My patient Zach was an objectively awesome tenth grader.He was academically talented and motivated, with a mix of A's and A-minuses in accelerated classes.
He was a starter on the varsity basketball team.He did Math Olympiad.
He even played the French horn in the school band, though he admitted that was mostly for his college application and to get out of an art history requirement that had a reputation for being pretty onerous.He started preparing for the ACT in April of his sophomore year, hoping to get it over with the following fall.His tutor charged $800 an hour, with a minimum of two-hour sessions, twice a week.
Within weeks, he was in my office complaining that there was no way he was going to do well.He couldn't get the pacing right and never finished all the questions in the allowed time.
Mind you, he was consistently getting 34s on his practice tests.A perfect score on the ACT is 36.
It's an exceptionally rare score.And Zach was very close to it.
But Zach wanted to go to the University of Pennsylvania, and he said that a 34 still wasn't good enough.Zach was already in the top percentile of test takers nationally, and he still felt like a failure.I am a clinical neuropsychologist.
I offer psychotherapy and cognitive remediation to children with learning disorders and related developmental disorders.Zach came to see me because he wanted me to write him a letter saying he needed testing accommodations.
Maybe with time-and-a-half he’d get the perfect score he really needed.STUDENTS DIVIDED OVER UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN HIDING FIRST-SEMESTER GRADES FOR 2027 FRESHMENWhen nothing is enough, when excellence is the minimum acceptable, we fall short.And when we fall short, we reach for labels and accommodations and services to close the gap.
Of course, sometimes children have real disorders and disabilities, and labels and supports are crucial.But in other cases, the struggles are healthy, normal parts of development, and medicalizing them backfires.
The s...