Frugal Friday’s Workwear Report: Pleated Maxi Dress
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Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.
I’ve been keeping an eye on Walmart’s offerings ever since I saw this article in The Cut a few weeks ago asking if the retailer would ever be considered “cool.” I don’t know if I can weigh in on the coolness factor, but I have seen a few pieces that look like they’d be office-appropriate for a fantastic price.
This pleated dress from the Scoop line would look beautiful with a navy blazer for a more formal day or with a sweater tied over the shoulders for something a little more casual. I love the red color, but it also comes in winter white and a black print.
The dress is $38 at Walmart and comes in sizes XS-XL.
Sales of note for 10/23 (ALSO, friendly PSA – check any NAS or Amazon Prime Day purchases for the return policies…)
- Ann Taylor – 30% off your purchase + $50 off your $200+ purchase
- Brooklinen – Friends & Family – 20% off sitewide and 50% off select bundles
- J.Crew – Up to 40% off select fall styles. Also, donate any gently worn coat in one of their stores and get $25 off your next purchase of $125+.
- J.Crew Factory – 40% off new arrivals + extra 15% off orders of $100+
- M.M.LaFleur – 72 hours only, save 20% on jardigans (Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off on other items)
- Nordstrom – 5840+ new markdowns for women, up to 40% off
- Talbots – 50% off one regularly-priced item, 40% off everything else
- Theory – End of season sale is on with extra savings (new prices are marked)
I recently discovered the existence of the ZeroCovid community on R3dd1t and I’m blown away. I don’t say this to make fun or gawk (I myself am immunocompromised and took strict precautions for a long time), but because I genuinely did not realize there is a sizable community of people masking 24/7 (sometimes within their own homes or while sleeping), avoiding ALL interactions, etc. Some have high-risk conditions but from my browsing, a lot do not and are simply trying to avoid long COVID. It seems that a few have loosened up over time (or periodically when cases decline) but many have not because they somewhat justifiably don’t trust the data. Some have also apparently extended their precautions to cover flu, norovirus, etc, so they say they will never stop masking or avoiding all things indoors with others, ever.
Do you know anyone who lives like this? What do they say to you about it? As I say, I have an immunocompromising condition requiring treatment every month and I have never met anyone who masks at home around their own parents who are not actually sick or believed to be exposed. Part of me wonders if this is even real…but it kinda seems to be.
The internet can be such a bad thing for people already prone to anxiety/hypochondria because they find communities like this one and reinforce each other’s paranoia.
Look up the recent controversy around the Last Ditch bar in MA if you want to go down a rabbit hole.
Do you have a gift link to the Boston Globe piece, by any chance?
I’ve seen a lot of talk about this from people in other disability communities. Yes its good to have a support group but there is such a thing as wallowing.
I think the venn diagram of people there and people on this board has high overlap….
I don’t – I’ve never seen anyone here talking about masking while sleeping.
Hahahahaha, this proves the point! That’s all you haven’t seen here and probably because no one has asked.
? That doesn’t make any sense.
I’ve read here every day for years and I’ve NEVER seen anything like what I see on ZeroCovid, so no, really not seeing any overlap. If you want to get in a jab at the occasional anxiety poster who was nervous about shared elevators, whatever, but these are people who consistently live their lives as if the risk of getting COVID is 100% and the risk of getting long COVID from infection is 100%.
See below?
I don’t think there is a sizable community of people masking while they sleep (is that even safe?) or avoiding all interactions. (So you know, that particular sub has a bit of a reputation, and I doubt everything posted there is posted in good faith.) But of course there is a sizable community of people wearing masks to avoid getting sick (there was before the pandemic too, but this new virus is more contagious prior to symptom onset, so it takes more effort to avoid).
My household masks everywhere we go because our health and quality of life improved tremendously when we started doing this, and we’re not willing to go back. We both have immune deficiency, autoimmune, and autoinflammatory conditions, so it’s no wonder masking helped! But I wish we’d tried this sooner, since it’s a lot less time spent suffering and needing medical interventions. I don’t know much about long COVID, but it’s clear that masking works better at preventing it than any other intervention we have.
Remember there are also people whose risk hasn’t decreased much since this whole pandemic began. There’s still no vaccine recommendation for the tiny number of people who got myocarditis, and they’re supposed to avoid infection since it would be a lot worse. Hopefully the availability of Xocova will improve things for a lot of people, but it’s still very new.
When you say “everywhere you go,” do you mean for all indoor gatherings with family and friends do? Have you had a Thanksgiving meal with anyone, for example? I masked through early 2025 but I found it was a huge quality of life drop to keep it up beyond that, and my immunologist gave me the tentative blessing to “loosen up.” I now only mask for air travel and I feel much, much happier. I’d probably consider masking at other times but I’ve really struggled to find a mask that fits well, doesn’t give me tension headaches and a runny nose, and allows me to stay hydrated throughout the day.
Yes, I mean whenever indoors, but we live in a place where it’s honestly pretty easy to spend a lot of time outside, so there were always a lot of outdoor gatherings in our life at baseline. Also non-negotiable dietary restrictions make shared meals complicated anyway (I’d really have to think about whether diet has actually been more of a social obstacle than masking!).
It does help to find a mask that is relatively more physically comfortable (I hate how awful some of the standard hospital supply choices can be; 3M to me is much worse than Vitacore or BNX though everyone is different). Masking in public is not uncommon where we live, so it feels like a boring decision and not some huge statement.
I should say that I still basically hate wearing a mask, but I’ve been breathing through my nose since 2020! Before I always had a sinus thing and often a cough, and I was missing so much work from being legitimately laid out sick with whatever was going around that it was a problem. My autoimmune conditions calmed down so much that I have a new baseline, not just fewer flares. Showing up in a mask beats staying home sick basically, though it would be nice to have better options!
But if your quality of life got worse instead of better, and your immunologist has your condition under control and is not concerned, I totally get making a different choice. Besides getting extra boosters and the option of taking Xocova in case of exposure, a lot of immune compromised people qualify for Pemgarda, and I think IVIG probably contains protective antibodies at this point too for people who get that.
So it’s partly about what we’re trying to avoid (a bad case of COVID vs. an autoimmune flare or a permanent post-viral complication), what treatments are available for either with what odds of success, and what helps us keep living our lives (and stay insured!).
I think masking yourself wherever you want is fine. Especially on public transit or in busy areas
Demanding that other people mask is where I draw the line. Masking yourself does a lot to protect you in day to day life, but we are not at the point where you can expect everyone to be masked.
I think society should expect people who insist on going out when sick to mask. I am a singer, and the general etiquette is that if you come to rehearsal sick you wear a mask and sit in the back of the room away from others. We know the consequences of passing germs along to our colleagues.
Yes all that is reasonable. Mask yourself. Sick people who are out mask. But not just every person and you can’t be harassing others. There are risks in life. You cross the street. You walk under branches. You can reasonably reduce risk but not eliminate it.
The people who do the harassing are the anti-maskers, not the maskers.
+1 that society should expect people who go out when sick (or feel like they’re catching something, or are just getting over something) to mask.
We do need source control masking back in healthcare since that’s where the highest risk people are, and people can’t usually mask to protect themselves when they’re getting medical treatments. Unsurprisingly the data shows that the outcomes of hospital acquired infections are still pretty severe.
But in most contexts protective masking works well. Better air quality standards would help masked and unmasked people alike and is a better collective goal.
Yes obviously a healthcare setting is a different scenario entirely.
Have you spent 6 years avoiding people? Like no holiday dinners?
It’s not avoiding people to mask at a holiday dinner. It’s just going without some food!
When will you/do you plan to stop masking at holiday dinners?
I currently have no plans to stop avoiding infections at holiday dinners. It seems like there is nearly always someone who is actively sick, and I know that I can catch things from people who aren’t having symptoms yet anyway. We’re talking about people I care about, and it’s not something I want them to have to worry about; it’s my responsibility to make sure I don’t get sick. I do not want to go back to spending the holiday season seriously ill or needing medical care like in the past, since then I end up seeing people less.
But there’s a lot of research happening all the time, so with the current pace of medical advance, maybe my whole medical situation could change someday?
But it’s really not a tragedy. A mask is such a minor thing compared to some of the devices people can end up needing if conditions aren’t kept under control (though if I ever need something like that, I’ll be grateful it’s available too).
Do you use N95 or similar quality masks, with strong filters that are almost sealed around the mouth and nose, or the loose surgical or dental-style masks? Do you use the fabric masks? I am curious. I want to mask in a lot of indoor places but I much prefer to looser style, which I know is not as robust or helpful.
I can’t get a tight fit with surgical style masks (I know during the mask shortage some nurses used braces to seal them, but that feels fussy to me now). So I use N95 or KN94 (earloops seem to fit me pretty well, but aren’t always the most comfortable). I have a friend who relies on fabric Cambridge masks with apparent success and an immunologist’s blessing. The N95s with a foam padded nose bridge are a lot more comfortable than the ones without it. If you never tried the BNX, even if the fit is a little loose, I think it would still beat surgical.
There are people who know way more about mask options than I do. I am sick of the pandemic too and think very little about it all these days since it’s all just a habit now.
I think that internet groups for medical and mental health issues can be a good thing in very small doses and a terrible, self-reinforcing thing for anything more. When I went through IVF I remember feeling initially thankful for access to a group of others going through the same process, but then realized it gave me a really negative and warped view of the world and I quickly backed off. My SIL has chron’s and had a similar experience.
I’m in a community of people who aspire to zero Covid because their spouses have chronic illnesses that would worsen because of it. I still work from home almost exclusively and avoid a fair bit of travel due to the risks of my own partner. There are still a lot of people out there doing this, but of course you don’t see them and it’s hard for them to bring it up in normal communities because of the kind of outrage about it.
I have a physician who still masks because she’s caring for her high risk mother at home and just doesn’t want to bring anything home that could harm her. Makes a lot more sense to me to mask at work than to mask at home like the people OP mentioned.
I have a friend whose husband had serious health issues, and she was basically homebound from the beginning of the pandemic until the husband passed away last year.
