I don't think the problem is with the parents who are doing the best they can for their kids, and getting a proper diagnosis. I do think the problem, discussed in this article, are schools that are pushing parents into giving their kids these medications and then doling them out like they are Halloween candy. AMEs end up seeing those same kids later, when they try to get a medical, and have to turn them down. They get turned down not because they really have ADD, but because someone thought it was simpler to dose them than to deal with them.
The problem's not really with parents so much as with a society that's changed in very pathological ways. Younger parents accept the current insanity as "normal" because they live in it, not because they created it.
The biggest problem is over-protection ("helicopter parenting") that's reached the point of being pathological, which has led to kids' not being able to simply go out and play anymore. They can only play when being supervised by adults, preferably in "organized" activities that don't provide the same developmental opportunities as the pick-up games in the sandlot that were the norm when I was a kid.
When I was a child, my mother would physically shoo me out the door and tell me to "go out and play" if I sat inside too long. This was typical then, but it seems very scary and neglectful to modern parents.
We had rules, the most common of which was to be back by the time the streetlights came on. There were also geographical limits that (for me) were along the lines of:
* I had to stay on the same street until ~ age 5.
* Two or three blocks away was okay until ~ age 8.
* Anywhere I could get to on my bike or by taking a single bus (no transfers) until ~ age 10. I have no idea how my mother thought this rule up, but it encompassed a pretty good chunk of Brooklyn. During this time I would frequently take my little brother Joe to movies at the Sanders Theater. It was about a 10-block walk because we'd pocket the bus fare and use it for junk food.
* Pretty much anywhere in the Five Boroughs of NYC from ~ ages 10 to 13. For example, during this age range I routinely took a little brother or two with me (along with their friends on occasion) from Brooklyn to Shea Stadium in Queens. No one thought it odd for a 10-year-old with two or three littler kids in tow to be going to Shea Stadium on the subway. It was normal back then.
* Pretty much anywhere that didn't require a passport by the time I reached high school age. I was 13 when I started my freshman year, and simply attending high school required me to take two subway trains, twice a day. A lot of people nowadays gasp with disbelief when they hear that.
Nowadays, kids don't have that freedom. Parents will say things like, "Well, things were different then," to try to justify the pathology of it all. But the main difference is that the world is a much
safer place nowadays. Look at the crime stats. The crime rate is down almost 50 percent compared to what it was 40 - 50 years ago.
The other problem is that the schools have become bastions of idiocy. Few schools allow "contact" kinds of games during recess such as Tag, Ringolivio, Johnny on the Pony, or even Stickball, for fear that one of the little ones might get a bump or a bruise -- heaven forbid. You'd think these kids were made of glass or something.
And there's the whole idea of "structured activities." Don't even get me started on that other than to say the reason that
unstructured activity is vital for kids is because it gives them the opportunity to
build the structure themselves -- and what they come up with is almost always more developmentally advantageous for them than what a committee of helicopter parents will devise.
There's also a reluctance to accept the fact that boys and girls have differences beyond how they pee. There seems almost a campaign to feminize boys, and few suitable outlets exist for their energy, which is a product of the biology of being male -- no matter how unpalatable that may be to the morons running the school system.
When I was a kid, we had boxing, for example. We also played baseball, football, and other contact games
without adult supervision, and the degree of contact far exceeded what would get kids thrown out of games (or the whole league) under today's rules.
How many elementary school level boxing programs are there nowadays?
It's really a mess, and it's really not parents' faults. Their biggest mistake is believing the morons running the educational industry, which so refuses to accept that the changes they've implemented have been abject failures that they'd rather drug kids than switch back to the old ways. (The fact that the government subsidizes schools for each kid that they manage to get diagnosed and drugged doesn't exactly help matters, either.)
-Rich
