"Joey Pigza Swallowed The Key": People With Disease ADHD

Special Programs for Students

I think J. Ps’ mom and the school personnel’s’ meeting was a great step in the right direction. It opened the line of communication so that they can collaborate to begin figuring out what was best for J. P. They each had read his file and were aware of the difficulties J. P. was having. I think that this book did a terrible job of channeling through the some of the resources to see what would work best for J. P. You can’t just automatically diagnose a child you must exhaust all resources one by one until you come up with what the diagnose from the doctor is and then find what works best for the student. In 1998 they may have been able to tell the parents he needs medicine but today we aren’t allowed to come out and say your child’s needs medicine. It now 2018 for sure we have come along way it is no longer called special-ed.

Today it is known as inclusion and most children if in inclusion don’t spend any time in an inclusion school or classroom they are mainstreamed into the regular classroom. It doesn’t mention a behavior specialist or counselor in the book. Maybe if a behavioral specialist or counselor had observed and worked with J. P. things would have been different. He ended up cutting the tip of a little girls nose off and that finalized the decision for him to go to a special ed center where he met Mr. Ed. Mr. Ed played a great part in J. P. getting better and learning how to cope with ADHD. I wonder today if Mr. Ed would have been the behavioral specialist or counselor that J. P. needed. I think that there is just a lack of support needed to help J. P. in the school system. His mom also needs to be his number 1 supporter and help her child to become the best person he can be by standing up for him to receive the help he needs.

Things that Joey Discovers About Himself

At the beginning of the book, Joey sees himself as “wired” so that tells me he has already got a negative opinion of himself. He is wired in his own way not because everyone has labeled him that way. Being wired shouldn’t be a label. He is J. P. , the one and only J. P. His family doesn’t help him feel any better about himself. His mom left him with his grandmother, so she could go off and chase his dad. The grandmother physically and emotionally abused him. She painted his room pink because she heard it was a calming color, now he sees that day in and day out as a constant reminder of him being wired. He has rules everywhere he goes the problem is he doesn’t think about what will happen once he completes his actions. He is reminded of the rules at home and school, but J. P. continues to break the rules he has no set expectations. No one is encouraging.

Everyone sees him as the boy with ADHD, not by his real name, J. P. Everyone in the neighborhood calls him “Zippy” because he was skinny and was constantly moving all the time. He didn’t care for the names he was called such as “retard. ” The stereotype is already imprinted on his young mind at an early age. He will forever be known as Zippy or the boy with ADHD to some who choose to be ignorant of who J. P. really is. He is apart of so many difficult situations at home and school that it makes it harder for him to find the calmness in the storm. All these rules and all the choices combined make it easy for him to be over stimulated.

I think throughout the book as J. P. comes to realize a lot about himself and the choices that he makes he learns to like himself even more by realizing that he does have an illness that is manageable. He finally realizes that his mom loves him, Mr. Ed is a great encouragement to him and the people at school were glad to have him back. I hope now that he has the right kind of medicine that he makes better choices, but his funny quirky personality stays true to who J. P. truly is.

How “Nature” and “Nurture” Impact Joey’s Life

They both impacted his life greatly. It seriously broke my heart that his mom told him that he should have been retained but there wasn’t a teacher who wanted to have him in their class two years in a row. He wasn’t nurtured at all early on in his mom drank while she was pregnant with him. His grandmother abused him while he was in her care. At school, they weren’t sure what to do with him. His lack of being nurtured led impart to him being unstable. He had no boundaries, no expectations, no model to look up to. So, what began at home bleed over into school and his life. Natural just happens or it seems that way. Sometimes people do things like drinking, drugs, and smoking during pregnancy thinking that it won’t affect the unborn child. I disagree it does in some way affect the child. His moms drinking affected his brain and other parts of his body before he was born. The mixture of the alcohol and the genetics in his family contributed to his ADHD. We will never know if she had not drunk if he wouldn’t have had ADHD.

Good and Bad Traits

He didn’t want to hurt anyone. When he accidentally cut off the tip of Maria’s nose he was in major trouble. But in the days to come, he went to her house and knocked on the door. Her dad answered, and he apologized for what he had done, even after her dad wouldn’t accept his apology and was mean to him. He still loved his grandmother after everything she had done to him. He continued to ask about her throughout the story. He still wanted to be liked by everyone. He never met a stranger anywhere he went. He made a new friend on the bus named Charlie. Charlie attended the Special Ed School also. He had small hands and arms. Joey accepted his disability and treated him like a human being.

He never called him a name or treated him any differently. This is awesome and sad at the same time to me because Joey sees Charlie for who he truly is a person first. Joey, on the other hand, is not seen by a lot of adults and peers he is around as a person first. This to me shows the true heart that Joey has come to know and believe in. He loved animals. His mom got him a dog and he named him Pablo Pigza. He gave the dog unconditional love. Joey has a big heart still after everything he has gone through. He didn’t think about the what might happen with the choices he made. Sometimes if his mouth said things before he got a chance to think about what he was about to say such as “let me get back to you on that. ” He was spur of the moment with his actions. Then his actions had consequences. He owned up to every situation no matter how hard the consequence was. It had to be extremely hard to get on the bus and go to a new school. He went into the unknown bravely and made new friends without labeling anyone.

What Can We All Learn From Joey

I learned to be patient with my students. I should take a step back, count to ten and realize that these students don’t get to choose whether they are ADHD or not. I learned as a teacher that yes, our students need rules to follow but also need to know the boundaries and what the consequences will be once they choose the action. I learned that I will stand up for the rights of my students to find what will work best for them.

How ADHD Affected Joey

Research suggests that genetics is the main cause of ADHD with other causes being smoking, alcohol and brain trauma. J. P. possibly got his ADHD through genetics and by his mom drinking alcohol while she was pregnant with him. ADHD is not the definition of who J. P. is as a human being. It is something that people used to define him in the beginning, but he overcame that and now he is the little boy who has a dog.

What Are Things You Can Do to Help

You should always call them by their name. Never call the boy/girl with ADHD. Don’t use ADHD as a crutch to define the student look beyond it to help the student be successful. Look for other ways to bring attention to the students such as how good they are in sports, their talents, their personalities, and interest. Always be positive about the student and don’t portray them in a negative way in front of anyone.

Overall Feelings About the Book

I really enjoyed the book because it has real-life situations, about a child with ADHD, that could happen in the classroom. This book discusses situations I would handle differently. I would make sure to have a lot of patience and understand how ADHD affects a child. I would recommend it to parents with a child who has ADHD and a teacher who has a student or students with ADHD.