I’d make only one observation... My kids are grown - and are now amazing young adults (all in their 20s.) We did all things the way we believed were right for them, not what the rest of the world insisted was correct. It has turned out to be a spectacular success, but at times it truly was insanely difficult.
But here’s the thing - now, with the call that settles in after the storm - I realize that it wasn’t my *children* that were difficult. It was the fraught intersection between their needs and the world’s demands.
The world wanted compliant performers that made the adults around them look good. My kids happened to have some exceptional abilities, which made those expectations even more pressured.
All of the people who live in the reflected glory of children’s performances (and there are MANY) twisted the fact that *their* successes were dependent on the *children*. Somehow these people believed that the reverse was actually true - the *kids’* success depended on *them*.
Parents, teachers, “educators”, pediatricians, a myriad of child “experts”... not all of them, but *many* of them.
“It’s for the kids” is a common justification in cry - when in fact, almost *nothing* is actually in the kids’ best interests. These vampires not only bask in the reflected glory, they also intercept all the incoming support.
The kids are just a commodity to be shaped for sale. But when the kids don’t fit their mold, that’s unacceptable to these people - they have too much at stake. The kids must be brought into line.
The kids are, typically, not the problem. The kids are where the true values lies.
The people who want to drug them into a stupor, sexually mutilate them, capture their undivided attention 24/7 and those that no abuse them in a million other ways, are NOT acting in those children’s interest. They are the source of the difficulties.
We don’t need to worry that the kids are “difficult.”
We need to worry about the difficulties other people cause for them.
I very much appreciate your insights into this absurd culture war that so many are sucked up into. Please stay strong, your writing is some of the best I've seen, and being bedridden the last few months, I often read for an entire day or more.
You are both outstanding and refreshing.
As a footnote, I'm a retired history teacher, Army veteran, long time activist in Central America, visited 40 plus countries, and also am a free lance writer/journalist.
Mar 18, 2023·edited Mar 18, 2023Liked by Jenny Holland
I think it actually started with anti-depressants. I can't even imagine the percentage of adults who are currently taking them, but it's very large.
Maybe we've sedated ourselves to the point where we're not worrying about things that we really should be worried about. Maybe it's that sedation that keeps us from putting the extra energy into raising our kids. Or maybe it's that acceptance that we need to be sedated as adults that makes us rationalize sedating out kids.
I don't know the cause or the solution, but maybe our society would be slightly less fucked up if more of us dealt with reality.
Anyway, like COVID, and of our attempts to remedy this will be violently opposed by Pharma.
Living in Asia, I was surprised with the prevalence of ADHD and its drugs in American pop culture, from Bart Simpson high on 'Focusyn' to Kendrick Lamar's song titled "A.D.H.D". Looking at faces of trans-id youth online, I assume many of them grew up affluent, academic, and anxious.
I wonder if the democratisation of education in the 21st c has made suburban parents panicked about the future of their children. "If my children fool around, immigrant kids will take their Yale spots" - hence the drug solution, not to mention pills and surgeries for the parents themselves.
I think that some parents crave a label for a difficult child that sounds medical, whether there is anything medical going on or not, because of a fear that some might criticize their parenting if they just have a difficult kid. Some kids have medical issues, but that is only one possibility among many. Other factors, such as what influences the child is being exposed to, should also be explored.
Ultimately our problem is that too many adults aren't adults. Like children who haven't matured, they embrace the shallowness of "Me-ness" - how does this make me feel? how does this make me look? does doing this get sympathy for me? Just as adversity is the primer of resilience, it is also the door we must pass though to become adults. Far easier to drug the kids, or let them "do their own thing," than to do the hard work to help them mature. Growing old and being parents aren't for wimps – or the immature, either.
I am a 20 year occupational therapist who has (not exclusively) worked with kids diagnosed with adhd. Every now and then a parent will narrate to me their fight to keep their child from being diagnosed as such. Always begins with a teacher complaining, “He is a distraction in the classroom” followed by “He needs to be seen by a doctor so he can be diagnosed with adhd and prescribed medication so he can behave in class.” Those words exactly. And “behave” defined as quiet and easily controlled. I have kids on meds whose only reason they are calm and focused are because they are drugged. Common sense dictates that when kids are provided with activities that pique their interest, have a certain amount of challenge, and are given movement breaks, they are able to self regulate and focus and attend when needed. It takes a lot of careful preparation and skill when choosing classroom and OT session activities to help kids learn and grow, also allowing for on the spot modifications and creativity because each child is uniquely made, each day is different, each child’s family dynamics diverse. Most unfortunately, careful preparation and skills are disappointingly and largely lacking in the adult and teaching population.
