I’m glad I don’t go to school nowadays. You might remember that, back when, my school seemed to hardly know what to do with me.
As a child, my interests were diverse and eclectic – like many children. I was smart and learned quickly, like many children. I swelled with creative urges, like many children. I was constantly intellectually restless and intellectually understimulated, like many children.
If I was a ten-year-old child now, I’d most likely be incorrectly labelled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and medicated until all of those good things had been ‘normalised’.
Instead of being smart, well-educated, well-read, far-ahead of all of my fellow students (and a ridiculous polymath besides), I’d be uninspired, insipid, average, and would have achieved so very much less than I have in my life – and I’d have come to believe that my intellectual and creative gifts were an illness.
Screw that. I know which one I’d rather be.
Now, I’m not saying that ADHD isn’t real. I’m not saying that it doesn’t need treatment. I’m not saying that the treatments don’t work (despite the doubts that have been cast on some of the clinical trials).
What I am saying is that the ‘net’ of ADHD is cast rather wider than perhaps it should be. It’s almost a fad. Lazy diagnosis, lazy medicate-and-forget treatments, the idea that variation from some idealised notion of normalcy is a defect and (perhaps worst-of-all) the tendency to lump folks into overbroad classes and deal with those people as a class, rather than as distinct and varied individuals.
Now those are problems.
These days, the word ‘special’ has taken on a new meaning. If you’re ‘special’ or are the parent of a ‘special’ child you probably know that the word all-too-frequently means ‘broken’ or ‘defective’.
Your kids are special – in the real, olde worlde meaning of the word. Yes, sometimes they’re also broken or defective… but whether they’re special-special or special-defective, both kinds of kids need the same thing: They need attention, and care, and it needs to be tailored to the individual. One size doesn’t fit everyone.
Creative, smart, eclectic, and gifted children aren’t what society considers ‘normal’. It can be daunting, frustrating and troublesome to have a child whose intellectual and creative gifts far exceed your own. There’s no manual, or definitive guide to dealing with it. It takes extra time and extra effort to recognise, understand and foster their gifts, and to allow them to become truly great. To be all that they can be.
That’s really what you want for your children, isn’t it? Help them. Your child is a person and not a DSM-IV or ICD-10 classification. Learn who they are, and help them become who they will be.
Ha. I know the feeling. I was kicked out of my fourth grade classroom one day by a teacher who called me a no-good hippy. I think there are some advantages to at least some of the current diagnostic labeling that goes on. For instance, our school district provides additional resources to children with learning or communication disabilities. So instead of getting flunked out or kicked out as in my generation, many get supported to excel where they would have previously been out on their own.
I think I was lucky, in some ways, because the teacher who couldn’t cope with smart kids, and who apparently tagged me as “defective”, had me seen by professionals who knew what they were about.
And I ended up getting into the local grammar school and getting a university place.
But, looking back, I think the teachers steered me in the wrong direction. And I’m not sure that today’s teachers would do so much better at spotting the looming problem.in time to make a difference.
It’s a bit of a myth that any kid who is a bit different gets labelled as hyperactive and pumped full of drugs. In the UK at least, to get a diagnosis of ADHD you would have to get referred to a specialist child psychiatry team, and undergo a well-validated multidisciplinary assessment, which would involve seeing several professionals over a period of time, as well as investigation of school and home factors. Even with a diagnosis, pharmacological intervention is only part of the treatment, along with psychological and family therapy, and social and educational support.
The situation now, where ADHD is more widely recognised and people get the treatment they need, is much better than in the old days, when these children were labelled as “bad” and excluded from school, with a disturbingly high proportion of the boys especially ending up in prison.
Some countries certainly handle this better than others.
“… and a ridiculous polymath besides…”
And she’s humble as well!
Love ya, Tat.
Good article. They diagnosed me with ADD without hyperactivity. I was one of the early cases before it was mass marketed and over-diagnosed. The psychologist who handled me was one of the leaders in the field, worked at a prestigious university and all that. I still say ADD is bullshit. The medication did keep me dumbed down but that only lasted till high school was over. Once I stopped the treatment I was free to develop and explore the abilities my authority figures took from me.
The ‘disease’ is an educator’s disease, not a student’s disease. Educators can’t reach the children, the children do poorly, the educators want the kid to have self-esteem (because self-esteem is 90% of what educators do nowadays). To make the kids sit down, shut up and perform on their stupid tests teachers fry the student’s brains on amphetamines and tell the kids that their failures weren’t their fault because it’s a medical condition. They get off the hook for not teaching and the kid gets a self-esteem boost because it’s not their fault they couldn’t learn. ADD absolves both teacher and student of responsibility.
I think that the whole self-esteem movement that prompts this kind of thing is from teachers not wanting to upset parents. Parents with kids who have high self-esteem don’t sue schools or complain about teachers. It’s a legal liability issue, not an education issue or a sensitivity issue.
CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!
Harrison Bergeron, call your office.
/me applauds. Excellent article Tateru. Makes me wanna buy you dinner.
I think the best way we can support your article, is by personal experience corroborating your opinions.
When I was in college I majored in psychology (and three other majors. Let’s not go there. gah… brain burn…)
My primary area of interest was in abnormal adolescent psychological development, and I was blessed to have as my primary professor a man who enjoyed the same area of special interest. He was especially informed in ADD and ADHD, and he had some very interesting things to say.
In his studied and very educated opinion, he estimated that 8 out of 10 children are incorrectly diagnosed with ADD or ADHD… when in reality they’re just simply brats with clueless parents (his words, not mine). And since they’re medicated for ADD (as you point out Tat)… and that medication has severe repercussions on people who don’t need it (much like anti-depressents can cause suicidal tendencies in normal people)… these children were badly impacted and those medicines given a bad rep– when they worked just fine for children who REALLY had ADD.
Tateru points out another side that I’m sure my instructor was aware of and didn’t mention in that particular class: gifted children who are bored out of their minds and whose parents don’t know how to nurture them, or school systems that have neither the funds nor expertise to recognize such ones.
One of my teachers once told my parents I could make straight A’s if I wasn’t bored to death by the classes themselves (I loved learning. I hated school. I was heavily self-educated through reading). One teacher recommended I be placed in an advanced course two grades ahead of my current level, but my parents (perhaps wisely) didn’t want me placed in an abnormal social structure where I would undoubtedly be bullied and ridiculed (they didn’t have special classes back then just for such students). Can’t say I disagree with them, even to this day.
My opinion of this through the years is simple: I wasn’t really all that “gifted”, in reality. What I was… was a child whose mother and father encouraged me to read as early as I could discern the alphabet, who always took me and my siblings to zoos and aquariums and museums, who always made sure we had plenty of drawing paper, pencils and crayons. So in school, when classes were packed and the children around me were indeed spoiled brats, without someone to nurture the level of intelligence my parents had inspired in me, well… I hated school. Right up until my third year of college, when… suddenly finding things that interested me and challenged my intellect– my teacher’s prophecy came true and I finally made straight-A’s, just as she predicted.
So Tateru, I sooooo agree with this blog. Hit me right where I live. I totally verify and personally validate the points you make. And frankly, you could probably write a book and not cover even a tenth of the issues involved. Your article is a crystal of ice on the tip of an iceberg.