No, I don’t. But remember – these folks have largely cut themselves off from public life. Their Internet chat rooms are probably their only outlet for socializing, so they are active.
my sister is like this. she only occasionally goes to restaurants and keeps the mask on if she’s masking. she doesn’t work or have family so it’s kind of a privilege to be able to do it. she’s mostly worried that she has enough random diseases that she doesn’t need to add long covid to the mix. (she’s kind of a hypocondriac.) she treats my family (with 2 kids in school) like we’re reckless crazies out there licking the ground or something… but she’s lost YEARS to this at this point. she just got covid for the first time and i kind of rejoiced because i hoped it would make her less crazy. (and, delightfully, there was no way she could blame her covid exposure on me or my family.)
i still remember an Atlantic story i read 25+ years ago at this point that talked about how the DSM has had to change because the internet made smaller groups of people more able to gather. the article opener is wild…
gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/?gift=PEb_GDID3744HtoRx9Zp6UCgBi8sLxg6sAZyEHCnDPs&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
I’ve thought about it a LOT over the past 10 years… the opener is wild (first few graphs below).
A New Way to Be Mad
“In January of this year British newspapers began running articles about Robert Smith, a surgeon at Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary, in Scotland. Smith had amputated the legs of two patients at their request, and he was planning to carry out a third amputation when the trust that runs his hospital stopped him. These patients were not physically sick. Their legs did not need to be amputated for any medical reason. Nor were they incompetent, according to the psychiatrists who examined them. They simply wanted to have their legs cut off. In fact, both the men whose limbs Smith amputated have declared in public interviews how much happier they are, now that they have finally had their legs removed.
Healthy people seeking amputations are nowhere near as rare as one might think. In May of 1998 a seventy-nine-year-old man from New York traveled to Mexico and paid $10,000 for a black-market leg amputation; he died of gangrene in a motel. In October of 1999 a mentally competent man in Milwaukee severed his arm with a homemade guillotine, and then threatened to sever it again if surgeons reattached it. That same month a legal investigator for the California state bar, after being refused a hospital amputation, tied off her legs with tourniquets and began to pack them in ice, hoping that gangrene would set in, necessitating an amputation. She passed out and ultimately gave up. Now she says she will probably have to lie under a train, or shoot her legs off with a shotgun.
For the first time that I am aware of, we are seeing clusters of people seeking voluntary amputations of healthy limbs and performing amputations on themselves. The cases I have identified are merely those that have made the newspapers. On the Internet there are enough people interested in becoming amputees to support a minor industry. One discussion listserv has 1,400 subscribers.”
Askamanager featured a letter from a manager whose employee was disabled and in a wheelchair. But then the manager saw the person in a documentary about people who aren’t physically disabled but believe that they are and so they use a wheelchair. And the letter was about if the manager should report this as being not disabled, or was this perhaps a mental disability, and if so, what should the manager do.
Bodily integrity dysphoria is not a new phenomenon. Oliver Sacks wrote about it decades ago.
I think your first sentence could apply to all kinds of radicalization that is happening because of the internet (like incels and terrorists). Weirdos can now find other weirdos.
There isn’t a real sizable community. There is a tiny internet niche and you are spending too much time on Reddit.
I know two families who still mask indoors in all situations. One is less strict and will remove their masks briefly to eat and drink, the other one is stricter and doesn’t do any indoor dining. However I don’t know anyone avoiding all interactions or masking in their own home (except while a family member is sick).
I still haven’t had Covid. I mask at the doctors office and in public restrooms. And always opt for outdoor dining and sports activities. I don’t live in a crowded building; I think some people who are like me and were always sick before need to stick to tighter restrictions to avoid unnecessary infections in a city tower than I do in the burbs.
Some people are crazy, and the internet makes it easier for them to find each other.
There’s probably something to this. Of the people I personally know who still mask indoors and avoid COVID for whatever reason, none of them have anything to do with that subreddit, nor does it seem representative at a glance. It’s just not necessary to think and worry and post online all the time about something that’s not that complicated.
This is so pretty, I can’t believe it’s Walmart??
I’m highly doubtful it looks that nice in person
It can be hit or miss. I have a few 100% cotton tops and a pair of jeans from Walmart that are shockingly nice – but anything synthetic isn’t great.
Two years ago I got a pair of cream wide leg trousers that fit me perfectly at Walmart – was walking by and they caught my eye on a clearance rack and were marked down to $3. I get a shocking amount of compliments on those pants.
I buy a lot of kids clothes at Walmart and I find the quality/style of the George brand very similar to the Cat & Jack line at Target (I’m in Canada and we don’t have Target). Recently I bought a few skirts for myself and I was SHOCKED at how nice they are. I have a knit skirt from Walmart that was literally $10 and it is nearly identical to one I have from a high end brand that was $400.
I think the increase in quality of some of their clothes is a recent thing though – they seem to be trying to compete with Target (at least in Canada?), H&M, Zara etc. I would not have been caught dead in Walmart clothes in my teens or 20s but now, I am here for a good deal.
Agree! Super cute. I’m still a big lover of a pleated skirt as I find them very flattering.
I wish it came in plus sizes but it seems like the brand only offers limited options in plus sizes and this isn’t one of them.
One of my co-workers wears stuff from Walmart all the time and it looks great. Depends on the person, I think.
Walmart has had a huge Renaissance among my mid 20s friends (probably a much less wealthy group than this board though). Iirc they hired the clothing director from Bonobos or somewhere. I don’t know about quality but it’s definitely a thing that they have some more stylish stuff now
I bought a 100% cotton halter midi dress from there last year. It’s great!
My favorite workout tanks are from Walmart! They had the least huge armholes when I was searching, so they were worth trying. Ended up being perfectly light weight, not too long or too cropped, and feel a lot like Vuori to me.
I picked up some Walmart workout gear on vacation 12 years ago and wore it forEVER. I was looking for modest tanks, and these were perfect. I need to go back.
The photo looks very pretty!
I am confused, though. I am seeing more and more items described as “maxi” skirts or dresses when to my eye the length is quite plainly “midi.” Back in the day, “maxi” meant floor-length.
Clothing retailers don’t use any terms correctly these days. Descriptions are meaningless.
The model is 5’9″ – I wondered the same thing
Yes, same. I guess if the dress were worn by someone substantially shorter it might be a maxi. My take is that the people who name the clothing items and write the marketing items aren’t necessarily well-trained in fashion terms, and I’ve stopped expecting them to get the descriptions/names correct.
One of my fave dresses I purchased earlier this year is from Walmart. It’s a 100% cotton a-line denim dress and I wear it ALL the time. It was less than $30. I’m now seeing similar styles at other retailers, but they’re asking more than $30 for it!
My primary memory of the (hoity toity) Scoop store in NYC was that they followed around my (Asian) friend because they apparently thought she was a shoplifting risk. Every time I see what the brand has become in Walmart it makes me smile.
Just chiming in on a fall morning to say that my entire household is Doing the Thing We’ve Been Dreading this morning. My kids are off to get vaccinations. I negotiated with a contractor. My husband had a difficult conversation with an employee. None of this is anywhere near as bad as anticipating was!
We’re getting flu shots today too!
And you should all treat yourself this weekend for Doing The Thing.
You inspired me to make the calls and schedule the appointments this morning. It was, of course, quick and easy and took way less energy than putting them off has. Thank you!
I got my routine screening mammogram done (after rescheduling it twice, and even though I had transportation issues that could have served as another excuse to reschedule, but I just made it happen!).
Thank you for inspiring me to write this email I’ve been putting off for over a year!
Hooray for Team ThirdJen!!
Also I returned a call I was dreading this morning and it was a big nothingburger so yay!
Personal finance question. I have always invested in pretty basic things – standard ETFs and a mutual fund for my 401k with my employer. I can’t hold individual stocks because of work. I got a call from a private wealth management company offering their services, so I let them do a presentation and according to them my investments are under performing and they could do better. But they charge a fee (1.5%) and I’m a bit weary of the value added. I’m 37, have about 250k I could move to them, make $180k plus bonus per year. I don’t have the time or inclination to check the market regularly. In your experience, is it worth it?
No. Leave your money in ETFs. Don’t check the market regularly, just set it and forget it.
Absolutely not. Those fees will eat up a ton of returns over your life. If you want to learn more, check out the Bogleheads forum on r3ddit. A simple 3-fund portfolio with regular contributions will set you up for the long haul.
No.
No. 1.5% loss, compounded, is a lot. Agree with the boglehead recommendation above. I suggest listening to one of their audiobooks.
1.5% is a hefty fee, probably because that’s a relatively low $ to have a wealth manager handle. Our manager only charges 0.5% assets under management, and that percentage it goes down if we get up to certain thresholds (in the millions, we’re not close to the next tier). I still don’t love it, but that’s how we have access to venture capital funds, the success of which to date more than makes up the fee.
Venture capital funds are not a place I would invest money I actually needed. It’s fun money for gambling. OP is talking about her normal retirement savings.
+1, venture funds are far too risky for money that one isn’t prepared to lose completely. Also, my understanding is that the venture funds that are most likely to succeed have enough big money (endowments, the ultra-wealthy, etc.) chasing them that there’s no way they’d accept investment from regular people or even regular rich people who can stand to lose a few hundred thousand to a few million.
I’m profoundly skeptical of any VC fund that would take me as an investor.
I’m in the space and this view is correct. If they want your money as a retail investor, it’s because they think you’re a sucker.
Right, that was my point, but I should have been more clear. There is no reason to have a wealth manager for $250k of retirement savings. (Also I just checked and it’s actually a hedge fund, not a VC fund, but in any case the holdings are private companies. It’s 2% of our overall portfolio and money we can afford to lose)
The fee does decrease for higher thresholds after 500k.
Still – no.
If you don’t want to deal, just put it all in a Retirement date fund at Vanguard and let it ride.
Never go with a Wealth Manager who cold calls you and wants 1.5%. That sounds like a little, but that is huge.
Remember 2 years ago when the market was down like 6% or whatever foe the year? Your manger would likely be worse, AND he would still take his 1.5% from you. No no no no..
Here’s how I think of the fees. A 3% withdrawal rate is the goal in retirement. That includes the taxes you have to pay on the withdrawal. If you are paying a wealth manager 1.5% per year, you have to cut your withdrawal rate back to 1.5% in order for your assets to last. That means that in retirement you are paying this person MORE than you are taking home after taxes. And for what? A couple hours of work per year? They are just putting you into their generic buckets of investments, or worse–selling you high-fee investments that eat up even more of your money.
