Comment by lawtguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lawtguy | Hacker News Reader

I think this points out that the problem is we keep treating our children like adults. We've pushed to make them learn skills earlier to the point that kindergarden is now essentially first grade [0]. Additionally schools are cutting back on PE to be able to cram more education in [1].

The result I believe is that normal childhood development of self-regulation begins to look pathological and becomes diagnosed as ADHD. At the same time we've been demanding more at younger ages, ADHD diagnosis have greatly increased [2]. Additionally, roughly two-thirds of these kids won't have ADHD by the time they become an adult [3]. I think this points to the fact that we're simply expecting too much academically too early and we're compounding this by taking away the physical play that would help them develop.

We need to reset kindergarden back to where it was so that most kids have a chance to properly develop. We also need to restore the idea that children are suppose to play, that it's good for them and not a waste of time.

P.S: For that other 30%, ADHD is real and drugs may be entirely appropriate. I'd also suspect that more play and pushing learning later will help them as well.

P.P.S: We also need to find a way for the kids that do have the self-regulation to learn more advanced material. Right now schools do a terrible job of dealing with the kids on either end of the bell curve of learning skills.

P.P.P.S: Boys appear to lag girls by almost year in terms of their self-regulation [4]. I suspect that is why boys are far more diagnosed with ADHD. In any case, I believe this is hurting both boys and girls, it's just more apparent in boys.

[0]: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/what-happened-kin... [1]: http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/education/many-schools-cut... [2]: http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/11/25/adhd-diagnosis-treat... [3]: http://www.healthline.com/health-news/mental-adhd-causes-pro... [4]: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/why-gir...

Probably even worse than the reduction of PE time is the reduction of playground time and the overbearing focus on child safety ruining what remains. As stereotypical dorky kid, I never liked PE, but I'd happily run around outside for hours if I was playing tag or basketball or something with friends. I'm not sure if kids these days get to have that experience.

I don't know if I'd put this in the category of 'treating them like adults'... children are built to acquire skills. That is the central aim of their brains and they are particularly well formed for it. What we're treating them like is not adults (as we do not expect adults to be studious or continually learning), but an imaginary fiction of what children should be.

We've constructed an image of children that does not correspond with reality. We see a child being well-behaved and attentive to arbitrary authority figures as a necessary part of being a 'good child'. In reality, those attributes are destructive to human beings. Kow-towing to authority simply because it is authority, and not because it is presenting convincing arguments and ruling by persuasion, is not conducive to anything that would entice a human being.

I would also say seeing this as 'treating children as adults' isn't quite right because it coexists with our society aggressively infantilizing adolescents. We've redefined adolescence as simply more childhood, denying the neurological and psychological developments that come with puberty in order to continue to perpetuate the imaginary ideal of a perfectly submissive a-personal child. And still, they are judged by their submission as they become more aggressively oppressed, subjected to high schools which afford less freedom to their students than convicted felons receive in prison.

The goal of schools is supposed to be to convey knowledge and skills to children and adolescents. The tactics that have been adopted since roughly the mid-1990s seek to impose this knowledge on students rather than to encourage learning. And it's not effective. If you treat human beings like prisoners, even the children that everyone is so convinced are utterly incapable of self direction, the result will be resistance and "misbehavior". The day the misbehavior stops is the day anything 'human' inside that person dies.

maybe so-called normal adults today are pathological - look at the obesity epidemic here in the US

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