Say No To Drugs... For Kids

This comic has made me realize that I have extremely strong feelings about medication for children. Let me first clarify that I am not talking about children with significant mental illness for whom medication is necessary for proper functioning. I'm not talking about kids who are diagnosed bipolar or schizophrenic or with serious conditions like that. I am talking about otherwise healthy, energetic, distractable, creative kids who don't want to sit at a desk for 6 hours a day.

I shared this comic on Facebook with the caption "Don't kill Hobbes. Parents, say no to drugs." I got, as you might imagine, some responses. Some people agreed that drugs are bad. Others felt that they might be necessary at times.

One friend of mine said:

This is difficult for me to look at. We have spent the last 2 years as ADHD sufferers ourselves to try to teach every coping mechanism we can with our now 8 yr old. He has severe ADHD. He is at the point that he can't stay seated in a chair at all. After two years we're getting him evaluated for medication. The thought utterly terrifies me. The problem is that it is a spectrum. It isn't ironically black and white. When contemplating topics like this (or any) I find it best to leave enough wiggle room to contemplate so as not to be 100% on one side of the debate.

And this is a very valid point. He can't stay seated, so how can he function at school. This will affect his grades and future educational prospects.

Wait... why does an 8 year old need to stay seated? Could I stay calm when I was 8? I could if I was doing something engaging like playing a board game, but not so much for a boring class. I was diagnosed with ADD at age 20, but quite untreated at age 8. However this was not a problem because from age 7 to 11, I was attending Sudbury Valley School where I was not required to stay seated and absorb information for 6 hours a day.

I took about 50 hours of formal classes during the course of four years. How did that affect me academically. When I returned to public school, I was the age for grade 6, but academically could have advanced directly to grade 8. Of course, this begs the question of what schools are supposedly teaching during the four years I missed? Indeed, I learned organically everything that I would have been force fed during those years.

So, is this 8 year old the one with the problem, or is the school defective? Children have always learned by experience, through play and exploration. Only in the last 150 years have we sought to so regiment education for younger children. I suggest that the child does not need to be fixed with medication, the school should be fixed with common sense.

Immediately after, there was this comment.

It's easy to take a no-medication stand when it's not your kid. If it were your kid being threatened with expulsion, being held back, or special ed, you'd likely do everything possible to keep the child integrated in mainstream schooling. It's not just ADHD, either. There are kids out there on antidepressants and antipsychotics as well, and I guarantee you it's not because their parents were lazy or looking for an easy way out.

If the Koalid were being threatened with expulsion or being held back, I would remove her from the hostile and non-nurturing environment that created the problem. I understand that this is not an option for many people. They have multiple children or economic challenges that prevent doing so. But, for me, I know the damage that inappropriate education can cause, and, unfortunately, as more and more schools teach to the test, more and more school becomes inappropriate.

Had I been forced to stay in public school for those years, the best case scenario is that drugs and strict discipline would have defeated my creativity and energy. I never would have opened Phoenix Games. I never would have created Pi-Con or ConCardia or any of those things. Equally likely is that my energy and creativity would not have been stifled but would have instead gone to less wholesome activities. Pranks, rebellion, and other trouble could have resulted, causing long term effects to my educational prospects.

There are good mainstream schools. There are also winning lottery tickets. The problem is not the teachers, but the system and the politics which dominate and corrupt the system.

It is my absolute priority that the Koalid be educated in a way that will best prepare her for success, whatever that takes. While the answer to how to do that is evolving, I am confident that catch-all medication is not that answer.

Christian Love

I read something the other day that absolutely infuriated me. It is the story of a transexual teenager whose "Christian" parents were so condemning of her condition that she ended up committing suicide. You can read the details here.

This upset me for a number of reasons. Of course, now that I am a father, any tragedy involving a child hits home. More than that, I am always disgusted when I hear about people who call themselves Christians causing this kind of suffering, especially to their own children. The Bible is quite vague about many things, but one thing that Jesus is very clear about is that it is not man's place to judge. That is exclusively God's domain. It is man's place to have faith and to love one another.

In the article, it says that the mom stated that "God does not make mistakes." That is the most absurd logic. Let's forget that there are examples of God making errors in the Bible itself. The extension of that logic is that one should not seek medical treatment because God gave you the illness, so you should just deal with it. But she is right, God doesn't make mistakes. God made Leelah transexual, and God commanded Leelah's mother to love her.

People like that pick and choose what parts of the Bible to take literally, Most of them will not suggest stoning an adulterer or avoiding clothing of mixed fiber or even following kosher eating laws outlined in the Bible. Generally, these people use the Bible to condemn things they find icky. Homosexuality is icky and they don't like it, so it must be wrong. Shrimp is tasty, so that must be ok.

God commands above all things that we must love one another. Above all other things. If my daughter turns out to be gay, trans, otherkin, or otherwise, I will love and support her. If she has psychopathic tendencies, I will still love her and do everything I can for her. She will never feel alone and abandoned because some book says that some part of her is "wrong."