This doesn’t even account for all of the lost returns in the years leading up to retirement.
250K is several million dollars below my personal threshold for dabbling in any kind of investment other than index funds and bond funds, including trading individual stocks. And even if the advisor’s picks outperform a generic portfolio of low-cost funds, the fee will eat up the additional returns.
This. OP you aren’t even close to the money you’d need to have to make this make any sense.
That fee is extortionate. Do not do this. You will literally put this guy’s kids through college through this fee.
This fee is way to high and I agree with many of the other comments. The question to me is why did you take his call? Do you want advice on your investments? A double check on what you have been doing already? Something you are thinking about changing? If yes to any of these, I think the thing is to either start doing some research on Boggleheads, Choose FI, etc on low cost/passive investing (like what you are doing now) or seek out a flat/hourly fee-only advisor.
That fee is crazy to me. We have ~$2.5M in retirement accounts and don’t do anything except low fee index funds. I don’t think you need active management until you have like $10M+ and even then I’m not convinced it’s necessary.
This is where I fall.
Wow I am impressed by this at Walmart! I guess it makes sense, Target has decent stuff too
I was at a dinner party and a friend of a friend (not someone I’m likely to see again) starting going off about how flu and covid vaccines were evil and other what I like to call instagram “health” talking points. I just didn’t say anything and eventually she changed the subject herself. How do you handle situations like this? I don’t want to get into a debate, but I also don’t agree with what she is saying and it is not factually correct. Some people just lack common sense.
I listen and understand that people have different points of view than my own. It’s interesting to see how people think and usually different than you expect. I ask questions.
Yeah, I just let them go. It’s not like they are actual policy makers, so we are free to agree to disagree without it being a moral hazard.
They vote for policy makers, though.
This is what I do too. I’ve had an acquaintance tell me that the Covid vaccine threw off her periods and therefore she’s not going to let her kids get the vaccine. Had a relative tell me that eating X or Y thing is going to keep away cancer so we should do it. Had another acquaintance tell me (unsolicited) why Christians should not allow gay marriage (we go to the same church and I hold the opposite view). Even with friends, I let a bunch of stuff go, but with acquaintances I would definitely just stay silent and make a mental note about them.
It is my experience that people.like that often fill dead air because they think they are incredibly smart and knowledgeable so I usually just let them speak and stare expressionless or look down, depending, until they run out of gas. And then I say something like “Could someone please pass me the water?”
I would say “Excuse me I’m just going to get another drink” and then not talk to that person again.
+1
That is probably what I’d do. Honestly I’d be so horrified I’d probably be speechless.
If it were one on one I’d say “I definitely disagree” and change the subject.
Same–I’d also be so horrified as to be speechless.
If I had the presence of mind, I’d probably say something like, “I always get my flu and covid shots because I like that I can reduce my own risk of needing hospitalization while also helping to protect my neighbor who has cancer” and then change the subject.
Likely I would have just stayed quiet and ignored it like you.
Depending on the vibe/my energy level I might have at the beginning chimed in about how delighted I was a couple weeks ago that when I got my flu and covid vaccine, I got pretty silver glitter bandaids on each arm without asking. LOL I was seriously so tickled, I showed them off at a yoga class that night. After sharing that though, I wouldn’t engage any further in the debate though – I’d just shrug off any peppering questions, if they came. I feel like sharing that I am current with my vaccines is enough of a statement.
I struggle with this too – I have a family member who will drop tidbits like “my adrenals are struggling” or “I’m taking [X woowoo supplement” as if it’s confirmed fact and I never know what to say.
It was exactly stuff like this. I don’t really want to get into a conversation about their supplements or whatever but I also don’t want other people to think I think that’s legit.
Then I would make an excuse to go get a drink or otherwise stop talking wtih them. Or bring up a different subject.
It’s not as if we have a system that gives you “confirmed fact status” on your supplements. I’d lay off.
Was it one-on-one? If so, I like just listening and then kindly saying “oh, I feel differently about that”. If it’s a group I tend to drift away from the conversation.
I think you just internally roll your eyes. Whenever I put nuts in my oatmeal, I remember the lady who told me she didn’t need vaccines because she eats plenty of nuts and seeds…
I’ve only encountered this once, and my response was along the lines of, “What an unusual perspective given modern medicine!” And then change the subject.
I doubt that.
“That’s fascinating…” and I move on with my life. In a way, it *is* fascinating.
Sometimes I’ve said things like “I can’t agree, I really think it’s more complicated than that.” But people don’t like that, so I don’t know.
I went through a phase where I would repeat what someone said, as a question, to show disbelief and semi-disengagement. “Flu and covid vaccines are evil?!” like that.
Nowadays, 15 years later or so, I would try to only mumble “huh, I guess I had a different experience” and look around the room for anything else.
I’d still be pleasant and wander off at first opportunity. It would be a footnote when I gossip to DH later that night.
When you’re in someone’s home and they’re preparing a meal for you and other guests, you have to e polite and respectful to everyone. There are some exceptions if someone is abusive to you or someone else first. You can defend people.
Ideas are not people. You should not create friction with another guest to defend an idea. Sometimes I think the “speak up!” narrative can get a little misapplied.
Once a man told me – at an outdoor gathering on a very sunny summer day, I am pale and was seeking shade or looking for sunscreen – told me all about how sunscreen causes cancer and prohibits your skin from being triggered to make natural sunscreen, which is healthier. Also something about how sun is good for your eyes, so you shouldn’t wear a hat or sunglasses, your eyes will produce natural sunscreen protection for themselves just like your skin. It was fascinating. Then his older relative, not sure whether it was his dad or uncle, overheard him and said “that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard” and showed me where he’s lost part of his ear to skin cancer.
I also sat through a MAHA diatribe (well-meaning, from a man whose foster children had notable behavior improvements after he eliminated various dyes and chemicals from their diet…by feeding them real food instead of junk food they’d been getting from their birth family) at a work dinner. I just kind of treat it as anthropology research. It’s interesting what people think, and where they get their information from.
Please be kind. I’m making every effort to be kind and fair when thinking about this.
Do you ever worry that certain neurological conditions are over diagnosed? I’m thinking specifically about ADD. I can sometimes be forgetful, I can procrastinate, I even occasionally use the wrong word when speaking. I don’t really think these things are a problem, but that they’re pretty normal human behavior.
In school, especially law school, I always felt it was a little unfair that people who seemed normal to me had access to drugs that allowed them to focus for entire nights and more time to complete time sensitive tests. But I figured they were probably struggling with something really difficult that I couldn’t understand. I’d been told having ADD is like having a brian that’s constantly switching channels. That sounds extremely hard. Anyway, if someone really needed unlimited time on a time sensitive test the world would quickly account for that and they wouldn’t be beating me out for competitive jobs. I was wrong; class rank doesn’t come with an asterisk for those who got unlimited time.
I let it go. But now I think about my kids. A friend recently confessed that he daughter had a complete neuropsychiatric evaluation and is in the very top of IQs. Genius level. But also ADD and although she breezes through school she gets extra time on every assignment and of course takes the concentration drugs. I have a kid who is extremely bright but probably not a genius. I know in my heart he is not ADD. Actually his executive functioning is extremely impressive. But I think he’s in a no win situation if genius level kids are getting these accommodations. Maybe he could score as well as a genius level kid if he tried extremely hard. But not if that kid gets unlimited time and a drug that lets her stay up all night completely focused. Part of me wants to have him evaluated just to find some reason that he could also get the kind of help that would give him the advantages my friend’s genius daughter gets. This feels so wrong to me. Like cheating. But I also feel like my kids can never ever get a fair shake if even geniuses get extra time and study drugs. Tell me I’m misguided here.
I think you’re misguided and being unkind.
You can be both a genius and profoundly disabled. My 142 IQ doesn’t make my other problems magically disappear. I can do math in circles around the average person, but I haven’t gone to the optometrist in 8 years because my executive function says absolutely not. I can write full comprehensive reports in a day that take others weeks, but the only thing I’ve been able to stomach for weeks is peanut noodles.
I hope I can reassure you some. A complete neuropsychiatric evaluation is in no way comparable to a quick questionnaire done at a primary care provider’s office; your friend’s daughter has ADHD and isn’t part of any potential overdiagnosis problem. Also the accommodations and meds don’t make students with ADHD perform better than students without ADHD. Your son’s excellent executive function is serving him better than extra time and meds are compensating for poor executive function. Twice exceptional students have challenges that accommodations don’t fully overcome.
right – neuropsych evals are multi-day testing totalling about 6 hours, we get a 40 page report and it costs $3500 even after insurance. sure go get one! they’re very useful!
I don’t think your instincts are wrong – those accommodations should be used in good faith, where folks/kids who need it get the appropriate assistance, and there I totally agree with you!
However, with the situation in your kid, what I hearing is a sense that there are kids with an unfair leg up. My reaction was that has and always has been the case. I was a kid in public school who had many more resources than the average kid there, just because of demographics. I had a lot of advantages – got to travel, tutors when needed, money available for extras – that most did not have. Was that unfair to the many smart and hardworking kids who came from poverty in the classes next to me? Yes, but it is an accepted reality. Would my parents have unnecessarily put me on meds or gotten me accommodations I didn’t need? I don’t think so, because they wouldn’t have felt right about that.
I’m making an assumption, but it sounds like your kid is in a fairly competitive environment, possibly with quite a few parents who have the means to ‘use’ the system in the way you describe. And that may skew your perspective a bit.
What is the outcome you worry about? What are the actual real negative possibilities? It doesn’t sound like there are any serious ones. (Correct me if I’m wrong!) But it can still feel unfair – and that’s frustrating!
Also, you often don’t know what real struggles people have privately – I think it usually a good policy to give people the benefit of the doubt here.
Very true. My daughter’s end of year grades for 7th grade (diagnosed but unmedicated ADHD; a mix of As and Bs) did not reflect the ungodly struggle it took behind the scenes to get there, not to mention the toll on our relationship due to constant nagging. This year she is taking medication and while it’s not a panecea, it allows her to be at the same metaphorical starting line as her neurotypical peers.
