Student: Chronic liar. Parent: Chronic believer of lies.

Sometimes the truth about a child's behavior (as the teacher sees it, anyway) can be very confronting to parents. Even when presented with watertight "evidence" of a misdemeanor, I've seen some parents stoically choose to believe the child's version of the event, anyway, because "My child never lies to me". It is almost as though they'll go to any length to hang on to the belief that they have that "unique" relationship with their child. The thing is, the child has fibbed to the parent (for whatever motive) because kids' do fib! I well remember telling my own parents colourful versions of the truth when it suited me. Sometimes I got away with it & sometimes I didn't. However, I can't imagine parents of the same generation as my parents automatically refusing to believe teachers & making a huge issue of the child's rights in circumstances like this. I've seen parents remove children from particular schools rather than believe things they (it seems) can't bear to believe about their child. It doesn't do the child much good, I'm sure: no consequences for anything, it seems.

My response is, "Yes, about 200 of them and I spend about as much time per day with them as you do."

Montana: My question has always been, "How can a kid have ADD or ADHD with regard to school, but then be able to play a video game for 12 hours straight?" There undoubtedly are kids with ADD and ADHD, but it's horribly overdiagnosed. Interestingly, I've been on the other side of that--I've had parents who vehemently insisted their kid was ADD or ADHD and managed to find someone who would issue that diagnosis even though the kid's capable of paying attention and doing the work.