As I was sipping my morning coffee, a Turkish kindergarten teacher from a popular Russian travel show said that nowadays most parents believe their children to be suffering from hyperactivity.
Just think about it – adults think that children suffer from hyperactivity. Was there any other time in the history of humankind when natural childhood behaviors would be labeled as sickness?
I know that ADHD is a real thing. Some people surely do suffer from something caused by a neurological condition (or several conditions), and suffer greatly. But where is that invisible line which separates an actual disorder from healthy behaviors which are simply uncomfortable and inconvenient for parents, teachers, and guardians?
I remember this little boy who attended a gymnastics class with my daughter. It was one of those “parent and me” classes where we had to accompany our kids and assist them in following a fun workout routine. We made sure they waited for their turn in line, didn’t run around like a band of baboons, and stayed safe on the floor.
Most kids listened. They were perfectly all right with waiting for their turn to jump on the trampoline, climb mountains of colorful workout mats, hang on the bar, or get into the huge pit filled with thousands of soft squishy squares (which made me think of fungus and bacteria and inevitable difficulties one would face trying to disinfect the whole thing).
The more active (and less patient) little ones would jump in place, make noises, poke each other, and try to escape the watchful eye of adults here and there, but parents had no problem containing them to the point where these behaviors weren’t too disruptive.
This one three year old boy was something else. He looked unusually happy, energized, and ready to conquer the world. Five or ten minutes into the class he would just run — forget waiting in line or following directions. He ran wherever he wanted until his mother was able to catch him, grab him, and bring him back to his spot. He would stay there for a minute and then see something else he wanted to do. For example, when everyone was taking turns jumping on the trampoline path along the wall, the boy would see a rope hanging from the ceiling on the opposite side of the gym and take off immediately because he wanted to swing on it, and so why wait or listen to someone’s “you are not allowed”? No words were able to stop him. The coach tried talking to the boy. The child smiled and followed for 5 seconds, and then went back to doing his thing.
He didn’t seem to care about his mother calling him. During every class that woman would give a thousand apologies to the coach and the other parents and just run after her son with an embarrassed, apologetic look on her face. Later on I heard her explain to the coach that they were working with a specialist. The boy loved the class, but he had absolutely no control over his immediate impulses.
I don’t know what was happening with that particular child. Was his behavior a result of “bad parenting”, lack of discipline, his natural character, genetics, or some neurological thing happening in his brain? This isn’t something I work with, and I certainly lack proper education and knowledge in the subject of brain chemistry, genetics, and psychology. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that even professionals who worked with the boy had to have multiple sessions, conversations, and observations to come up with whatever diagnosis. Was there any diagnosis at all? Was the invisible line between the “active, lively child” and the “sick child” actually crossed?
That’s very possible. In our society we think that a particular behavior becomes a sign of a psychological disorder (that can be officially diagnosed) when this behavior becomes too disruptive, harmful, dangerous, and threatening to the person who exhibits it or to the society he lives in. It’s in the word itself. DIS-ORDER is something apart from “order”, the socio-cultural and biological order that we perceive as our normal life.
In case of this completely uncontrollable boy running around as if his mother, the coach, and other people didn’t exist and the world was his to take and explore, I would totally understand if his mom said, “My child is hyperactive”.
But then for each such mom there are a hundred other moms and dads with children who are simply ACTIVE, not “disorderly hyper”. There is nothing abnormal in their tendencies to run, jump, have short attention spans, or not be willing to sit still for long periods of time or to “listen”.
If we want to discuss the “norm”, I believe it’s actually NOT normal to expect little children to sit still for a whole hour and to behave properly. Our children are not “hyperactive”. They are ALIVE.
My loved one was “an uncomfortable child” who happened to be born into a family of highly dysfunctional adults. As a result of this, by the age of 5 he was put on ADHD “medicines”, and by the early teenage years he was on 13 different daily pills, as far as I remember from paperwork, including antipsychotics. With his younger brother it was ADHD pills as well, but then also daily melatonin and other sleep aid to get him to actually sleep (because I don’t know if you are aware, but ADHD medications are stimulants).
