When Ron and I were giving talks, he as a pediatrician and I as a teacher, talking about the abuse of the ADD diagnosis and the nightmare of all the mixed up information the poor parents were being bombarded with, I couldn't help feeling sad for both the parents and the kids. I also worked up some anger. I certainly didn't like it that teachers were diagnosing kids, and demanding that the kids be put on Ritalin or they couldn't come to school. I didn't like the story that kids had a different reaction to amphetamines than adults. I hated it that the kids often needed sleeping pills and lost their appetites. And I felt especially sad for those wonderful bouncy, into everything, can't sit still for a minute, best friend with everyone, easily bored kids who were treated as having a deficit instead of a very special gift.
I do understand that there were some extreme cases where some kids were really in need of something, but when half the class was diagnosed, it looked peculiar to me. And I knew very well how amphetamines could make one focus. We discovered that in college. And some friends took a bit too much and had heart attacks and big old problems and got addicted and had big other problems.
I felt the whole epidemic was brought on by a perfect storm of events. Many teachers were failing to engage their students. It is often a disaster when the kids are brighter than their teachers. It is, obviously, a disaster when gym and music and the arts are cut back (so we can fund wars all over the globe). Kids need creativity and activity. Part of the epidemic was the fact that parents were quick to see that if their kid was diagnosed, he got more special attention. Then parents were demanding a diagnosis and the drugs because they thought that more concentration would give their kids an edge, better grades. Probably true in some cases, but really? What were they thinking?
Back in the good old days, when I was in grade school, we had big classes, we did our work, we mostly had good teachers (a middle class family could live decently on a teacher's salary in those good old days), we mostly got good grades. I never remember any kid being held back. I never knew anyone who was sent to the office to be talked at. The first homework I had was a poster in the sixth grade. We played after school. We played with whomever came out to play. God, now it sounds like a fairy tale. (and to top it off, your money earned real interest in the bank) Our parents showed up on parents night and at the Christmas play not every time someone looked cross-eyed at us.
In my opinion, Ron and I lost the battle and lost the war. The numbers are still increasing, although they West Coast kids and uninsured kids seem to be a lot less likely to have ADD. And what family can live on a teacher's salary? And how many parents can let their kids take some tumbles and lose a few battles and have a few failures anymore? Can the true genius bloom as well if the child is drugged? I don't know the answers.
My friend Greeley would say that it is the food and all the poisons causing the trouble. I have some unfounded prejudice about all the ultrasounds babies endure. Is it remotely natural that all kids have to sit still all day in the same classroom? Are we wired differently from 50 years ago? Is a descriptive anecdotal check-list enough to warrant calling our kids "deficit" kids?
What about other countries? Are they catching us with us? Are kids from other countries just less likely to suffer from mental illness? Or are the parents in other countries just too ignorant and behind the times to recognize the "deficits" in their kids?
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