time, full of new ideas, new friends, and new experiences, not all of those ideas, friends, and experiences are pleasant. We begin to fear they will be stigmatized for factors outside of their control. So it makes sense that some parents would shy away from “labeling” their child with a diagnosis like ADHD or anxiety.
But TikTok creator Olivia Lutfallah (@olivialutfallah) wants parents to rethink how they approach this issue with their child. The message is brief and simple, but powerful.
“To the parents who refuse to get their kids diagnosed because they don’t want to put a label on them,” she begins, “Before I got diagnosed, the labels put on me were ‘difficult,’ ‘disruptive,’ ‘lazy,’ ‘rebellious,’ ‘annoying,’ ‘impulsive.’ And when I got diagnosed, all of those labels were replaced with ‘ADHD.’ And that was very comforting.”
As the parent of two kids with ADHD, this absolutely resonates with me, and it did with a number of commenters, including parents, teachers, and folks with ADHD and others diagnosed with some form of neurodivergence.
“I work in education!!!! This is our number 1 frustration!” says one commenter emphatically.
“My mother-in-law said ‘I just don’t think he needs a label’ about my son,” shares another. “I replied ‘you mean a diagnosis? Because he can’t receive treatments or therapies without one. Would you tell a cancer patient they don’t need a ‘label’ and assume they’d still receive treatment? Because that’s just how the medical field works.’ She said she never thought of it like that but never mentioned it again.”
“OMG yes,” agrees a third. “And the parents with the weird hang ups about not wanting to medicate after the diagnosis. I cried the first day I took meds for ADHD. My brain was so quiet. They were tears of happiness and it felt like I fit inside myself for the first time in over three decades. When my daughter started meds it felt like we met her for the first time.”
“They tried to kick me out of school multiple times,” reads one particularly poignant comment. “After my diagnosis they moved heaven and earth to help me through school.”
If you’re still feeling a bit iffy on all this, a therapist in the comments offers another perspective.
“I try to reframe it for parents. A diagnosis isn’t a label, it’s a set of keys to doors we couldn’t unlock before,” they observe. “Diagnosis makes intervention accessible!”
It’s a perspective that’s worth bearing in mind: ADHD is a common diagnosis among children, with more than a million being diagnosed in 2022 alone. This is not an issue that is disappearing any time soon, and it may be a comfort for some wary parents to understand their family is not alone.