This. I really didn’t have an accurate grasp of just how much less time other people spent on homework and other necessary tasks until I was assessed. My great grades didn’t convey that I had very little time leftover for extracurriculars, a social life, or even enough sleep!
Please relax. I do in fact have late diagnosed ADHD, and I can tell you its very different from just being forgetful sometimes. Given the “late diagnosis” part I could always tell that my brain didn’t work the same way other people did, but I didn’t have an explanation for why. It’s a relief to know.
Don’t overthinking things with your kids. Sure some people cheat but that doesn’t have to do with your kid. Why would you want your kid to cheat? It’s a hard pill to swallow, but sometimes there are cheaters out there who do well.
OP is a lawyer who’s bought into the biglaw culture. Those people think it’s okay, even clever, to cheat.
It’s starting to feel like it may be a perk to go to a mid ranked school. Hopefully fewer classmates would be this calculating! It can be nice to be around people who are focused on education, skills, and accomplishments vs. just trying to game the system.
You are extremely misguided. My kid has a 99.9th percentile IQ and ADHD. She gets “extra time and study drugs.” The meds do not allow her to stay up all night studying with intense focus the way they might for a kid without ADHD. They make it so that she can sort of follow the textbook she is reading or the lecture she is attending, but it is still a LOT more work for her than for a kid without ADHD to master the material. Then if she learns the material and gets the work done, sometimes it is too much of a mental lift for her to actually turn it in. The meds also make it difficult for her to eat enough to fuel her body and brain, so she’s constantly exhausted and is always going on and off of them. She doesn’t exercise the option for extra time on exams because it’s too disruptive to the rest of the school day.
Sadly, your attitude is all too common in our school system. It is very difficult for gifted kids to get any sort of accommodation for ADHD because they are perceived to have an unfair advantage. People like you think that ADHD is an equalizer for gifted kids and are secretly gleeful about their struggles.
Accommodations for ADHD do not disadvantage kids without ADHD. They don’t even level the playing field for kids with ADHD; they just make the struggle a bit less desperate.
IQ is a completely separate issue. Think about it this way. Does a deaf kid with a genius IQ lose his right to a sign language interpreter at school just because he’s so smart that he could probably teach himself from the textbook? No, he doesn’t. Or does a genius with paralysis lose the right to a wheelchair because she is so smart that she can get a desk job where she doesn’t have to move around? No, she doesn’t.
Honestly, I feel like all of us should have access to the miracle drugs that let us focus. I get by with most of the ADHD symptoms but have no diagnosis, and find it appalling that there’s such a hurdle, even as an adult with a concierge doctor, to get access to them because of the required screenings.
Those drugs don’t affect people with ADHD and without ADHD in the same way. They do give people without ADHD an unfair advantage. They don’t even get people with ADHD to normal functioning.
Is adhd really this bianary? Because I saw plenty of “adhd” kids use these drugs for studying and partying. Are you were saying they were all misdiagnosed?
I assume you’re OP. Your reading comprehension skills are the reason you didn’t wind up with the legal career you wanted.
My primary care doc just prescribed me a non-stimulant ADHD med. I haven’t been on it long enough to see big results, but I also don’t have big side effects. I think it’s helping me focus and speak less impulsively. The generic medicine name is atomoxetine. There was no big hurdle – I just told her I was having issues (and had always had them), and she offered it as an option to try.
I understand that in some areas malingering to get extra test time is a real issue, but my answer is based on the idea that her ADD is a legitimate diagnosis. You’ve described someone who is a genius, but has medical issues preventing her from reaching her fullest potential.. She receives medication and accommodations to reach her full potential. But because her potential is so much higher than your son’s you don’t think she should be allowed to reach her full potential. Yes, this is misguided. This is like saying the star runner shouldn’t get treatment for injuries. Help your son find his way in life that doesn’t depend on him being smarter than the smartest girl in the class.
This times one million.
I think you’ll be happier if you let go of the competitive mindset you’re bringing to this discussion. There will always be someone smarter, pretty, more privileged etc. and the earlier you realize that life is not a meritocracy, the easier it is to let go of petty complaints, comparing yourself to others, and to focus on what makes life fulfilling for you. So yes, I do think you are misguided here. I also think there is a lot of self-diagnosing on the internet, some helpful and some not, but I see no point in second guessing a medical diagnosis. A medical professional has determined that your friend’s daughter’s accommodations are appropriate. The end. I see you saying the right things in your post about how living with ADD must be hard but you don’t seem to really believe it based on how you’re discounting accommodations for people with ADD. I would work on that internal consistency and helping your own child build a life that works for them, regardless of what Susie next door is doing.
The ADHD issue is completely separate from the issue of IQ. It’s so sad that we hate intelligent people, yet we venerate people who are naturally gifted at sports.
I think ADD/ADHD are very real and also overdiagnosed. I specifically think overdiagnosis has accelerated because heavy screentime usage can result in symptoms that mimic but are not the same as ADD/ADHD.
I also believe that if your autism allows you to go to an Ivy League school and have the career of your choice, you should not compare yourself to kids/adults who cannot speak, live independently, toilet alone, etc. Both conditions are real but they are apples and oranges.
Agree that it’s misguided to consider medication for your child. They have side effects! There are questions about whether they may have long term effects on the brain-which are not concerning if your child needs the medication but definitely a question for you to consider if they do not! Also, it’s a great time for you to teach your kid about running his own race. As stated above, there is always someone else who has a leg up, whether it be more resources, better connections, donations to schools, money to develop sports or musical talents. You can spend a lifetime comparing your kid to others. Additionally, the smartest kids in my classes and my kids’ classes weren’t always the most successful! There is so much emphasis in our society on getting into an Ivy that we’ve lost sight of the fact that there are hundreds of other colleges that more than adequately prepare kids for the rest of their lives, many of which have supportive and dedicated faculty that you might not find at an Ivy. I think this is an unfortunate symptom of our society. Your child sounds smart and well adjusted. Why interfere with that?
Take a deep breath and think about what you are saying. A “fair shake” at what — are you worried that your son will lost a spot at Harvard to a kid who is “cheating” with an ADD diagnosis? Are you seriously considering medicating your son unnecessarily to get a higher class rank?
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what ADHD actually is. Stimulant medications are not “study drugs,” they are designed to bring dopamine levels in the brain up to therapeutic levels. They put a person with ADHD on a level playing field with their peers, it is equity, not equality. Do people abuse these drugs to get a leg up? Sure! But if this genius child was diagnosed via a neuropsychological exam, then this likely isn’t a case of abuse or gaming the system. Please never tell or insinuate to the parent of a neurodivergent child that their child’s necessary, therapeutic medication is “cheating.”
I think this is coming off more harshly than I intended, please don’t take it that way. But I am the parent of an elementary schooler with a genius IQ and ADHD. Due to certain side effects, he cannot take stimulants. I wish he could! Unmedicated kids with ADHD have higher instances of anxiety, impulse control, low self-esteem, and are at an increased risk of future drug abuse. I worry so much about him. Seeing someone insinuate that a parent properly medicating their child is giving them an advantage hit me deep today.
I can’t speak to whether it is over-diagnosed. However, I will say that for both of my diagnosed kids, we had to jump through a lot of hoops, spend a lot of time, and pay a lot of money out of pocket to have a full assessment done. We weren’t doing that to get them an unfair advantage. We were doing it to help a struggling kid.
I’d also like to give you some insight from the other side. My younger daughter is, to all appearances, very smart and academically successful. She graduated in the top 20 students in her (large, competitive) high school class and had her choice of several strong colleges, most with scholarship offers. She is also diagnosed with ADHD. She tried meds, but none of them worked well for her. She frequently cried, raged, and stayed up very late (without any meds giving her perfect focus) to keep up with her work. She worked extra hard compared to her classmates to accomplish the same things if not less. Reading comprehension is particularly challenging for her and it just takes her longer to get through a text than someone else might take. This makes tests hard for her to complete in the allotted time. (She does not have a learning disability with respect to language.) Without extra time, she will score less than she’s capable of simply because she cannot get through the questions fast enough. I understand that it feels like an unfair advantage to you looking in from the outside, but for those kids, they’re struggling with an obstacle that’s keeping them from doing their best and meds or extra time on a test may be the only way to level the playing field. Without them, they’re working with one arm tied behind their back. From the outside, it probably looks like she’s breezing through school. But she isn’t. And until you’ve sat with that kid night after night encouraging her, helping her focus, trying to calm her when the frustration exceeds her ability to deal with it, you don’t understand that the meds or extra time aren’t giving her an unfair advantage, they’re just letting her function without fighting her own brain every single day.
Does the fact that my daughter is very intelligent mean that she shouldn’t be allowed to reach her full potential? The fact that your kid doesn’t need help to function at his full potential shouldn’t mean that my kid can’t have the help they need to function at theirs, even if that means my kid is ultimately going to perform better than yours. The meds and accommodations don’t make my kid smarter, they just let her use her natural talents without the obstacles that her neurodivergent brain put in the way.
I have taken you at your word that you’re trying to be thoughtful and kind as you think about this. I hope that this gives you some perspective that you might not have had before.
You could be describing my daughter. People like the OP actually want our kids to be “working with one arm tied behind their back.” These are the same people who demand that their bright but not gifted children be given access to gifted education because they think the gifted kids are getting something special that gives them an extra advantage, which results in gifted education’s being turned into useless “enrichment” instead of a specialized mode of education geared towards kids who learn much differently than kids who are merely bright.
This!!!
My ADHD son took meds for about 6 months to give him a fighting chance to graduate high school.
He now works in the trades and is successful, but it was a slog to get him diagnosed and medicated
The only problem in this story is the fact that your friend shared the results of her daughter’s evaluation with you. Your reaction is why I keep these things private.
Yes, I think it is over diagnosed, and yes, I think parents seek diagnosis so their kids can get whatever the perceived benefit (in my town, if your 4 year old is on an IEP, you get the free full day public preschool. It’s DEEPLY abused.).
But, I also think you should check yourself from diagnosing/undiagnosing your children’s friends? That feels icky for reasons others are articulating way better than me. Stop comparing your son to others, and particularly so because he’s doing great (congrats and well done, btw!).
ADHD is very real, yet also recently over accommodated. Meds help and are needed but aren’t a panacea. Folks with ADHD with meds and accommodations still struggle mightily.
