I’ve written before that it’s all related. Little of what I write is a thought unto itself, which is why I try to consistently link back to my previous thoughts throughout my many blog posts.
I came across an article illustrating how its all related. Here is one Belinda Luscombe arguing why she needs to drug her kids even if ADHD doesn’t exist.
At this point, it sounds insane enough, but that is literally the title of the article: “It Doesn’t Matter if ADHD Doesn’t Exist, My Son Still Needs Drugs”
The article starts sane enough, she doesn’t want to drug her kid and Dr. Saul is arguing ADHD does not exist. Her son comes from a “bookish home” and had tutors, but is dyslexic. The son gets in trouble at school and has trouble reading and writing and the school tries to convince the parents to drug the son, but the parents resist. Not untypical.
But then you begin to see the pathological insanity of the system, but you have to look close.
One interesting wrinkle is here:
We may have stood our ground forever, except for the aforementioned “charming” part. Turns out our son was something of a pied piper. If he decided to wander off task, he took half the class with him. The nice folks at the nice school pointed out it wasn’t very fair to the other parents.
The kid is a natural born leader. The charismatic-type who people will naturally follow. Naturally, this is used against the child: He’s a natural leader, therefore it is all the more important to drug him.
But, in any case, what modern parent can approach the specter of a child who doesn’t learn with any equanimity? Even a not-very-attentive adult can see that the knowledge sector of the economy is the safest haven in downturns. The gap between those with college degrees and those without is ever widening. Not just in income, but also in life areas like successful marriages and health. The option for a kid who can’t sit and learn is not a slightly less lucrative career, it’s a much more miserable existence.
How much pathological modernism can be forced into a single paragraph? Understand the (barely) implicit script presented here:
The child must go through public schooling so he can get into college so he can get into an office job so he can survive the failing economy so he can be healthy and have a decent marriage.
First thing to note is the fear. She states “the cold hand of impending doom got us by the neck and squeezed.” The system is working quite well when it can instill actual dread in a parent when the public education system is failing him.
The second thing to note is that all these correlations she’s pointing to are probably genetic in origin. In other words, its not the education and college degree that makes someone healthy, marriageable, and successful, it is the person underneath, and given that he was such a naturally charismatic child, he probably would have done alright. So her fear is rather unfounded.
Third, look at the implicit assumption that college and an office job is the correct path. No consideration he could go into sales (which would seem an obvious path for a charismatic child), trades, or entrepreneurship. Nope college and an office job or bust.
Fourth, the implicit assumption that if a kid can’t learn in our public schools the child is wrong, not the schools.
She pretty much accepts that her child must be drilled complacency to be a good office drone or he will be a total failure at life. Pathological modernism.
Either he needs a class size of about six, with an incredibly adept and captivating teacher, or he needs a little help.
…
Could we get our kid through school another way? Maybe. Perhaps spend half the day in P.E. Or get him a governess instead of a classroom. Or find a teaching style that is different, somehow, more kinesthetic or less visual or uses blocks or therapy monkeys. But they’re all just maybes and he’s not our only kid and he’s not our only life challenge and his useful school years are slipping away. The meds work, are almost free of side effects and, far from being handed out willy-nilly, are a huge pain to get every month.
Notice what’s not on that list?
Home-schooling. She’d rather drug her kid than leave her job and reduce her families consumption. Either that or the thought of home-schooling enver even entered her head. I’m not sure which one would be more sad.
When I asked our now 16-year-old son if he liked taking his meds, he said “Sure. They help me concentrate.” And when I followed up with, “Would you rather be able to concentrate without them?” he gave me one of those specially-reserved-for-moronic-parents-looks and replied, nice and slow, so I’d get it. “Wouldn’t anybody?”
At least he’s happy.
She did get one thing right though: “But if we want to eradicate a chemical solution to what might be a behavioral disorder, we’ve got a whole economy and education system to reorganize.
It seems there might be something needing changing with a system that requires drugging 14% of our boys to work. I am shocked by this.
Of course, she then states “While you guys get on that, I’ve got to get my kid through school.
How cauterized does someone’s soul have to be to be to look to your kid, know the system is destroying him enough that he needs drugs to simply cope, and then say, meh, I’d rather drug him than change it or remove him from it?
****
So, in one article about a dozen paragraphs long we have: public education, ADHD and medical over-prescription, the tuition bubble, white collar uber alles, the declining economy, nontraditional sex roles, failing marriage, consumerism, and the economic fracturing of our society. All are linked together to force one young boy to drug himself, and like it, so he can continue the consumerist rat race in the future. It’s all related.
Good deconstruction, “Free Northerner”. Thank you for writing…
A.J.P.
Have you emailed this yo the mother?
