ADHD: Attention Deficit Disorder

I wasn't feeling well today, so I spent the day pretty much in bed. In between episodes of consciousness, I flipped through some magazines that had been sitting on my night stand for some time, but I have not had the time to look through.

For starters, every other page was a full-blown ad for some bullshit ailment. The one I'll pick on today is for kids with ADD (or ADHD) which is attention deficit disorder. I do not mean to dismiss kids who truly suffer from this, but more and more, it's just some money-making scheme for pharmecutical companies to profit of every parent's fear that "Johnny isn't getting perfect scores in school. Oh my GOD what is WRONG with him and how do I find an EASY FIX for this?"

This particular magazine ad featured a boy happily focused on doing homework well into the evening after describing a full day of activities that included a full day of school, music lessons, and sports activities. And damn, this boy still had the stamina to focus on the mindless busywork that schools issue as homework. Isn't that the picture of what you hope your child can aspire to?

Does anybody but me see the idiocracy of this? Please say I'm not alone....

There is NOTHING wrong with the kids today, and there is EVERYTHING wrong with a society that expects them to behave like miniature adults. Because guess what -- kids are not miniature adults and we're insane to expect them to behave like 30 year-olds at age 10. Look at what we do to them. We put them into the 'education' system at age 5 where they're told to sit still and be quiet in an artificial environment and listen to some boring teacher ramble on about learning the alphabet. And we get upset when the kids lose interest, fidget, and start staring out the window???? Helloooooooooo????

Now, I'm not saying that children should get away with behaving like selfish little assholes (like the behavior their parents model for them). I'm just saying that we need to be realistic about their attention span, and teach what is truly important and not keep pushing more and more shit on them. Kids are stressed out enough. Quit cramming their schedules with shit thinking that YOUR kid will be the next wonder of the world. Give me a break. Read the first sentence of this paragraph that refers to "selfish little assholes" and look in the mirror. Allow them to be KIDS.

God Bless the kids (and their parents) who are fortunate enough in this day in age who are able to lie in the back yard and imagine cloud shapes as superheros, follow an an insect to its home, or maybe interact with neighbors because they're not being shuttled off from one activity to the next.