I have inattentive ADHD and am on a non stimulant med. I went on the meds and while things are SO much better than they were, I’m still not functioning normally.
I can’t follow a movie/book even if it’s the most captivating thing about strong interest of mine. I can almost never make a return within the window. It takes me hours to get started with work each morning – in a job that’s interesting to me and I love. I have to use GPS directions to go everywhere or I’ll miss turns … even when driving to work which I do 5x a week.
I think there’s both – there are people who really, truly need the drugs & extra time, and yes, there are definitely situations where it’s unclear where the line is between “would benefit from” and “doesn’t have a fair shot without” (especially for interventions like “extra time on tests”, where almost anyone would benefit from it!)
But big picture, I don’t think “is it absolutely fair” is a productive view of the world – your kids already have tons of advantages lots of kids will never have; and they don’t have some advantages that other kids *do* have. No matter what you do, that’s always going to be true. Do the best for your kids, and raise them with courage, joy, compassion, thoughtfulness and hard work, and you’re doing fine.
When everyone gets extra time, the students who need the extra time just finish early!
If a lot of students are running out of time, then not enough time was allotted to take the test.
*the students who did not need the extra time
I don’t think a lot of tasks work that way – I can do a different quality of work on a task if I spend 10 minutes on it, vs. 2 hours, vs. 20 hrs (especially for detailed, nuanced work that’s not – there’s no way to spend 20 hrs boiling an egg, but there’s absolutely a way to make a 10 minutes vs 2 hrs vs 20 hr project plan at different levels of quality
Have you ever taken the lsat? Unlimited time is the MOST important thing you could have on it. It matters more for certain tests than others. But for a lot of important tests the time crunch is the point.
Time is the crunch point for the top students who are capable of getting every question right. On the LSAT someone with less intelligence will get a bunch wrong no matter how much time they have.
So, the genius kid with unlimited time beats the genius kid with limited time. This is my point.
If you are OP, it seems like your point is that with unlimited time the average kid could tie with the genius kid.
I live in an area where finding a psychiatrist who will diagnose your child as having a condition that requires accommodations is a frequent topic of conversation, and the mothers are pretty clear they are doing it for competitive advantage – so yes, I think they are over-diagnosed and people are often acting in bad faith.
That said, obviously I cannot know any specific individual’s challenges so while I think it is a problem in the societal sense, I do not spend my time judging individuals (unless I have heard their mothers talking about how they went to three therapists to find the one who would give them the “right” diagnosis in which case I am judging the mothers pretty darn hard).
The cost for these outside assessments in my area is in the thousands of dollars. While I know there are ethics codes, paying that much money for “your kid is fine” isn’t going to get you referrals. There’s an incentive to make a diagnosis.
Chiming in to say that this is the case in our neighborhood as well. Kids who did just fine all through elementary and middle and even in 9th grade, but all of a sudden in 10th grade they are diagnosed with “anxiety” and need time and a half on the SAT so that they can bring their 1470 up to a 1520 and get into an elite college.
I am not in any way denigrating the moms on this board who have kids who have actual disabilities, but when about 40-50% of my kid’s private school class gets extra time because of an anxiety diagnoses (and these kids do not seek out any other accommodations or medicines, just extra time on tests and assignments), they are abusing the system and that’s what is grating on parents like the OP and myself.
Maybe OP should just go for it then. What are the odds he’s not anxious at this point.
Diagnosis of certain conditions has changed over time. It is factually correct that the DSM, which is the diagnostic guidebook for mental conditions, has gotten more expansive over the past decades: both by adding new disorders and by lowering thresholds for diagnosis to existing conditions.
Beyond acknowledging that as a fact, I tend not to worry about the things raised in the rest of your message for me or my kids.
FWIW, my kids are teenagers and one just started college. They went through one public school system K-1 2 so I know a lot of their friends and classmates, especially the ones that were in the honors/AP/college-curious bucket. My kids are reasonably bright, but never score at the tippy-top of anything. We’re probably among the more well-off families in the district, so my kids did nice but not especially fancy enrichment like music and dance lessons, summer camps, etc.
In my experience, the kids who were assessed as having very high intelligence, being gifted, being especially academically-focused, etc., often were kind of underachievers by high school. While you can make a kid do homework, you can’t force them to participate in activities in quite the same way when they are teenagers, especially in terms of things like leadership positions. The kids whose moms always bragged about their brilliance got into the same colleges (more or less) where my less-brilliant kid got acceptances.
Op. Thanks all.
To clarify, I dont doubt my friend’s kid’s diagnosis. I realize some geniuses could struggle; this one doesn’t according to my friend. But that’s doesn’t mean I begrudge her extra time. Obviously it will help her genius child to reach her highest potential.
I also want my beloved child to reach his highest potential. He has potential, just not genius potential. What I hear from the parents for the many “genius”
kids here is “Our kids are geniuses. We get the best accommodations and the best drugs to help them reach that potential and if your kid isn’t a genius well he doesn’t the time, attention or access to performance enchanting drugs our kids get because they have so much potential.” That’s very different from having ADD and needing help.
I get that he’s going to have to try to make up for some of his lack of genius with hard work and luck. I accept that. But I really cannot accept that he can’t get the same time as the genius kids who don’t even struggle get. They’re already more gifted, he shouldnt get less time than them because of my foolish commitment to ethics.
I know life isn’t fair. But institutions should be. That’s why we’re purportedly accommodating the adhd kids. As much as it hurts my sense of justice I’d be a sucker to not and least try to pursue SOME diagnosis that would be advantageous for him. I get that that means money and time. But I’d spend on tutors, i changed my whole life to get him into a great public school and I’m very dedicated to his education. It doesn’t sit right that he’s asked to do the same work in less time than a group of geniuses who are more gifted than him in the first place.
WTAF? If the genius kid has ADHD and has been granted extra time then they are most definitely struggling. The bar for schools to give accommodations to gifted kids with ADHD is much, much higher than the bar for accommodations for a child of average intelligence with ADHD. You just hate smart kids and want to see them suffer.
You are a terrible person.
I can guarantee you that your average child struggles much, much less than my “genius” child with ADHD, and if he works moderately hard he will probably be much more successful in life than my child will be if she works her tail off 24/7. He will also certainly be happier and more contented. I have seen this dynamic play out even within several families where one kid is extremely gifted and may or may not be 2e and the other is just a bright striver. The truly gifted kids all face more challenges and get less recognition than the ones who just love the grind and chase all the awards.
This is such a disappointing response. A lot of people took the time to explain, very kindly, why your thinking is misguided and it doesn’t appear that you’ve even tried to listen. Just more whining and martyrdom. I for one do not consider you an ethical person based on what you’ve said here. I consider you selfish and suspicious and small minded. I’ve said it elsewhere, but I urge you to research what ADHD symptoms and impacts actually entail. You will be grateful your child does not have this condition.
There is NOTHING unjust about a kid getting accommodation or treatment for a condition that holds him back from his full potential. Your child has nothing holding him back. That’s why he doesn’t get accommodations or treatment. He doesn’t get “less time.” He gets the standard amount of time. Just like everyone else except those with diagnosable conditions. Your child isn’t going to reach genius potential even with extra time because intelligence isn’t a function of time.
Welcome to the world. Your child, along with almost everyone else on planet Earth, is not a genius. He will need to work hard to succeed. Just like everyone else, even the geniuses. Being a genius does not magically result in success post high-school without doing actual work.
The best thing you can do for your child is to teach him to be kind to others and to develop a good work ethic. Not get him a dx that will follow him around for his whole life and medicate him. These drugs aren’t magic study pills. They have side effects. He gets used to extra time in high school and maybe college – then what? You think employers and clients give extra time? What a joke.
OMG you are the problem here. You are seriously thinking of getting your child a bogus diagnosis so he can get extra time on tests? When you are accusing a mother who put her child through an extensive neuropsychological evaluation of doing the same thing and judging her for it?
To be honest, you sound bitter and unhealthily competitive. Let your child run his own race and you will both be much happier.
Honestly OP this sounds made up. I am sure you’re satirizing a bit but no parent who is legitimately trying to treat a legitimate ADHD diagnosis is going to characterize stimulant meds as “performance enhancing drugs.” ADHD accommodations/meds aren’t given because a child has potential or because they are geniuses. That’s a weird way to frame the entire thing that rings very false to me. Either way, just stop talking to these people about how they treat their kids and go run your own race. You’ll feel better.
Yikes. This is too much to unpack on a fashion blog.
Is it really advantageous, though? What about his sense of worth, his sense of self-esteem, and your relationship with him? Does he have to hit certain scores to get into certain classes? Get into high school?
The older your kids get, the more it’s about coaching them as opposed to telling them, “do X.” Both of my kids have had interests and focuses that wouldn’t have been my first choice, or my fourth choice. For instance, my youngest probably should have stayed with ballet, but they wanted to dial it back, so he did. My eldest took some classes and pursued some things that she wanted to do that maybe didn’t look so great on a college application, but those were her reasonable choices. And she’s doing fine.
This is a really good approach.
“But I think he’s in a no win situation if genius level kids are getting these accommodations.”
This doesn’t make any sense to me at all. What do you think a “no-win situation is”? Your child, by your own account, is intelligent and has great executive functioning skills. Your child is going to be just fine. Very successful, even! A genius kid succeeding, or even beating your child out for the top spot in class, is not going to stop your child from being successful. Your kid isn’t going to score at a “genius level” if he gets more time because he simply doesn’t have that kind of intelligence. ADHD meds don’t improve your intelligence. The ability to concentrate is not the only differentiator between your average very smart high achiever and actual geniuses. Ask yourself: if the genius level student fails to complete and turn in 50% of her homework assignments, but they’re perfect when she does, is her grade going to be better than your child who turns in 100% of his homework assignments but only earns a 90%? This is an extreme example but you must understand that raw intelligence isn’t the only thing necessary to achieve in school or at work or in life.
I don’t understand. Tests like the lsat and the sat are really about time. Of course my kid would do better with unlimited time. He might not ever be a genius but if he gets a 175 instead of a 165 shouldn’t I advocate for that? no law school will care if he has an adhd diagnosis. Presumably the genius gets a 180 with her extra time because she a genius annd that’s her potential or whatever. Everyone should be doing their homework. If she’s distracted because of her diagnoses she gets drugs and extra time. If he’s distracted no one cares.
