I was first introduced to the concept of one person having multiple diagnoses during my early years in training to become a special education teacher. As part of my early training I volunteered at a psychiatric hospital on a floor where they treated children with multiple disabilities. Some of the children’s charts were so huge and heavy that they were nearly impossible to carry. The diagnoses were long and varied and included psychiatric and developmental disorders, medical conditions, as well as physical disabilities. I was amazed that children as young as five or six could have more labels than the number of years they were alive.
My exposure to children having multiple diagnoses continued with my classroom internships where one child could have cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and be vision impaired and another could have autism, intermittent explosive disorder and albinism. And it was very possible that these children with vastly different diagnoses be in the same classroom.
In my experience, it seemed more the norm than not for a child to have multiple diagnoses rather than a single one. Take the diagnosis of ADHD for example. A child having ADHD may have one or more co-morbid conditions or disorders including depression, anxiety disorder, conduct disorder, learning disabilities, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant disorder,and sleep disorders to name a few.
It was often a challenge for me as a budding teacher to know which diagnosis was the most important one to pay attention to as far as individualizing therapy or lessons to meet that child’s needs. It was common practice to read the child’s chart prior to meeting them. But over time, I felt that the child I read about with the alphabet soup of labels and diagnoses was not the same child I would meet and get to know in person. A diagnosis could never tell me about the child’s personality, his likes and dislikes, or what would motivate him to learn. Bucking protocol, I insisted upon meeting each child first in person before reviewing their chart or records.
My special education textbooks would provide a quick synopsis of most of the different diagnoses which would enable a child to receive special education services. But what most textbooks failed to do was to discuss how to teach and treat children having multiple diagnoses. Yet these are the very children who are usually in the special education system. During those years of learning how to teach, I marveled at the parents who seemed to have such a daunting task of parenting a child with multiple diagnoses and challenges.
I would never have guessed back then, that I would someday become such a parent.
Through my own experience in raising a child having more than one diagnosis, I have a special empathy for any parent going through the whole diagnostic journey. It is not for the faint hearted. In my son’s toddler years, we knew something was up with him but we didn’t know what. During our search for a diagnosis we heard many things from doctors, therapists, teachers and assorted experts including things like:
