Raising Arizona

So, I'm the proud daddy of a six-year-old boy who sometimes won't sit down in class. Working with him, school and others has been an interesting experience in what it means to raise a kid in today's overdiagnosed kids' world.

One of my better acquaintances, a noted blabbermouth and fine criminal defense lawyer, says he rarely said a thing until he was almost four. Since then he can't shut up and makes good money as a consequence. Had he been raised today, he would have had a battalion of experts all over him by the time he was three. He didn't, and turned out fine. Years from now the grown up version of Leroy and I will look back at his six year old edition and laugh at it all.

Oh, I fuss and worry, but my general answer to "What's up with Leroy?" is "He's six." A lot of mommas and too many daddies today go nuts over not getting the "diagnosis" early enough. "Oh, if -only- I had known ... a week after he was born!" We've forgotten that kids don't all bloom the same way at the same pace and that most of us turn out just fine.

I don't have enough fingers and toes to count how many times "autistic" has been waved at me. With some reason. My wife has a severely autistic brother who's been under state care since he was a child. He's autistic to the point of being unable to learn anything. This means I've seen what autistic is, and my son ain't that. Another acquaintance has a son who's speech delayed. He's a bright kid, he just doesn't have much to say. He's quite happy sitting by himself and creating very detailed Lego and other put-togethery toys. So one of momma's friends fretted to us that this means he's probably 'obsessive-compulsive' and ooooh ... Or he's a budding engineer, I said.

God or Nature, take your pick, developed genetic diversity to create different outcomes. That's why some of us are artistic, some talkative, some quiet and contemplative, some outgoing, etc. That's how we're built. It's how collectively we come up with all the skills we need to survive as a group. But we've come up with a "cookie cutter" guideline about how kids develop. And it's according to plan. An evil plan.

The capitalist credo is "find a need and fill it." The marketer's corollary is "if a need doesn't exist, invent one and fill that." All this fretful parenting stuff is just another way to suck money out of our pockets.

Which leads us to meds, which came up during the discussions surrounding my son. It was someone saying, "well, it seems to help some kids, so maybe we need to try 'em out here ...". To which I said, still say and will continue saying, "NO!" And needless to say, one of the school folks said, "if money's an issue (which it isn't) I know where you can get 'em cheap." I'll bet you can, lady.

Part of this is just sheer laziness. By looking at a few cues, I recently saw that some of my son's recent wackiness was his way of calling for a change in afterschool routine. He didn't like the noisy yet regimented on-site program. But he's not good for his age expressing his wants (except for new toys and ice cream), so it took a little figuring. So we moved him back to the private aftercare program he enjoyed in kindergarten. Since we've done that, he's fine. Except on Mondays, and we're -all- a little short that day, aren't we? Pretty understandable.

This drug silliness is also the byproduct of money. Insurance and pharmaceutical companies pay money hand over fist to get kids on meds. This drives my sister, a VA psych nurse, nuts. She says she's already seeing grown men who've been on Ritalin or whatever all their lives and can't imagine being without it. But that's what the bill payers pay for because that "fixes" the problem. The whole idea behind meds, she says, was to bring people down to Earth long enough to work on a long term solution, not dope 'em up 'til the day they die. But if people are actually taught how to work things through, then they're no longer patients, and don't need the drugs.

Scary.

BTW, my son's grades are fine. This baffles his teacher, who swears he's not paying a lick of attention. I hate to tell her that his daddy was pretty much the same way.