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Yesterday, Matt Walsh had an article on Daily Wire that discussed "new" evidence that ADHD is likely not an actual condition, that treatment with Ritalin and Adderall is only temporarily effective and likely causes long-term stunted growth and psychological problems. The article appears to be behind the paywall, so I can't link to it. But there is a YouTube video that I suppose duplicates the argument of the article.
I've long thought that ADHD was simply boys being boys. Most boys like physical action, and some are easily bored by studying at a desk for 6-8 hours a day. I wasn't bored because I liked academics from third grade on. But I saw classmates who had a hard time sitting still long enough to study.
I'm not surprised that giving boys psychotropic drugs from a young age may be harmful.
I think the solutions are two-fold: 1) give boys more physically active ways to learn, and 2) teach them skills to be better at sitting and concentrating.
Did any of you (or your children or grandchildren) have ADHD? How did they deal with it? What do you think the solution is?
Discussion (53)
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My thoughts track yours. I suspect what we see as the inattention and physicality of boys in school is simply a genetic manifestation of masculinity in most cases.
One thing I have actually observed in some men who have been treated with drugs for ADHD is that the modern audio-visual capability opens new avenues for their gaining information and then reasoning about matters for which they could not get through reading. Some of these men are very intelligent.
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I think giving children amphetamines or -based drugs is criminal. The boys we knew when our son was a child who took Ritalin didn’t like taking it - it made them feel “weird,” they said. In fact those 2 were the highest IQ boys in a very high IQ crowd. Later in high school they started trading it around to “help” friends “focus” for exams.
I think you ought to be able to measure a condition before you treat it, not just describe it variously.
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I suspect this is another example of a wonderful drug in need of a market. If the “condition” is properly defined, the pharmaceutical companies make millions before anyone bothers to do a proper study. And parents are often easily blackmailed into these “remedies” by the “experts”. Agree with post author and previous commentators. But also wonder if this is a side effect of our increasingly all-women teaching staffs and administrators and their idiotic expectation for little boys to behave like little girls. Idiotic and wrong in so many ways. But then again, I’m no “expert”. (Lord, save us from experts!)
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The article that I can't find now had a story about a Dr. Swanson who did a study in the 1980s. If you showed boys a video explaining math, they were restless; but if you showed them the Star Wars movie, they paid attention. If you gave them Ritalin, they paid attention equally to both videos. According to the article, Dr. Swanson's study was the basis for the whole ADHD movement. He is now 80 and regrets his study.
Of course, boys were restless when some boring subject was explained. But a good teacher could do it in a way that would be interesting and keep the boys' attention without drugs.
I had a 9th-grade physical sciences teacher who was great with demonstrations. He was a part-time farmer, so he used agricultural examples in his teaching. He collapsed sealed cans filled with steam, made sugar turn black, and had atomic models for all the kids when we were studying organic chemistry. We did labs to measure the effect of each of the simple tools. He didn't have a dynamic or exciting personality, but he knew how to relate science to our everyday experiences and how to get everyone to participate. Crucially, he was a man.
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They told me I had ADD; or maybe it was ADHD. They gave me Ritalin for a while. It seemed to help a little. Then in 9th Grade I noticed that I was doing better in school when I forgot to take the pills, so I stopped taking them.
I never had a disorder of that nature. I needed things like a less boring education, sports, tree-climbing, maturity. I think even back then I was saying that this was a largely male thing, and that what it needed was things like less boring education, sports, tree-climbing.
I don't know that there's no such thing as ADD/ADHD, or that pills never help. (Gee, the tea I take now might be helping me still.)
But I do think there's a lot of overdiagnosis, a lot of stuff labeled as a disorder that's not a disorder, a lot of education that should be less boring, and a lot of pills that don't need to happen.
And dare I suggest that single-sex educational systems have merit?
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