Your approach will not serve your child well when you use bogus accommodations to get him into a school or class where he is not among his intellectual peers. No matter how much extra time he has, he will never be able to analyze literature as thoughtfully or grasp complex mathematical concepts as thoroughly as a gifted child. The extra time a gifted child with ADHD gets on a test just allows them to put those ideas down on paper. Eventually your kid will not be able to keep up no matter how much extra time he gets.
And yet if I can get him an Ivy League degree he’ll be doing as well in life as the non genius football players and legacy kids who are also there. He’ll be much better off than his parents for sure. Let’s not pretend that everyone who gets their foot in these doors needs to be a diagnosed genius. There’s plenty of bright and hard working kids there too.
to 3:05
honey your kid could cure cancer and you still wouldn’t get him into the ivy leagues.
Statements like “he will never be able to analyze literature as thoughtfully or grasp complex mathematical concepts as thoroughly as a gifted child” are the reason why people find the parents of the gifted so thoroughly irritating. Surely there are literary critics and mathematicians that were not gifted children? The only person I know who is a literal rocket scientist was in the “slow” math group in grade school. Still managed to get a physics PhD.
Parents of gifted children only say those things to people who say nasty stuff about gifted children or try to insist that giftedness is not a thing.
Balderdash. I’ve had many iterations of the following exchange:
Other Mom: My precious Sunshine is highly gifted, especially in math, music, and languages.
Me: That’s nice! My kid is really enjoying being in the choir. Isn’t it nice that we have a music teacher that is so engaged with even the little kids?
Other Mom: My kid can’t possibly relate to the other children and their musical interests because he is so highly gifted in music.
Me: [groans internally] Hmmmmmm. That’s too bad.
The way I read OP’s post is that her child is gifted, but not a “genius.” Setting aside the “gifted” label which is loaded, it’s clear she’s got a smart kid. But the reality of the situation is that there’s always going to be a smarter person out there and that, yes, people at the very highest levels intelligence really can analyze literature or math or whatever their specific strength is at a far higher level than the result of us very smart over achievers. It’s not that deep.
His tutor should be able to cover strategies to make the most of the time. He can also practice. If he keeps running out of time and getting distracted, why are you saying his executive function is great?
I have graded a ton, and I advocate for plenty of time for everyone and offer it when it’s my call, and I think you’re exaggerating how much extra time matters as an advantage. Nobody gets unlimited time.
To be fair the biggest tests of my life were the lsat and timed first year law school tests. I really don’t think you can overstate how important time is on those tests. I’m completely confident that having unlimited time on those would have changed the course of my career. My kid doesn’t struggle with time in classroom tests but the difference between a timed and untimed lsat is life changing for the vast majority of people.
This makes no sense. If everyone had extra time, the genius kids would still have outperformed the average kids so you would be no better off. I think you are arguing that only you should have gotten extra time and everyone else shouldn’t have?
If I had a magic fairness wand, yeah, I’d change some things about some accommodations; that I don’t think are serving our society as a whole very well. But in reality, that is a) very hard to do without unintended consequences (ie. you raise the bar for proving you need XYZ accommodation, you end up filtering even more for parents who can afford to hire their own consultants and lawyers to navigate it).
But neither of us has that wand. It sounds like you’ve done a ton to give your son a strong start in life, and that’s a wonderful thing to do. Regardless of what other people are doing, what is best for your son right now? Big picture, is taking stimulants to study all night even good for your kid, even if it did increase his chance of someday going to Harvard from 1% to 1.1%?
What do you mean you don’t understand? You don’t understand what intelligence is? I can tell! You don’t understand that test scores and intelligence aren’t the same thing? That’s apparent. You seem to think that “intelligence” is limited to its expression in test scores? WTF.
“He might not ever be a genius but if he gets a 175 instead of a 165 shouldn’t I advocate for that?”
Yikes yikes yikes. I doubt extra time is going to move him from a 165 to a 175, but ethically, no you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t disingenuously seek out a diagnosis that your child doesn’t have, restructure his schooling, all to give him an advantage that he does not require. If “she” gets distracted she gets meds and extra time (if she chooses to seek them out) *because it’s due to a medical condition.*
Seriously, what’s your plan? Lie to him and tell him he has ADHD? Coach him on how to lie to pass a neuropsych exam? Or tell him you’re doing this unethical thing so he can have advantages over other children? How is that good parenting? I’m sorry someone did better than you in law school. Get over it and model being a good person for your child.
This was frustrating to read. There are a lot of good comments, so I’ll try not to be repetitive. I’m trying to take on good faith that you are trying to be kind, but, the longer I sit with your post, the harder it is. It does not seem that you have made any effort to understand ADHD and its affects. You start by asking if we think these conditions are over diagnosed, but what you’re really doing is complaining that you think smart kids with ADHD get “unfair advantages” and you want these “advantages” for your child, too. Those aren’t the same topic, at all. This reveals a fundamental lack of understanding about the condition and tells me you are only worried about other people getting ahead of you or your child. And worse, this is the mindset that you’re projecting onto others with ADHD – how can I get an undeserved advantage over others?
First off, if you do not have ADHD, stimulant medications are not likely to give you a significant advantage, especially not in the long run. Your idea about how these drugs work is ignorant and rooted in stereotypes. They do not produce some magical ability to concentrate all night, either in people with ADHD or without.
The fact that people appear normal to you is meaningless. That doesn’t mean they are not struggling. ADHD is far more than simply being forgetful sometimes, or procrastinating, or using the wrong word (???). It’s more than feeling like your brain is constantly switching channels. Have you even tried to research the effects of the condition on executive processing and the different ways it manifests in different people? I urge you to make a good faith effort to do some research.
“Anyway, if someone really needed unlimited time on a time sensitive test the world would quickly account for that and they wouldn’t be beating me out for competitive jobs. I was wrong; class rank doesn’t come with an asterisk for those who got unlimited time.”
This blows my mind. Are you a recent grad or something? Please tell me that you don’t think class rank remains a determinative factor for competitive jobs well into one’s career. And let me assure you, “jobs” do not give people with ADHD extra time to do work. The world *does* account for this, my dear. Housework, life admin, childcare are all impacted by ADHD. No one is giving adults with ADHD extra time on these things either.
So here’s my real life experience.
1. Friends who have diagnosed adhd will simply lose a train of thought, something I think is deeply normal and human, and say “oh that’s my adhd.” It’s hard for me to believe we haven’t completely over diagnosed this condition. If occasionally losing a train of thought is adhd we all have it.
2. I spent a lot of time in college and law school trying to concentrate, taking lots of breaks and generally wishing there was more cramming time. Adhd students used adderall for all night studying and also partying. I honestly don’t understand the argument that it doesn’t help you concentrate more than the average non-adhd people. I literally had people tell me they could take it and stay up all night studying.
3. I went to a competitive law school. The top students went to big law. I didnt. Everything was on a curve and it was very easy to excel if you had unlimited time on tests. Starting your career in big law really does set you up for a career success I never achieved. Is this sour grapes? Am I pathetic? Maybe. But looking back I always feel like a sucker. I don’t want my kids to be suckers because I didn’t advocate for them at every opportunity. Nothing is on a curve yet. That’s true. Right now no others student’s grades take away from my kid’s. But being in the top 10 is important in high school and that comes quick. I don’t want my kids to fall short of a good future because I was too stupid or lazy to advocate as well as the other parents.
So basically you are saying that kids who are more intelligent than yours are taking away from him. Cool, cool.
You really think that the only reason you weren’t at the top of your law school class is that a few kids had extra time on exams? I did not get extra time on exams and could never finish them, but still got top grades because I spotted issues you would never have spotted and analyzed them with depth and nuance you never could have achieved even with unlimited time.
I have no doubt that I’d have done better if I had unlimited time and others had a time limit. That was part of the test. If everyone had unlimited time I would have done about the same.
Yeah, what is this argument? I went to a competitive law school, did not get extra time or any accommodations, and got the grades for big law and entered big law. I don’t think firms should place so much weight on 1L grades when it takes some people longer to figure out how to write a law school exam, learn to issue spot, etc., but that doesn’t seem to be your issue OP. You seem to assume that anyone who did better than you had a leg up you didn’t, and that is dangerous thinking. You are destined to live an unhappy life with a huge chip on your shoulder, and your kid may do the same if the message they hear from you is that someone else who did better than them must have had an unfair advantage. Even if we all have all the time in the world, some people will write a better exam than others, analyze more deeply, think more critically, write more clearly and persuasively, etc. That’s just the way the world goes! Our brains are different and we all have our own strengths and skills. Please, for your kid’s sake, focus on helping them identify their own strengths and skills and worry about themselves, not others.
Anecdotes are not data. ADHD is not “losing your train of thought” and that’s it. Your comments seem deliberately obtuse to the point that I think you’re a troll.
By all means – cheat and lie however you want to give your child whatever advantage you think they deserve. But you should probably keep these thoughts to yourself.
The students who got extra time on the LSAT aren’t usually the top students in law school though.
1. Your failure to excel in law school to the level you believe you should have is due to your logical reasoning deficits, not the amount of time you were given to take tests. You should know that when someone says “that’s my ADHD” when they lose their train of thought that this is not a comprehensive assessment of all the ways ADHD affects that person or anyone else with that diagnosis. I have already told you to research this condition. You need to do so so that you can understand what it actually does to someone. Losing one’s train of thought can be part of ADHD but that does not mean that ADHD means only occasionally losing your train of thought. Be serious.
2. Everyone was subject to a time crunch in law school. Even ADHD students. Taking ADHD meds, when you have ADHD, may (if you’re lucky) allow you to focus at or near the level you would if you didn’t have ADHD. It doesn’t give you a superhuman ability to focus. You were not oppressed or disadvantaged, because you, like everyone else, experienced time pressure. Anecdotes are not data. You have no clue what people were experiencing.
3. Yes, this does sound like sour grapes and yes you do sound pathetic. I also went to a competitive law school. I did not start my career in biglaw because I did not want to, but I did later work in biglaw for a few years. There are many ways to have a successful legal career and they do not all begin in biglaw. I don’t know that many students (if any) got “unlimited” time on tests in law school, but even if they did, so what? Again, that is an accommodation of their medical condition so that condition doesn’t impede them from reaching their full potential. You did not have that medical condition, so there was nothing to accommodate. Why can’t you grasp this concept?
