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I think Judy's mistaken assumption reinforces my concern that people very often try to fit children into pre-defined boxes/labels rather than spending time to find out who they are. So jenny/Jonny's behaviour is abstracted to become 'dislexic' etc. This really becomes problematic when those who work with children refuse to accept that a specific child can behave in a certain way becasue it does not fit with their own notions of children with x,y,z. This really upsets me when I am told by a child, when in schools, that he/she is being bullied by other children and then staff tell me that thye are working to teach Jenny/Jonny to come to terms with his/her disability, teaching him/her coping mechanisms and avoidance startegies or simply reply that's the problem with these children they don't know how to get on with other children, we keep him/her in at breaks now to stop the bullying. What I'm getting at is that the application of so called objective criteria result in professionals working on the basis of an individual deficit model. The response is to make attempts to change the indivdiual in isolation from their peer group. In only one of the six schools I have visited have children experiencing bullying told me they felt supported by members of staff or told me that attempts have been made to address the behaviour of the other children. So much time and money is spent on finding out what label to apply to the indivdiual or how the individual doesnt fit into 'educational/developmental norms' and virtually nothing on how to address the social and cultural environment of the school. John %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%