I apologize for so directly doing so, but I must disagree with much of your take on this. It is probably true that ADHD doesn’t exist, and that there are other ways to solve behavior problems, but there are windows of time for doing so. If they are missed, other options have to be looked at, despite the devastating consequences. Much of the reason schools now lack rigor is behavior problems. A teacher can’t really punish a student. They can barely even make them feel bad about themselves without becoming legally liable. A child that is allowed to exist Ina feral and unrestrained state until they are 8 or so can not exist with others. They also can’t be corrected with any tools available. Mind you, I didn’t say they can’t be fixed, just not with the methods most (mistakenly) find acceptable. And it doesn’t take natural charisma or leadership to get other to follow you in primary grades. It simply takes boldness created by living unrestrained and always getting your way. If your child had to learn next to somebody that couldn’t even sit in a chair and felt they were entitled to say anything they wanted at any time to any adult, it would be a relief if that child could be medicated. We fix bad parenting with chemistry. It is not a good solution, but it is probably the only one that works once the brain is 10-12 years old and the problem is out of hand. Now, if you responded “Well, that just proves that parents need to discipline and fear God and reject modern entitlement” who could argue with that? But what if they don’t? For everybody else’s sake give them the drugs. The damage is probably already done for them anyways, and at least the drugs keep them from affecting others quite as drastically.
observations over the years has lead me to one conclusion, mothers do not care about sons. This is only one example but it is a common example. She (not sure if there is a father in the story so maybe they) would prefer to drug their son into compliance vs standing up to peer pressure
And what kind of lame ass teacher losses control of their classroom to a child?
Nice post, very informative and thoughtful. I’m in the choir. :)
I was never the conspiracy theorist type; but as an individual with a chronic illness (Rheumatoid Arthritis) I have very serious doubts about the pharmaceutical industry.
I assume Psychiatrists are pressured by Pharmaceutical companies (via media/television campaigns that portray regular little boy behavior as “disordered”) to over-diagnose ADHD/ADD.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the cure for ADHD/ADD is letting kids run outside in the fresh air (the rise of ADHD diagnosis’ coincides with the trend of school districts doing away with recess) and a diet of healthy, non-processed foods.
I know from all the arthritis medications I’ve been prescribed, to stay away from the new medications with elaborate expensive advertisement campaigns. At this point, I’ve probably tried every drug available on the market for my condition. Yet the best treatment regime that works for me is an old (cheap) drug called MTX, eating a healthy diet, fish oil capsules, and moderate exercise. I.e. the standard treatment for RA circa the 1950’s (MTX is a very old drug).
Pharmaceutical companies are no different from any other company these days – they’re interested in profit, and will resort to sleazy sales tactics to achieve said profit.
When I was in high school, the stereotype was that vocational training or trade schools were for the dumb kids. Everyone was pushed toward the college track. I’ve done all right for myself but I can’t help but notice that my peers who became plumbers or electricians right out of high school make a lot more money than those who became office drones.
This chemical method does a pretty good job at suppressing dissent by destroying natural leaders if there is a method to this madness.
Goodness, there is so much here that I can’t address all of it, but here is a critical point for all the parents out there to understand:
It is an absolute lie that ADHD medications rarely have side effects. They can, and they do, and they can cause irreversible damage.
I work part-time as a speech-language pathologist in a private clinic after working in an urban school district. I have observed many, many children on a whole host of different ADHD meds and have observed many children experience side-effects. The worst one I saw was a child you developed a severe tic within a week of beginning ADHD meds. The neuropsychiatrist told the mother that this doesn’t happen often, but it does happen sometimes. Every 20-30 seconds, the child would either jerk his entire jaw to the left or turn his whole head to the left while opening his jaw wide. It was miserable for him, but he couldn’t stop doing it.
Naturally, the mother removed him from the medication, but the tics continued. The last time I saw him, he was still exhibiting the tic about once a minute despite being off the meds for months.
+1000
Recess, if it happens at all, is once a day for fifteen minutes over the course of a seven hour school day starting from age 5. Think about that.
Also, the chemicals added to our food supply…I’ll be writing about this topic soon on my site, but for now, let’s just all acknowledge that the big food industries are basically evil and do not care that the industrial chemicals they add to our food supply are causing neurological changes in our brains. I’ll have more to say about that in the future.
And finally – do you want to know what one simple change is that would cost very little (comparatively-speaking) to implement? Standing desks. If each class room had half a dozen standing desks for the children who needed them, you’d see a lot few behavior problems.
Great article, FN.
As a kid just about to graduate college, I feel very strongly about this topic because it is still fresh to me. I am/was dyslexic (and ADHD to a lesser extent). However I was blessed to be homeschooled. This method of schooling forced me not to take the easy way out, it made me train myself and find ways to get through my “handy cap” and I am stronger because of it. All that to say these learning disability are just that, not something that needs to be medicated. And you can learn to over come them on your own with out drugs.