I felt the same about ADHD until my daughter entered third grade, when grades went from being pass/fail to numerical values. We put her on amphetamines as a fourth grader when many of her grades were in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. She doesn't like taking the pills, and I don't make her as long as her grades are mostly Cs and above. Four years later, she spends a couple weeks a year on amphetamine. We see it as a tool of last resort, because as a society we know amphetamines have lots of horrible side effects, but I stand by my decision to prioritise passing elementary/middle and I will for high school.
The teachers, and school personal mentioned who were encouraging it in the case study behaved in not only an unethical but illegal manner. Only doctors can diagnose, and only parents can approve using, if they desire, any medication for their children. Teachers legally can list behaviours that parents can then report to a doctor for a diagnosis Legally, they can't do more. In cases in which they overstep, I would suggest speaking to the ISDs attorney.
High school should offer different tracks, wherein in includes vocational training, such as mechanics, electronics, tailoring, and cooking. Also, basic childcare should be taught in school, too. This will sound CRT- ish, but it truly is not: not everyone needs algebra. We should offer algebra, trig, calculus, but to those who want to go to college. People who want work with immediate results need to have a clear path to that work at a young age. People who to college with short term thinking often jump to conclusions easily and lower standards in fields that require second-guessing our reflexive impressions and patient reasoning. Also, people who emotionalize should call their work what it is: creative writing, research.
I missed this the first time around, but I'm glad I found it buried in my inbox. This echoes a concept I've been rolling around for a bit: "we" have moved past addressing harm, to addressing risk, to now addressing discomfort. "Harm" has been so dumbed down that stimulation itself can be argued as harm. And that's incredibly dangerous to fundamental human agency.
Girls, on the other hand, are under-diagnosed with ADHD, and a lot of women aren’t diagnosed until after their child is. Girls with ADHD get written off as immature, spacey, ditzy, not taking school seriously, overly talkative, and on and on. I lived my whole life not knowing why I was “different” from most other people until I was 22.
I know ADHD isn’t the main point of your post, but whenever I see people discussing over-diagnosis in boys, I feel compelled to mention the other side of how doctors can screw up ADHD diagnoses. A lot of people have no idea.
It’s interesting to watch society split right now, and from my view there’s really no way to reconcile both sides. It’s been a long slow gradual decline over the years. One of the factors you might be interested in researching is how diet can cause problems in behavior. Weston Price had a good book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, it only took one generation of poor diet to produce children with skeletal abnormalities, then you throw in epigenetic factors and you’re essentially causing long term damage to your DNA and family line, sort of forced eugenics, add in the plant based diet insanity and people will die. There’s people who have done research on this, Anthony Chaffee is one, he’s got an account on Instagram and you can see the results of shifting back toward a diet of animal proteins and meats. Mikhaila Peterson also cured many of her health problems simply by eating steaks.
There’s also research out there by select psychiatrists who have helped cure mental disorders like schizophrenia simply with diet. Anyway, tough times are coming and people need to find their tribe, it’s not going to be a time to be careless. The United States will probably see the worst of it, a repeat of the things that happened in Nazi Germany, but for the sake of our children and really the future of the human race, we gotta be very clear eyed about what’s coming.
Regenerative Agriculture is the way to raise food, grazing animals on pasture. Guys like Allan Savory have figured it out and no one who looks into it can deny the results. Call of the Reed Warbler by Charles Massy does a good job of giving context. Keep fighting the good fight, it ain’t over by a long shot.
It’s shocking how many parents blindly hand over their parenting responsibilities to government, professionals and culture, and so often going against their own intuition in doing so. I fear for our future in which the children have been raised on extremely violent video games, pornography, pharmaceuticals and with only consumer culture to supply meaning.