And again, do you think biglaw partners and clients give extra time? No, no they do not. So ultimately, even if someone gets extra time in school, they still need to face the real world one day. You should be so grateful you don’t have to deal with that.
4. “I don’t want my kids to fall short of a good future because I was too stupid or lazy to advocate as well as the other parents.”
Oooof. Honey. Your kid isn’t going to fall short of a good future because you didn’t advocate for him to get an accommodation he doesn’t need. If you keep teaching him that he can blame others for his lack of success, as you are doing, then you will fail him. As you have been told, success is not a zero-sum game. I question your underlying intelligence if you cannot understand these concepts. They are simple.
Really, you came here to ask us if we will validate your decision to get your kid a diagnosis so he can get extra time and medications so he can have a leg up over other kids because he’s not as smart as they are. Wow.
Here is the athletic equivalent of your argument. Imagine that there is an extremely talented sprinter on your child’s track team. That sprinter has asthma and requires inhaled steroids. All those steroids do is to return the talented child’s lung function to normal. Your child is an average runner. You argue that because the natural athlete is allowed to take a therapeutic drug to allow him to perform to his potential, your child should be allowed to take anabolic steroids to “level the playing field.”
Sounds ridiculous, right? And the natural athlete will still run faster than your kid.
This is an excellent example. We avoided an ADHD evaluation for one kids for a long time just hoping he was immature and figured he would grow out of it. The evaluation process revealed many things were happening that the school did not tell us about because he was non-disruptive and was smart enough to coast with excellent grades. Like he was taking a break to refill his water bottle as much as 15 times a day because he couldn’t sit still.
He actually doesn’t have extra test time as an accommodation because he doesn’t need it. What he does need is classroom seat placement that keeps him away from noisy or disruptive kids because even with medication he can’t focus if he is seated at the back with multiple kids in his visual field.
No. Literally everyone who ever took the lsat would have benefited from unlimited time. Doing it quickly was a huge part of the test. If you could go back and check every answer most people would increase their scores tremendously. An inhaler with steroids won’t help everyone. It’s more like a great runner with fantastic potential according to an expert her mom paid thousands of dollars to was given anabolic steroids.
the lsat is one test that is applicable to a very small number of people and a strange thing to obsess over in relation to children.
Did you need more time when you were taking the LSAT? I wish you could have had it. Try to think through what is really about you here.
Yes. I think Id have had a better score with unlimited time. Not because I struggle with time management but because that was part of the test.
I fully acknowledged it’s about me and my experience. But looking around it seems that I wasn’t advocated for. I was bright but no one said: “hey here’s an angle. Here’s a way we can give you a leg up.” Maybe the angle was a connection, a sport, or a diagnosis that allowed them to improve their test scores. The pushy parents, the ones with the sharp elbows? Their kids got into better schools and career wise have had easier lives. I want that for my kid even though every fiber in being wants me to play by the old rules and say “just do your best.”
I don’t doubt that my friend’s kid is a genius. I don’t doubt that everyone here who says their kid is a genius is a genius. But I think I had as much potential as a lot of people who did much better in life because their parents played games mine didn’t know existed and I want more for my kid.
This really seems to be about two things: 1) envy that the friend’s child has a higher IQ and 2) bitterness about her own mediocre performance on the LSAT and in law school. I got a 175 on the LSAT and ranked first in my class after the first year of law school. Neither of these things happened because I got extra time on exams. On the contrary–I did not get extra time and didn’t finish either the LSAT or any of my first-year exams! OP seems to believe that 1) the people at the top of the class get extra time; 2) the extra time is the only reason these people are at the top of the class; 3) with extra time she could have performed comparably; 4) people with lower IQs deserve more time than those with higher IQs to equalize the playing field. None of this is true.
If you want to give your kid an advantage, get him bassoon or viola lessons or sign him up for fencing or sailing.
OP, do not act like you were abandoned in the woods with no one who cared about you. You don’t have ADHD. Be grateful.
You are disingenuous (look at your OP and now you really acknowledge your complaints are about something entirely different), you can’t take responsibility for yourself, your consumed by envy, and you cannot see the big picture. Your logical reasoning abilities are also pretty questionable. And no one is going to have an easier life just because you go to NYU instead of Georgetown or UT or whatever. That’s crazy talk.
You confuse advocacy with unethical behavior. You can advocate for your kid in a million ways that have nothing to do with getting him an unearned and unfair advantage over others. Teach him to be kind, to help others, to network and value his relationships. Teach him to try hard, to take care of himself, to value education. To keep going even when it’s hard. To look at the long term, to set goals, to dream big, to believe in himself. To make good financial choices. If he wants to go to law school, help him navigate admissions, OCI, to learn about different career paths and how to position himself.
There are children out there who have so much potential but won’t be able to realize it because of institutional barriers that you can barely comprehend. Or just plain old bad luck. You need to spend less time listening to other parents and more time focusing on yourself and your child. I guarantee you’ll feel better.
In the ideal world, this is how it works.
I think what OP is identifying is that there are certainly circles where it has actually become pretty common for a lot of athletes and their parents to get their non-asthmatic kids diagnosed with asthma, so they get steroids, and overperform. The existence of parents doing this does not mean that *some* kids with steroids really do have asthma.
I absolutely think that “huh, maybe I should get my kid steroids too!” is an unhealthy response, but I think a lot of these “No, that’s not how it works!” responses are missing the point that, in some circles, for some kids, that *is* how it works (OP isn’t asserting that zero kids have asthma and need steroids; she’s asking about how to be a good parent in a world where some kids without asthma are getting steroids, and she’s worried her kid is going to be cut from the track team because of it)
I wish that’s what OP was asking about, but it’s not. She isn’t worried that her kid is going to be cut from the track team. Her kid is doing fine. Just not the very best. She’s upset that her kid could win the race if only the kid with asthma who is naturally faster than her kid wasn’t allowed to use his inhaler. So maybe he can get an inhaler, too? Her original post framed the question disingenuously (it wasn’t about whether we think ADHD is overdiagnosed). She then didn’t listen to anything anyone said and doubled down on her belief that people who get accommodations for ADHD don’t deserve it, and then revealed her true desire to get her kid a dx so he can perform better. She then revealed her hang up about her own LSAT score and legal career.
People like you are why I hated law school, opted out of biglaw, have volunteered to talk all my friends’ kids out of law school, and am considering a career change to get away from lawyers completely.
You’re not at all misguided.
This is so, so sad. OP, it sounds like your kid is high school age or younger. Do you even know that he wants to go to law school? And then into biglaw after that? Or is this your unachieved dream you are projecting on him? That’s going to do more damage than you “playing by the old rules” ever will.
I was a bright but not genius level kid who took the LSAT in the allotted time and scored accordingly. It was on the low end for my T6 school, but it was the activities my parents had allowed me to pursue, the interests they had supported me in developing, and the voice that spoke through my personal essays (that they had encouraged but never controlled) that got me in from the faculty review/second-chance pool of applicants.
I applied binding early decision to Columbia and they rejected me. If I had scored higher, I would have gone there, and I would have gotten sucked into the biglaw funnel because how dare I waste a Columbia pipeline? And I would have probably convinced myself that it was what I wanted.
I would have been so unhappy, and my early adulthood would have been so much rockier.
Gently, maybe this evening you should ask your kid what *his* dreams for his future look like. And then really listen.
De-influence (or influence) me: I can’t stop thinking about the color of the Cuyana bag from yesterday. I love a hunter green and wear a lot of jewel tones.
The double loop featured yesterday is gorgeous but too big. I’m playing around with the tall zipper tote or Camina, as a practical buy, because I like a north/south bag or the Celestia, because I like shape. (I also like the Mila, but $800 is too much.) the totes read as more work bags (I currently use a backpack) and the Celestia as a purse for out and about.
I’ve looked at Cuyana a fair amount in the past but have never pulled the trigger. I love a beautiful leather bag. Anyone own these? Any thoughts?
My everyday purse is a Cuyana bag that I’ve been beating up for about 10 years now and it still looks great. I did have to get the strap fixed once and recently the zipper got out of alignment and got that replaced, but that’s without any babying whatsoever and a decade. I’d say go for it, the quality is good and their bags and beautiful.
It was a really great green… I’m not a purse person any more but I’m also still thinking about it.
I have the double loop bag (the smaller crossbody version) in black. It’s been my daily bag for 2 years and looks like new. I am not easy on my bags.
The larger version is so architecturally interesting (too big for me so so pretty!) and Forest is a beautiful color. Buy it.
I freaking love my Cuyana tote from ~2017. It desperately needs replacing for a daily work bag as it’s definitely (and rightfully) showing signs of wear. I still schlep it everywhere on weekends as I still have a kid an diapers and it holds so much. But, I have squeezed every last drop of life out of it: over stuffed it, crammed it under airplane seats, spilled junk on it, all of it… and the dark oxblood color still looking good (apart from damage that’s my fault, like scuffing up), handles are miraculously still in tact and aren’t anywhere close to ripping out.. I just can’t say enough, and I rarely have opinions this strong about a brand!
FWIW, I have a Cuyana tote from 2023, and it is holding up well! I don’t use it daily but I’m not precious with it.
I have a Cuyana leather backpack from ~2019 that still looks great. Yesterday’s bag got me thinking too–thanks for flagging other items that come in that green!
cuyana has other bags in that color! https://cuyana.com/search?q=forest&type=product&options%5Bprefix%5D=last
Last year I scored a pair of The Row black loafers at a second-hand store and am blown away by how comfortable they are – like I can walk all day in NYC level comfort. I now want a comparably comfortable pair of brown loafers, but the price tag for new is eye-popping, so am looking for equally stylish and comfortable brands. Two have caught my eye, and am looking for IRL experience with either. These are still quite pricey, but half the cost of Row. Anyone wear Jamie Haller or Margaux loafers and can speak to their comfort level?
I have the Haller loafers and they are very comfortable but not a lot of support!
I have Margaux’s Phoebe. I think they are very stylish. Comfy right out of the box, no break in. No support on the other hand. They packed well, and are put together enough for work but not so staid that I feel weird running about town.
