Posted on 05/19/2022 11:51:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
We should stopping pushing 5-year-olds onto ADHD medication and start pushing them to get outside and play.
My patient was struggling in the classroom and at home. His teacher complained that he couldn’t complete his math worksheets without frequent interventions to refocus him. His parents were tired of the nightly struggle to get him to sit still long enough to finish his homework. The Vanderbilt forms confirmed what everyone already knew: a classic case of ADHD.
I filled out a letter for parents to give the school to start the formal process of getting him special classroom accommodations (extra time on assignments, special seating near the front, more frequent breaks, and so on). The parents wanted to pursue therapy, but their insurance wouldn’t cover it. I gave them the best tips I could on homework strategies.
We planned to see how the next month or so went with the extra classroom help, and then we would meet back up to see whether they wanted to proceed with a trial of medication. The parents were understandably reluctant, as was I, to start him on any daily medicine. After all, he was only five years old.
Taking the Garden out of Kindergarten
The first English language American kindergarten was opened in 1860 by Elizabeth Peabody. Peabody lectured and lobbied widely to spread the word about the benefits of early childhood education, with great success. Within 20 years of the founding of her first school, there were more than 400 kindergartens dotting the nation. Math worksheets, however, were not on the map.
As rates of early childhood ADHD diagnosis continue to rise, it is instructive to visit with our kindergarten pioneer. Peabody’s portrayal of our first kindergartens could not be further from the lives of America’s youngest students today. Kindergarten has not simply been changed into something different, it has become its own worst nightmare.
Kindergarten’s founding goal was to help children cultivate wonder, not complete worksheets. Peabody takes the name of her program quite literally: every school ought to prominently incorporate a real garden. In early childhood, the most important thing — “the first, second, and third thing” — is, quoting Wordsworth, to “come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.” Through growing flowers, as well as other patient immersions in the gentle rhythms of the natural world, children will develop a more meaningful sense of nature’s God than they could ever hope to glean from a problem set.
Peabody is reluctant to use the word teacher. The true teachers are the child’s innate curiosity and sense of wonder, prompted by the lessons found within the natural world and his own conscience. Nature and imagination are key, and everything is done to encourage flights of fancy.
Storytime, for instance, is not an opportunity to evaluate reading comprehension, but a way of fostering a child’s natural delight and moral development through exposure to “beautiful creations of the imagination.” Herein lies the deeper meaning behind her embrace of the “child garden” model. One does not standardize a child into flourishing, anymore than one could lecture a flower into blossoming.
There was no need, in the kindergartens of our past, for testing academic progress, because academic progress was not the point. Time spent on academic study at that age is not only a counterproductive waste, but an opportunity lost: this is the time to help the children cultivate character and virtue, so that, when they do amass knowledge in the years to come, they will be able to make the most of it. Kindergarten was invented to help children be better people, not get better grades.
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Peabody’s most shocking statement to modern ears is yet to come. She explains that “a few hours of Kindergarten in the early part of the day will serve an excellent purpose, using up the effervescent activity of children, who may healthily be left to themselves the rest of the time, to play or rest, comparatively unwatched.”
Don’t let the modern embodiment of the institution fool you. Kindergarten was implemented by popular acclaim nationwide to give children a few short hours a day of valuable socialization and expose them to nature while stimulating their imagination, developing their moral sense, and hopefully burning off a little excess energy.
Read that last sentence again, let it sink in, and then read your local public kindergarten’s curriculum. Here’s a sample sentence from mine: “District assessments, which are aligned to our Mathematics and Language Arts Essential Units of Study, are administered throughout the year as one measure of monitoring progress on state standards.” Where have all the flowers gone?
If you already feel like you’ve stepped through the looking glass, you may want to stop reading now. Peabody depicts a world with not even a hint of the early childhood academics my patients know. After hymns and musical games, the main tasks of each day are playing more games, doing gymnastics, and dancing. No state standards to be met here, unless the state has legislated a standard for totally awesome fun.
Public early childhood education spread to cultivate the moral imagination and work off some wiggles for an hour or two. It is hard to imagine how modern kindergarten could depart any further from its founding promise. Its creators capitalized on a wave of public sentiment opposed to dull instruction and authoritarian taskmasters, promising instead a child-centered world of nature, dance, and song. Today, the only time a kindergartner is liable to encounter a flower is when his workbook asks him to spell r-o-s-e, and he better not start dancing or he’ll have to tango his way to the principal’s office (and then to mine).
Diagnosing the Child Instead of the Instruction
Children don’t change over the centuries, only our approach to them. In truth, school has always been changing. Anyone who has heard of the one-room schoolhouse, or the highly contrasting educations of presidents like Abraham Lincoln and John Adams (either one), understands that to speak of a universal, unchanging American pedagogy is nonsense.
Which brings us to the million-dollar – or, to more precisely reflect pharma company profits, billion-dollar – question: why on earth are we diagnosing children with mental illness based on their reaction to the latest educational fad? Oughtn’t we make the experiment fit the child, rather than the child fit the experiment?