Literally every single time.... you nailed it.
I’d make only one observation... My kids are grown - and are now amazing young adults (all in their 20s.) We did all things the way we believed were right for them, not what the rest of the world insisted was correct. It has turned out to be a spectacular success, but at times it truly was insanely difficult.
But here’s the thing - now, with the call that settles in after the storm - I realize that it wasn’t my *children* that were difficult. It was the fraught intersection between their needs and the world’s demands.
The world wanted compliant performers that made the adults around them look good. My kids happened to have some exceptional abilities, which made those expectations even more pressured.
All of the people who live in the reflected glory of children’s performances (and there are MANY) twisted the fact that *their* successes were dependent on the *children*. Somehow these people believed that the reverse was actually true - the *kids’* success depended on *them*.
Parents, teachers, “educators”, pediatricians, a myriad of child “experts”... not all of them, but *many* of them.
“It’s for the kids” is a common justification in cry - when in fact, almost *nothing* is actually in the kids’ best interests. These vampires not only bask in the reflected glory, they also intercept all the incoming support.
The kids are just a commodity to be shaped for sale. But when the kids don’t fit their mold, that’s unacceptable to these people - they have too much at stake. The kids must be brought into line.
The kids are, typically, not the problem. The kids are where the true values lies.
The people who want to drug them into a stupor, sexually mutilate them, capture their undivided attention 24/7 and those that no abuse them in a million other ways, are NOT acting in those children’s interest. They are the source of the difficulties.
We don’t need to worry that the kids are “difficult.”
We need to worry about the difficulties other people cause for them.
I very much appreciate your insights into this absurd culture war that so many are sucked up into. Please stay strong, your writing is some of the best I've seen, and being bedridden the last few months, I often read for an entire day or more.
You are both outstanding and refreshing.
As a footnote, I'm a retired history teacher, Army veteran, long time activist in Central America, visited 40 plus countries, and also am a free lance writer/journalist.
Yours, Patrick Young.
I think it actually started with anti-depressants. I can't even imagine the percentage of adults who are currently taking them, but it's very large.
Maybe we've sedated ourselves to the point where we're not worrying about things that we really should be worried about. Maybe it's that sedation that keeps us from putting the extra energy into raising our kids. Or maybe it's that acceptance that we need to be sedated as adults that makes us rationalize sedating out kids.
I don't know the cause or the solution, but maybe our society would be slightly less fucked up if more of us dealt with reality.
Anyway, like COVID, and of our attempts to remedy this will be violently opposed by Pharma.
Living in Asia, I was surprised with the prevalence of ADHD and its drugs in American pop culture, from Bart Simpson high on 'Focusyn' to Kendrick Lamar's song titled "A.D.H.D". Looking at faces of trans-id youth online, I assume many of them grew up affluent, academic, and anxious.
I wonder if the democratisation of education in the 21st c has made suburban parents panicked about the future of their children. "If my children fool around, immigrant kids will take their Yale spots" - hence the drug solution, not to mention pills and surgeries for the parents themselves.
I think that some parents crave a label for a difficult child that sounds medical, whether there is anything medical going on or not, because of a fear that some might criticize their parenting if they just have a difficult kid. Some kids have medical issues, but that is only one possibility among many. Other factors, such as what influences the child is being exposed to, should also be explored.
Ultimately our problem is that too many adults aren't adults. Like children who haven't matured, they embrace the shallowness of "Me-ness" - how does this make me feel? how does this make me look? does doing this get sympathy for me? Just as adversity is the primer of resilience, it is also the door we must pass though to become adults. Far easier to drug the kids, or let them "do their own thing," than to do the hard work to help them mature. Growing old and being parents aren't for wimps – or the immature, either.
I am a 20 year occupational therapist who has (not exclusively) worked with kids diagnosed with adhd. Every now and then a parent will narrate to me their fight to keep their child from being diagnosed as such. Always begins with a teacher complaining, “He is a distraction in the classroom” followed by “He needs to be seen by a doctor so he can be diagnosed with adhd and prescribed medication so he can behave in class.” Those words exactly. And “behave” defined as quiet and easily controlled. I have kids on meds whose only reason they are calm and focused are because they are drugged. Common sense dictates that when kids are provided with activities that pique their interest, have a certain amount of challenge, and are given movement breaks, they are able to self regulate and focus and attend when needed. It takes a lot of careful preparation and skill when choosing classroom and OT session activities to help kids learn and grow, also allowing for on the spot modifications and creativity because each child is uniquely made, each day is different, each child’s family dynamics diverse. Most unfortunately, careful preparation and skills are disappointingly and largely lacking in the adult and teaching population.