I hate the soles, no grip.
OP here – thanks for the feedback. The hunt continues!
Try to find the brand on eBay or similar.
Shopping help? I would really like a pair of plaid/check wide leg pants that are business casual appropriate. I’m a (non-designer) size 16 (so may need an 18 in fancier brands). Have you seen any that really wowed you? Fun color combos or unusual versions of the print welcome. Not too spendy, if possible. Thanks!
Nordstrom has several options. A friend got some by Wit and Wisdom at the Anniversary sale and they are really cute. Or these go to 16, but the color is fun: https://www.nordstrom.com/s/liverpool-los-angeles-kelsey-wide-leg-trouser/9230218
There’s a good brown plaid in the Maeve Collette pants at Anthropologie
Understood if this is spendier than you’d like, but Boden has some good options.
Thanks all!
First world problem here. Re-organizing my closet, and wondering how you handle your nice purses that you aren’t currently carrying. Currently, I keep them in dust bags on a shelf in my closet. When I go to grab one, I find it frustrating to have to look through several to find the one I need. Do you all use dust bags – are they worth the effort?
I find dust bags and stuffing the purse to be worth the effort. If you can’t tell them apart, could you label the bags?
Yes, they help the bags stay in good condition. Maybe tie a little tag to the drawstring labeling which one it is to solve your issue?
OP – both great ideas – thank you.
Label with photo of the bag
Do you think that sleep needs vary by the person and if so, can you train your body to function on less sleep? I have a cousin who only sleeps 5-6 hours a night and I need to sleep at least 7, preferably 8 hours a night to feel normal the next day. I think if I could sleep as little as she does, I would be able to be more productive, but is that thinking a fallacy?
Sleeping only 5 hours is bad for you!!
The body does what the body does. There’s no purpose lecturing that it’s BAD for you when the body won’t let you sleep anymore than that.
Not always: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/short-sleeper-syndrome-sss
Sleep needs 100% vary by person. They change throughout your life though.
Listen to your body. If you shortchange the part of your day that allows your cells to re-generate and your body to recharge, chances are you will be less productive rather than more.
Sleep needs absolutely vary by person and life season, but I don’t believe anything you do is going to affect how much sleep you need, except maybe good sleep hygiene stuff (dark room, regular exercise, etc.) so you can get more sleep in the same amount of time because you’ve reduced the amount of time it takes to actually get to sleep. But that’s gonna buy you maybe 20 minutes.
There is a really interesting Atlantic article about people who need very little sleep. It’s a thing, although I think some people who sleep shorter durations are just fooling themselves.
My understanding is that sleep needs do vary by person, in that something like 1% of the population really are fine with 5 hrs/night indefinitely (and, for example, perform equally well on reaction time tests the next day, in a way most people do not); but it’s more genetic than something you can train yourself into.
I will say, I had a particularly overcommitted semester in college one year, and I *felt* like I got better at handling all nighters…but at the end of that semester, small cuts on my hands had simply stopped healing. I had chalked it up to dry winter air, but the day after finals, I slept something like 20 hours straight, and within 2 days, the cuts were completely healed. So maybe I wasn’t doing as well on no sleep as I thought I was.
I was sick constantly in university when I wasn’t sleeping enough!
It varies from person to person but very few people genuinely only need 5 hours.
I am quite happy on six hours a night and will wake up without an alarm clock.
That said, I am a very efficient sleeper: lots of deep sleep, lots of REM, just minimal light sleep.
You can cool your room down and take more magnesium, which will help in the edges for improving sleep quality (and therefore decreasing duration).
That said, it tend to not be a trainable thing.
No, you cannot change yourself into the very rare genetic type of person that requires much less sleep. This is genetically determined, and is a lifelong trait.
I just saw a lecture on sleep disorders today, and they reiterated that sleeping only 6 hours a night is increased with many negative health protectors, most notably increased all cause of death. 7 hours is the ideal goal. Your brain really needs it. And interestingly, 8 hours or more is also associated with increased risk of death. But it is presumed that much of the risk for > 8 hours sleep is confounded because people who have many medical disorders – from cancer to autoimmune disease to degenerative neurologic disorders to depression – have fatigue / increased sleep needs. So it is likely their underlying disease is the main contributor to their increased morbidity and mortality.
I’m a 6 hour sleeper. On weekends, no alarm, I only sleep 6 hours. I typically only sleep longer when I’m sick. But I also feel terrible when I sleep less. You probably will too if you try to get by on less. I’m also not spending 2 more hours on productivity.
A few weeks ago I posted asking if anyone had had a discectomy for a herniated disc and received some great advice and kind comments. I had my discectomy four weeks ago and I’m happy to say it went very well. If anyone is contemplating the surgery, do it!! It’s life changing to not be in debilitating pain anymore. I’m not totally back to normal, but I went back to work last week and feel good overall.
I had a lot of anxiety prior to surgery because I’d never had surgery or been in the hospital before, but it was all fine. I had probably the worst sleep of my life that night because the hospital was so loud, the bed was so uncomfortable and the nurse was checking on me constantly, which leads me to question how on earth people who are admitted to the hospital for weeks or months at a time actually heal and recover…I’m glad it was only a night!
I’m so glad it was successful!! I am also very knife shy so thank you for sharing your good experience.
On sleep, there’s currently a movement to improve sleep environments in hospitals. I was impressed last time I stayed overnight with a patient; the nurses checked in quietly without a lot of noise and commotion and without turning on the lights, so the patient kept sleeping. I’m sure it does vary by floor, by what the patient’s needs are, and by what other patients are going through (since some alerts are going to be loud no matter what). But it’s an area where there’s motivation to improve, and some of the changes do make a difference. I think adequate staffing helps, and that is something that is always worth advocating for.
I’m in Canada so unfortunately healthcare is very much subject to the whims of our provincial government.
The main things that kept me awake were 1) the constant codes being called that were blared on loudspeaker throughout the entire hospital regardless of where they were actually happening, and 2) Every time a patient on my floor rang their call bell for the nurse, the whole floor could hear it. I’m sure there’s good reason for it, but holy crap it never stopped.
Thank you so much for this post. I’ve been referred for this exact surgery, I’ve not had surgery before so quite nervous. Also worried about recovery times as surgeon indicated they give people up to six weeks off usually and honestly prepping my work to be away for that long would be awful. 3 weeks off and then 3 weeks of half days would be doable.
Do you have physical therapy requirements? is that manageable with office hours?
It’s interesting how it seems to vary, my surgeon said I would only need 2 weeks off and that ended up being the case for me. I only had a few days where I was in pain. The main thing afterwards was feeling really low energy, I slept a lot. I took all the painkillers I was prescribed and used ice on my incision and that helped. I also needed a cane for a few days.
I’m lucky in that my job is really flexible so I’ve mainly been working from home since, but I’m able to work full days.
No physical therapy until 6 weeks, so I’m not at that point yet.
Good luck! My herniation was huge (the surgeon actually took a picture of the chunk he removed because he was so amazed) so if my recovery was smooth, I’m sure yours will be too.
I’m 43 and went to my female OB/GYN complaining of fatigue and brain fog. Her immediate reaction was to brush me off and tell me I was “too young” to have my hormones checked. I am so disappointed that in this day and age, we are still telling 43-year-old women they are “too young” for perimenopause shifts.
I refused to just accept that. I pushed back and told her I’ve also been experiencing uncharacteristic rage lately—and I am normally a very chill person. Once I brought up the rage, she finally agreed to order the comprehensive lab panel.
But even after putting in the order, she still insisted it was probably “other factors” rather than perimenopause. It feels like some doctors will blame absolutely anything else before admitting a woman in her early 40s is going through hormonal transitions.
I’m glad I stood my ground and got the labs, but I hate that it took a fight. For anyone else who dealt with a doctor who blamed “other factors,” how did your lab results turn out? What markers should I double-check on my paperwork to make sure she didn’t leave anything out?
You should probably give your doctor a bit of grace here. She’s giving you the benefit of her experience. You have every right to push back, but feeling “sooo disappointed” is a waste of your energy.
Disagree. It’s very likely a 43 year old woman is in menopause and HRT can be a huge help.
Both myself, and my 40 something female GP saw huge improvements in our respective quality of sleep and other symptoms when we started HRT. There’s no reason to suffer.
I thought that “having hormones checked” wasn’t generally a real thing unless you mean thyroid? I thought that they could get values, but they’re seldom meaningful since they’re too variable, and there isn’t a result that would confirm perimenopause.
When I had PMDD, it turned out that I was deficient in magnesium, zinc, and B9, but I’m told this isn’t common. But addressing those deficiencies did help me.
Why wouldn’t you want to be tested for other factors?
+1
Yes, this. You very well might be in perimenopause but you’re not going to find out by testing those hormones and you should be doing other general lab tests, including thyroid hormone, iron, and possibly other nutrient deficiencies.
Yeah hormones fluctuate so I’m not sure one lab tells you much. I had fatigue and brain fog that cleared right up with a b12/vit D supplement. I also added an omega 3 but not sure if that helped or not.
My gyn treats peri/menopause based on symptoms – apparently hormone panels aren’t a great diagnostic tool. That said, if you felt dismissed, it might be worth finding a different doctor.
It sounds like she felt challenged, which is different .
telling a 43 year old that they are too young for perimenopause is not challenging, that’s dismissing.
I mean, every time I’ve tried to diagnose myself to my doctor I’ve been wrong.
They run hormone panel to rule out other conditions rather than to diagnose perimenopause. There are other hormonal conditions that have similar symptoms.
Hormone levels shift throughout your cycle, so checking them is useless. I’m curious what your doctor is actually going to do with the lab results.
On the feeling dismissed part, yup for two years although I didn’t care if my hormones got tested. I had textbook peri symptoms. It took me not sleeping for two weeks and a full on melt down to two doctors offices to get HRT. Miraculously, I slept just fine the night I started taking the HRT.
You should know most Obgyns aren’t trained on menopause. Very few medical schools teach it at all. You should look for a menopause specialist.
I went to multiple doctors until my menopause specialist told me that bloodwork doesn’t show anything because hormones fluctuate. She treats the symptoms — and yours sound like perimenopause. Also, the average age of menopause is 51 so 10 years of perimenopause can start at 41 (or younger).