This is a small glimpse into a complicated life story to illustrate how common and how easy it is for someone to just go and get their kid heavily medicated if they wish, and how one pill turns into 3, or 4, or 10 because there are so many “disorders” and behavioral aspects that can turn an “overly active” child into a supposed little psycho who can’t live a day without a lengthy prescription. And then the parents get a check from the government too because they care for a mentally disabled individual.
As far as I understand, this whole thing was supposed to go on indefinitely, but one day at the age of 18 or 19 he quit all the pills altogether. Surprisingly, things didn’t get any worse than they had been prior to this brave attempt to reclaim one’s own body and mind.
It’s not my place to speak for another person, and maybe one day he himself will decide to describe his journey of becoming free from so-called medicines, mental and physical hardships, and family manipulations. I can only say that I’ve watched him change and grow as a human being, and his example (among others) made me think that there is something inherently wrong with this whole ADHD thing and how it’s being diagnosed and treated in both little kids and young adults.
Sometimes I think that for many older people this disorder is almost fashionable. Yes, some truly suffer from several symptoms at once (for which there exist behavioral therapies), but others just want the pills to help them study or alleviate daily lack of energy, which, by the way, can have its roots in poor diet, stress, hormonal imbalances, and other problems which won’t be fixed by anything like Adderall, ever. Because drugs don’t fix problems, no matter how much it can seem otherwise at first. They only increase them a thousandfold.
ADHD is a curious thing. One day I was picking my daughter up from school, and this couple of parents was standing next to me, waiting for their daughter and son to come out. Their kids were 6 and 7, and both were already on the pills. I’d see them every now and then afterwards, and a couple of times their son would get an ice cream from the after-school ice cream cart which I assisted with in front of the main entrance.
What would those two red-headed kids be if not on the pills? Would they turn into unruly monsters? When their son approached the cart, he didn’t speak to me, he simply kind of threw his dollar bill in my hands. At that point his mother was preaching him, reminding not to throw things and be polite and say “thank you”. Then the boy actually started speaking to me about something random, which was quickly stopped as if the mother was scared that the child would say something bad to a stranger, somehow insult me, or maybe reveal unwanted information.
The parents were young, active military (father), and always dead serious. I don’t think I saw any of the two smile even once, which wasn’t bad at all, it’s not like one is REQUIRED to smile, I’m not a very smiley person myself 🙄 But their faces were more than smile-less. They were GRIM.
Back then it made me wonder about what kind of problems and hardships the two people can be going through. Perhaps they were truly drained by life with its many challenges, some of which came in the shape of two red-headed kids who were just too much for themselves and for the others. Too much of something that had to be fixed by amphetamine pills.
It seemed almost as if the kids were seen as something to be “solved” — shaped into a form which could be handled safely, contained into a set of social norms, made docile enough for the school not to complain.
I do realize that I am biased. Who am I to speak of this if I haven’t had a child with ADHD? This is a valid point, I’m just an observant. For all I know, the boy could have thrown tantrums, made constant noises, run around the classroom, try to leave school, disrupt every 5 minutes of class time, and be a threat to himself and others if not for that miserable little pill. That’s very possible, and oh god, I wouldn’t be smiling either if I had to deal with that for the past 7 years, 24/7, non-stop. Maybe I just never encountered truly DIFFICULT kids.
But that doesn’t argue with the point I was making in the very beginning of this post. Most kids are normal. They aren’t “overly hyper”, they aren’t exhibiting any “deficits”. Their attention is fine, and their energy levels are fine. They are supposed to want to run, climb, make noises, and NOT sit in one spot patiently for hours. That’s not ADHD, not a disorder. That is kids being kids — full of energy and curiosity, ALIVE.
When most parents think their children are hyperactive, it tells me that most of us, adults, simply aren’t mentally ready to have kids. In most cases, maybe it’s not the kids who need to be “fixed”, but we (grown-ups) need to grow more as human beings to be adequate enough to raise our own kids.
