aDHD- Michael

[Guest guest]

The med stuff with this is just nuts, really. One MD I know is coauthoring a

book on the Ritalin stuff. It should be out in press sometime this year.

 

I did an experiment with my first baby boy. I didn't allow anyone to show

him or have him see anything resembling guns on TV, movies, cartoons, books

etc. I absolutely monitored him for the first few years to see what would

happen with him. I monitored family conversations as well; it was an

experiment and everyone was curious to see what would happen so they

" humored " me. My family has guns though because of me having a sight

problem, my household here didn't have any (and we still haven't any yet)

and because my hubby hadn't been raised with them the way I had been, he had

never pushed for us owning guns.

 

So, was it the media or environment causing a boy to want to play with a

gun? The interesting thing is that my older son at a year and a half old

would take a hunk of foil and shape it to look like a gun (mind you, I was a

very involved parent) and my son would grunt and make sound effects with the

hunk of foil -that looked suspiciously like a gun. He explained to me that

things were coming out of the foil (though he had no name for the foil) and

were making that noise and then going XXX on something near by to make more

noise. After he began this kind of play which seemed fun to him, (he said),

the experiment was officially over...once he saw Star Wars, his sound

effects became very refined and both my boys have the imitations down to an

art...but back then, I was amazed that he was concocting in imagination what

in all intents and purposes would be a gun - without any programming or

influence to do so.

 

Kids are sure fun to watch grow up....in the " let's-have-the-boys-

able-to-play-with-dolls-too " experiment that said environment determines if

boys can play " like girls " with a doll, we both built a doll from scratch

together that was big enough to wear his old 18 month old clothes and baby

booties. While he never played with it, he still loves it enough to keep it

on a shelf (even after I offered to box it up and put it away, if he

wished).

 

Now mind you, both boys are excellent cooks so I am guessing that a good

healthy appetite tipped the scales on roles there...hehe

 

This kid thing is sure a precious experience ...and one I am glad I didn't

have to miss out on ...and my boys are good sports to put up with my

" experiments " while I continue to learn more about them....

 

Linda Lane

 

Message: 5

Mon, 3 Sep 2001 11:06:33 -0700 (PDT)

Michael Riversong <rivedu

Re: ADHD Diagnosis

 

Boys are diagnosed with ADHD much more often than girls -- about 2/3rds of

the patients by many accounts.

 

I graduated from high school in 1970. We were in a bad neighborhood, with

enough affluent families to keep it from being a total poverty pocket. Yes,

there were many boys, and a few girls, who disrupted school. At that time

it was fashionable to phase out corporeal punishment in high school, so

keeping control was very difficult. Then lots of kids started getting into

smoking marijuana, and behavior problems diminished -- that particular drug

made it a lot easier to sit still in a classroom. Maybe that's where the

psychology creeps got the idea to systematically dope up kids.

 

History shows that boys are always more disruptive than girls. That's just

the way we're wired as humans. Every society has had to find a way to deal

with this fact. You would not believe what some cultures have done to try

and solve this problem of unattached young males disrupting everything.

Prussians invented wars to send them off. Tewas made them live in special

houses until they could talk some older woman into marrying them. A few New

Guineans made them hunt heads. Some Native Americans send them off on

vision quests. Thais have them shave their heads, wear yellow robes, and

wander around begging for a while. Jews make them go through a Bar Mitzvah.

I'm sure you can think of other examples.