Camp musings.

[shiredancer]

My husband called a couple of times from the camp in the mountains where he and my daughter have stayed for the week. Sneaking out with his cell phone after lights out, hee! He's there as one of the parent chaperones -- he signed up because kidlet has so many separation issues, and I can't get any time off from my job at this time of year to volunteer myself, so he did it just to make a good-faith effort for our daughter. Shoulda seen his face when he was actually selected -- he was planning a wonderful week of passion at home with *me*! LOL, it was priceless. But it did the trick and made the week away entirely manageable for her. I sure hope she outgrows this much dependency at some point though -- I sometimes fear she's going to stay with mommy until she's, oh, forty-five or so.

But my real concern after husband's last call is for the other kids. He has gained a *real* appreciation for our daughter this week -- to which I say "'Bout time!" But he says most of the other kids are really, really rowdy, and at least half of them are on medication. *Boggles* How can it be that so many kids are medicated these days? Isn't anybody *seeing* them for who they are and appreciating them for it? Are they all just trying to keep them docile and well-behaved, because they can't deal? Because, I just can't accept that so many kids literally have medical problems. How can it possibly change so drastically over a few generations? In my day (oh god, heeeere we go...) I didn't know of anybody on medication, and the term "hyperactive" was unheard of. Now it's the most common thing around. Especially the boys -- you see a rowdy, loud kid around (being a *kid*, for gawd's sake) and everybody's saying "gee, he's hyper -- the parents should look into that. He should see a doctor." I know our current society isn't especially appreciative of or tolerant of children as a whole. But, my god. Because if you tell a kid he or she is such-and-such a way, they'll buy into it. They'll live it. They'll become it. They're very innocent and impressionable, are children.

Sorry, rants-r-us this morning, I guess.

Comments

[linaelyn.livejournal.com]

Do Not Get Me Started On This Topic.

It didn't happen in your day, my dear; it was just starting to happen in mine. The school I went to was "upper eschelon" and "Progressive" and taught the "new math" and the "new everything else"... and 1/3 of my class was placed on Ritalin, so that the first graders could sit in desks from 8 am to 3 pm.

Back in those days, the teacher wrote a note to the school nurse, the school nurse wrote a note to the child's family doctor, the family doc called in the prescription, and the parents picked it up. This started for me, in 1970, and whenever I had trouble in school, sitting still, my dosage was cranked higher. By the time I hit sixth grade, I was on double adult dosage, three times a day.

I am glad that Ritalin, Adderal, and a host of other drugs exist, because there are children who literally cannot concentrate for more than a moment or two, who have a chemical imbalance, and who are best served by adding a drug to their system. But so many children are given the drugs, so that the parents can ignore their own responsibilities as guides and caretakers for their own children.

There were studies out when *I* was a child, about a correlation between a child with hyperactivity, and a parent (the study said "mother" but this was 1975 *eyeroll*) with depression. Not to put too fine a point on it, but depressive parents have little enough to give their kids, that perhaps some hyperactivity is a child's coping mechanism, to gain the attention of the parent, whose attention deficit is due to depressive behavior.

Because I'm very open about having been diagnosed hyperactive as a kid, many parents come to talk to me when they first are told that their kid needs meds for their ADHD. The first thing I tell them, every single time:

THROW AWAY YOUR TELEVISION.
SPEND TIME WITH YOUR KID.
GO HIKING, GO SWIMMING, GO CLIMB A ROCK.

And look at your kid and ask yourself, "If I lived on a farm in Wyoming, in 1880, would this child's energy and enthusiasm be a liability, or an asset that helped us survive the winter?"

Which helps them see that sometimes, it's not the kid who is sick; it's the society

[nonniemous.livejournal.com]

Square pegs, round holes. Or curvy-curly pegs, straight holes. What Lin said, and the fact that we are asking children to do what they're simply not designed TO do, sit in a desk and act like little adults for hours on end. Yeah, they go slightly nuts and we reward them with a) Your behavior is wrong, as are you and b) drugs.

There are some kids who need the drugs. There are more of them who need less sugar and carbohydrates in their system, time outside running around, and understanding from the adults around them that there's NOTHING wrong with these kids, theyr'e just KIDS.

Sorry, I have two boys I'm sure would have been diagnosed with some sort of learning disorder/add/adhd if I'd put them in school, and it just pisses me off to think that we're too lazy as a culture and a society to change what needs to be changed for these kids. I can help my own, and I've done my best--sometimes. ;-) But it's really, really sad for the kids whose parents either didn't know better, or didn't want to know better, or didn't investigate things enough to be absolutely certain this was the solution before drugging their children.

[shiredancer.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Lin -- thank you for helping me to understand the situation better, and for making such good sense, and for being the person you are (and I wish there were a *lot* more like you). This really does help, and I do believe I'm on the right track in my understanding.

Part of it, too, I bet, is that kids these days aren't allowed to burn off their excess energy just *playing* -- in the fields or the woods or by streams, or in empty lots or just in yards or on the street. We've become a paranoid society on that score too. It's just... so sad, as you know.

[shiredancer.livejournal.com]

And thank you, too, Lisa -- again, for helping me to get this in better perspective, and for enlightening me, and for making so much sense, and for being your wonderful self. I knew I could count on you and Lin! It makes me appreciate all the more what you're doing for your kids with the homeschooling. Yeah, our culture, our society... it's really got a *long* way to go to improve things. We've had such a long spell of complacency and "golden times" without real adversity or war (and no, I don't count those long-distant, eternally ongoing "conflicts" abroad as wars that truly involve this whole country), and as you say we've gotten lazy as a culture. Not that I'm asking for war or plague or depression to knock us out of our complacency, although I strongly feel that as a country we rise to our best when challenged... I just wish the culture could grow up, all on its own volition, and do better.

Does that make *any* sense? Ah well. Thanks, sweetie. *smooch*