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Comment by sibeliuss | Hacker News Reader

The point is: there isn't a "right" way. That's exactly what the author is trying to say. By failing to recognize the ways in which they were different, they forced a mode upon them and here we are. A whole medicalized generation addicted to stimulants trying to fit in where in past generations you had artists and rebels and seekers and every other kind of misfit that made life interesting and unique and challenging to the status quo.

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> in past generations you had artists and rebels and seekers and every other kind of misfit that made life interesting and unique and challenging to the status quo

I get what you’re saying, but parents of ADHD children are looking to help them become adults that can function in society and be independent without the struggles that are often accompanied with ADHD: addiction and self-destructive choices.

A lot of the types of people that you mention — rebels, seekers, misfits — I feel are generally less happy individuals, and might chose a different path for themselves if they had the right opportunities and tools.

Sure they might make life interesting for others, and maybe “interesting” is a word they might describe for their own life. And what often makes them “interesting”, looking from the outside, is that they are addicted and/or self-destructive.

But are they ultimately happy, and is it the life they really wanted for themselves?

That’s what parents struggle with. If they know their child will be happy with addiction, self-destruction, and being “interesting”, maybe it would be easier to not worry about or try to help them with their struggles with ADHD.

But most parents think their children will want a different life, and so they also want that for them.

Maybe it is just my subjective experiences in life and who I happened to meet, but people most would classify as "seekers and misfits" tend to have smiles on their faces more often than people who look just like everyone else.

But which way does the causality run?

> The point is: there isn't a "right" way.

I can tell you at least one “wrong way” though, which is to completely ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist.

That’s what my parents did and it’s extremely frustrating to deal with as an adult. Logically I understand there’s no value in living in the past, but the “what if” thoughts will nag me forever.

What if instead of failing out of high school and getting a GED, I could have been an honor roll student and go to the college of my dreams? Things like that.

The other problem is that I somehow lucked into a great, well-paying career, so now they just say “what’s the problem, everything worked out!”.

Right? Like what if the parents of a child who's legs didn't work just pretended they did? How would that play out? Probably would end with a phone call to CPS.

Ignoring mental differences is not a solution to the problem. I've met too many parents who are afraid to get a diagnosis because "what if they have it".

There isn't a right way yo parent kids with ADHD. It's going to be something you have to work on together. But pretending it doesn't exist can only bring misery for all involved.

Well why don't you go to the college of your dreams now? Or does it only work when other people work and pay for it?

I have no academic basis to apply to a top school, and to be honest the more annoying part is that I missed out on 4 years of the college experience that I got to watch my friends have from the sidelines.

I don’t understand your point about who pays for it, sorry.

> have no academic basis to apply to a top school

Then what exactly are you complaining about? You clearly didn't deserve that college experience.

Why do you say that?

Because you just said you didn't.

I guess maybe I wasn’t clear, my point was that if I had been given the chance to succeed academically from an early age, given my condition, my life could have been significantly different.

Or do you not believe ADHD is a real thing?

I don't think you meant it but I don't like how you phrased it. That in the past if you were to have ADHD, you'd be an artist or a rebel and so on, implying that it is something cool. And that nowadays it's just addiction to stimulants.

I know of quite few colleagues and friends with ADHD who need stimulants to get anything done at all, even to get out from their bed. Who were treated unsuccessfully for anxiety, depression, when all their symptoms vanished after getting on meds.

ADHD not to everyone is something quirky, to some people it can be utterly debilitating and devastating condition.

> had artists and rebels and seekers and every other kind of misfit that made life interesting and unique and challenging to the status quo.

It's definitely interesting to read stories about such people, especially those that lived long ago or are fictional characters in the first place. The notion of being a misfit is romantic and gratifies our imagination. However, what those "misfits" and "rebels" actually were is people who suffered, or caused everyone around them to suffer, or both. Few of them, or those in their proximity, enjoyed their fate.

Are such people important to society? In some cases, yes. Do I want to be such an important person? No thank you, I'll happily read about them on the news.

I agree that we have over medicalized many conditions and over prescribed psychoactive drugs but let's not romanticize past generations. Very few of those misfits became artists or rebels or seekers who did anything interesting or challenged the status quo. Lots of them ended up homeless or addicted or incarcerated or dead in motorcycle crashes. I have some of those in my own extended family and it's tragic to see them continuously fail, sometimes in ways that have disastrous consequences for the innocent people around them. You're looking for the successes and not seeing the failures (selection bias).

I disagree. The author is clearly stating that he was not compatible with his parents’ way of raising him. So he is saying their way was “wrong”, and this implies that there is a “right” way, or at least “not wrong” way. I just feel really bad for the parents.

I wonder how much room there is for misfits these days. Young people have to nail it or fail with a high student debt burden.

I think in the past we missed a language to label the "weird" and unproductive people. But I know of communities were it was common for an employer to "hire" such people for a period, then pass the buck to another employer. Now the thing is, in the past, it was for the public normal to see a commercial enterprise as a social enterprise too.

Nothing of that is left anymore in today's Management Schools. In the technocratic thought of Nazism it started by just killing "unsocial elements" (read: people with disabilities).

  The Euthanasia Program required the cooperation of many German doctors, who reviewed the medical files of patients in institutions to determine which individuals with disabilities should be killed. The doctors also supervised the actual killings. Doomed patients were transferred to six institutions in Germany and Austria, where they were killed in specially constructed gas chambers. Infants and small children with disabilities were also killed by injection with a deadly dose of drugs or by starvation. The bodies of the victims were burned in large ovens called crematoria.

  (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-murder-of-people-with-disabilities)

Okay, that escalated quickly. But talking about fitting in has to answer what it means to be human. And if we as society are actually at ease with people that are not as productive in current business processes. We obviously don't want to kill them, but on the other hand we require them to be "normal". Helping kids learning/trying to adapt a bit is not bad per se. But can we handle it when it doesn't work?

That hasn’t entirely gone away, it’s just taken up the guise of empathy now. Canada’s MAID program seeks to euthanize people for mental health issues, and it is my believe that it has already been successful in suckering many that would not otherwise go through with anything into ending their lives.

Although it is ostensibly not yet approved for mental illness, it appears that the standards in practice are lax, and that some amount of patients that start out seeking treatment for depression are convinced by their doctors to exaggerate other conditions to get approved for MAID.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/christine-gauthier-assisted...

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/vancouve...

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