There exists a world in which five-year-olds are encouraged to get dirty, dance, sing, and play while keeping as far as possible from anything redolent of rote recitation or enforced stillness. It is not conceivable that Peabody’s students would be diagnosed with ADHD, even if modern psychiatry existed in her day, because they are never placed in a situation in which the symptoms of ADHD could even manifest themselves, let alone cause impairment. In a world where nobody is expected to sit still, running is not pathological.
Today’s inattentive fidgeters — in high school as well as in kindergarten — are very real. The children I see struggling with ADHD daily are not fabricating their poor report cards. Does that mean ADHD as a diagnosis is legitimate? In the story of America’s first kindergartens, we see a clue that it may be, at least in part, a socially constructed disease.
Keep Peabody’s vision in mind the next time one of those subpar report cards makes its way home. Yes, bad grades might be a reason to doubt the capabilities of your child. On the other hand, they might just as well be a reason to reexamine the methods and purpose of her schooling.
“Hell, schools are contributing to an increase in gender-dysphoria “
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
PBR88, this can’t be said enough. So I will add to it. And...Yes, I am shouting.
HELL, SCHOOLS ARE CONTRIBUTING TO AN INCREASE IN GENDER-DYSPHORIA!!!
HELL, SCHOOLS ARE CONTRIBUTING TO AN INCREASE IN GENDER-DYSPHORIA!!!
HELL, SCHOOLS ARE CONTRIBUTING TO AN INCREASE IN GENDER-DYSPHORIA!!!
HELL, SCHOOLS ARE CONTRIBUTING TO AN INCREASE IN GENDER-DYSPHORIA!!!
HELL, SCHOOLS ARE CONTRIBUTING TO AN INCREASE IN GENDER-DYSPHORIA!!!
More yelling:
PARENTS REMOVE YOUR KIDS FROM GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS IMMEDIATELY!
Or maybe just go ahead and charge them with a future crime, like "Protesting While Carrying the American Flag".
It was eliminated on purpose to close the original achievement gap between boys and girls. But they were too successful and now girl FAR outperform boys at every level including the colleges in which girls far outnumber boys now.
Especially boys.
Put one in a classroom and he’s climbing the walls.
Teach him how to fish and if he likes it, he’ll sit on the bank, dock or in a boat all day and not do a darn thing.
Putting your children on narcotics is a bad idea
Amen!
I actually decided at age 12 that recess should be incorporated into Junior High and High School.
That was not a self-centered wish: I was a very good student, and had less difficulty with the lecture setting than most. But I observed how deleterious it was for many to have to sit passively and just listen.
Activity is natural for children - and adults. A forced sedentary routine is counter-productive.
Yes, I didn’t really push the meds. He tried them and didn’t like how they made him feel. He was a skinny kid who got skinnier—lost his appetite. And his mouth got dry and his hands were purple while running and his vision got weird (he was a distance runner in high school—track and cross country).
And I didn’t want to feel like Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest so I didn’t press the issue.
I know the meds do help many with ADHD though.
“This began to escalate back in the 1990s. As I recall, schools got extra funding for each diagnosis.”
A doctor who did some consulting work for my company back in the 90s told me he could not diagnose ADHD. He said teachers were the ones who diagnosed it.
We had it when I was in school. We had baseball games already set up. Scarf down lunch and then everyone to the field. Each team knew to go to the field or bat. Play for a half hour or so and then go to class sweaty and worn out.
They said my son sat and stared out the window. So they juiced him.
Thank you for sharing..
My son went to three different preschools, all said maybe on spectrum & to get him evaluated.
We did get him evaluated but through insurance, not school system & they said nothing wrong with him, just a hyper-fidgety boy.
He’s now in Kindergarten & beginning was rough but his teacher clearly saw the problem..he’s super smart & gets easily bored so she started giving him more responsibilities like line leader, class assistant etc.. is he still a spaz? Yes, but wouldn’t have him any other way. It’s who he is & thankful his teacher worked with him instead of just referring him to get evaluated.
Another Reason to Homeschool
Could they be sued for ‘practicing medicine without a license’ ???
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Very enlightening. Brought back a few memories. I remember a bit kindergarten, we learned some French, the alphabet, counting by 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, and 10. With stars on the chart when you successfully completed a particular counting group. I found 3’s a bit of a challenge.
I think we were done by noon with a nap on our own little throw rug. And mommy came by around 1 to take me home and hear all about my day. Ah... the 50s.
Best wishes to you, your son, and family.
Every child is different. Maybe some need and benefit from medication. But I personally would rather err on the side on no meds.
Getting children outside - seeing and exercising seems to help very much. A watchful eye on diet also seems to help. To this day, my son avoids caffeine at all costs.
But don’t worry. My son was a spaz too when he was growing up. But he has grown into a great young man. He still does ‘spazzy’ things. But that just makes him be his own unique personality.
There are also some books, probably now only in the used book section, from a Dr Harvey Karp, with titles starting with “How to Raise the Happiest Kid on the Block” or something. They were fantastic for us while raising my son. Great advice for working with kids like ours.
Again, best wishes.
Appalling - yet not surprising.
Follow the Money. Follow the power.
Follow the control.
Good to know.
An excellent article.
You are correct. Happened to our boy.
I wish I could re-discover the source, but I read several years ago that given the same set of data, educators were 22 times more likely to recommend a student be medicated than a clinical professional was. And educators were 7 times more likely to recommend medication for boys than for girls.
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