I felt the same about ADHD until my daughter entered third grade, when grades went from being pass/fail to numerical values. We put her on amphetamines as a fourth grader when many of her grades were in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. She doesn't like taking the pills, and I don't make her as long as her grades are mostly Cs and above. Four years later, she spends a couple weeks a year on amphetamine. We see it as a tool of last resort, because as a society we know amphetamines have lots of horrible side effects, but I stand by my decision to prioritise passing elementary/middle and I will for high school.
The teachers, and school personal mentioned who were encouraging it in the case study behaved in not only an unethical but illegal manner. Only doctors can diagnose, and only parents can approve using, if they desire, any medication for their children. Teachers legally can list behaviours that parents can then report to a doctor for a diagnosis Legally, they can't do more. In cases in which they overstep, I would suggest speaking to the ISDs attorney.
"an ADHD child" what on Earth is that?!
High school should offer different tracks, wherein in includes vocational training, such as mechanics, electronics, tailoring, and cooking. Also, basic childcare should be taught in school, too. This will sound CRT- ish, but it truly is not: not everyone needs algebra. We should offer algebra, trig, calculus, but to those who want to go to college. People who want work with immediate results need to have a clear path to that work at a young age. People who to college with short term thinking often jump to conclusions easily and lower standards in fields that require second-guessing our reflexive impressions and patient reasoning. Also, people who emotionalize should call their work what it is: creative writing, research.
I missed this the first time around, but I'm glad I found it buried in my inbox. This echoes a concept I've been rolling around for a bit: "we" have moved past addressing harm, to addressing risk, to now addressing discomfort. "Harm" has been so dumbed down that stimulation itself can be argued as harm. And that's incredibly dangerous to fundamental human agency.
Girls, on the other hand, are under-diagnosed with ADHD, and a lot of women aren’t diagnosed until after their child is. Girls with ADHD get written off as immature, spacey, ditzy, not taking school seriously, overly talkative, and on and on. I lived my whole life not knowing why I was “different” from most other people until I was 22.
I know ADHD isn’t the main point of your post, but whenever I see people discussing over-diagnosis in boys, I feel compelled to mention the other side of how doctors can screw up ADHD diagnoses. A lot of people have no idea.
It’s interesting to watch society split right now, and from my view there’s really no way to reconcile both sides. It’s been a long slow gradual decline over the years. One of the factors you might be interested in researching is how diet can cause problems in behavior. Weston Price had a good book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, it only took one generation of poor diet to produce children with skeletal abnormalities, then you throw in epigenetic factors and you’re essentially causing long term damage to your DNA and family line, sort of forced eugenics, add in the plant based diet insanity and people will die. There’s people who have done research on this, Anthony Chaffee is one, he’s got an account on Instagram and you can see the results of shifting back toward a diet of animal proteins and meats. Mikhaila Peterson also cured many of her health problems simply by eating steaks.
There’s also research out there by select psychiatrists who have helped cure mental disorders like schizophrenia simply with diet. Anyway, tough times are coming and people need to find their tribe, it’s not going to be a time to be careless. The United States will probably see the worst of it, a repeat of the things that happened in Nazi Germany, but for the sake of our children and really the future of the human race, we gotta be very clear eyed about what’s coming.
Regenerative Agriculture is the way to raise food, grazing animals on pasture. Guys like Allan Savory have figured it out and no one who looks into it can deny the results. Call of the Reed Warbler by Charles Massy does a good job of giving context. Keep fighting the good fight, it ain’t over by a long shot.
It’s shocking how many parents blindly hand over their parenting responsibilities to government, professionals and culture, and so often going against their own intuition in doing so. I fear for our future in which the children have been raised on extremely violent video games, pornography, pharmaceuticals and with only consumer culture to supply meaning.