ADHD is not even an actual affliction. it's made up, in my opinion, so that working Moms and parents who don't want or don't have the stomach to discipline their kids can have an excuse to medicate them. good Lord. i mean, we didnt have ritalin for thousands of years and now all of a sudden 40% of male children are supposedly suffering from it. it's called being a boy, for crying out loud. i can only imagine what this drug is doing to the boys of the US and how it is going to affect their development.
30 years from now the country will be ruled by women. God help us all.
Thanks, you spoke for a lot of us.
I'd tend to agree with you in many cases, but not all, based on my experiences coaching my now-8 yr old son's baseball team.
We had a kid on his team last year who had ADHD (or at least some affliction) and it was severe, and it was not a discipline issue. He was not a bad kid and by the end of the season he had really grown on me.
But sheesh, was he tough to coach. On some days I had to literally stand next to him in the field to try to keep his focus on the game. Sometimes he couldn't even hold the bat up to swing. Other times he'd hit the ball and run to third base. If you bat 3 times in a game and you know to run to first base the first two times and you run to third the last time, something's wrong. Some games he would be quiet and lethargic and others he'd be hanging on the fence in the dugout.
I really felt for his parents and they were very appreciative of the extra effort the other coaches and I gave to him.
Do I think people jump to the ADHD conclusion too quickly? Yes. I think some doctors may be giving these drugs out "upon request" rather than diagnosing an actual problem (if it can really be measured). But I think there are kids who really have problems.
There really are a few kids who have ADHD, and can be shown with computer assisted evaluation to have impaired learning and to show significant improvement with Ritalin.
No doubt you are right about many of the cases, but for the ones who are significantly impaired, they can't learn and then are left out and left behind and then get into a lot of trouble.
Choosing Ritalin for a significantly impaired child rather than abandoning him to a life prone to crime is not a bad choice.
Without the Ritalin, they don't respond to discipline. They are too impulsive and distractible to learn in school or to learn from mothers and fathers disciplining them at home.
A large part of good discipline is being able to praise a child when he does well, not just scold them when they stray from the rules of proper behavior. With Ritalin these significantly impaired children can achieve in school and can learn to follow the rules of good behavior at home, and can finally get some praise for a change.
"it's made up, in my opinion, so that working Moms and parents who don't want or don't have the stomach to discipline their kids can have an excuse to medicate them."
You have no clue.