Being a good Christian is not difficult. The rules are easy: (1) Have Faith, (2) Love one another. Follow those two rules and you are pretty much there.

Historical Perspective

The Koalid was born in 2014, which means that she will have a very different perspective of history than I do. I was thinking a bit about what will seem like ancient history to her.

So, to make you and me both feel old, lets consider some relative historical perspective.

I was 11 when the Gulf War was fought.

The Gulf War was 23 years before she was born.

27 years before I was born, the Korean War ended.

Reagan was sworn in the year I was born, 34 years before she was born.

That means that to her, Reagan will be like Truman was to me.

The Vietnam War ended 39 years before she was born.

World War II ended 35 years before I was born.

Vietnam will be as distant to her as WWII was to me.

To her, both the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations will be events that happened in previous centuries before her parents were born.

The rotary phone and the phone booth will be to her like the telegraph is to me.

She will grow up in a world where legal gay marriage is as well established as interracial marriage was when I grew up.

The last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation aired 20 years before she was born, meaning that to her, shows like Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Buffy will be like The Twilight Zone and Batman were to me.

My first car was from 1986, 18 years before she was born. 18 years before I was born, cars looked like this:

You may now feel old.

Early Connections

As I was approaching becoming a father, I was told that it would change my life, that I would know love as I had never known, that my daughter would be the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. What I saw was a noisy, demanding, smelly thing that interfered with all aspects of life. While I loved the concept of my daughter, in the event, I wasn't a huge fan of the actual baby.

Then, she started to smile, and I started to see that there was the beginnings of a person in there. In the last few weeks, the Koalid has begun to engage. Not in dramatic ways. She still mostly just flails, but now she smiles when she sees someone she recognizes. She makes cooing and adorable gurgling sounds. She makes happy sounds when she gets attention and is clearly experimenting with communication.

You see, I have no experience with children. I have seen them now and then, but I have never watched a child grow up, so when I look at a squalling baby, I just see a squalling baby. Of course, it also did not help that at the same time as I was dealing with said squalling baby, I faced some of the worst financial stress of my life.

But, now, the finances are coming together, the baby is starting to become more of a person, and I'm starting to see a bit of what all the fuss is about.

Words Are Delicious - Changing the Plan

In previous posts, I have alluded to the fact that I was well aware that I was making some presumptions and that I knew I would have to eat some of those words when the rubber hit the road.

I do not understand work. I understand attention.
Pay attention to me. Do it now!

One of the my assertions was that it was a good idea to work from home and take care of the Koalid. This makes sense in an idealized world where a baby needs stuff, then goes back to sleep and a prolonged state of not needing stuff.

This is not how babies are in the real world. First, sometimes they need stuff more often than one might expect. Second, as they age, they discover more stuff that they need. At first, they just need to be fed and changed, but as the Koalid is coming up on three months, she is discovering the desire to be held, looked at, and to otherwise have my attention. Of course, I do not mind giving her my attention, but when that attention comes at the cost of being able to do the work I need to do, she will soon have my attention in a tent in which we live in the woods because we cannot afford to pay rent.

We are also finding that, surprisingly, Amy is more maternal than I. I love the Koalid, but I don't feel the sense of longing when I am away from her that Amy does. I also find that I am highly deficient in the discipline of breast feeding. My man boobs produce no milk. So, a plan that involves me staying home with the Koalid and trying (and mostly failing) to do consulting work while Amy works full time makes less and less sense.

You thought it would be a good idea to watch me and work?
I can't differentiate my hands from my feet, and I can tell
that's a sketchy proposition.

So, we are changing course in our plans to take care of the Koalid. It is not as important to avoid
being wrong as to recognize when one is wrong and to take all immediate steps to correct it. Through a combination of good luck and talent, I have been recruited for a new job which I expect will work out quite well for me. Of course, the Koalid will be in day care, as both Amy and I work, but if all goes well, Amy might be able to go to part time in the future and spend more time with the Koalid.

This all goes into action on Monday, and everyone is quite excited about it.

Praise

A friend of mine shared this link in which Alfie Kohn discusses the idea that verbal praise replaces the satisfaction of task completed for a child. While interesting, it does not ring true for me as a parent. It does, however get me thinking about the concept of praise.

There are a few different ways to praise. One way is to praise only for success. The downside to this is that the child may come to believe that she is only loved when she is successful and that her parent's love is conditional.

In a game in which no one can
win, everyone loses.

Another concept is to praise effort, but that the idea of "good job trying really hard" smacks of "you're not good enough to succeed, but you gave it your best, and that's good," so that doesn't seem like a great strategy either.

Let's go back to what the goal is. There are two goals as I see it here: one goal is that the Koalid will grow up happy. The other is the that the Koalid will grow up to be successful in her chosen field of endeavor.

Knowing that she is loved unconditionally and that we, her parents, will always be here for her as long as we draw breath is very important to being happy. But love and esteem are different concepts. If the Koalid turns out to be a failure at everything she tries and becomes a lazy bum, I will still love her, but I will not respect her. I want her never to doubt my love and support, but I feel that there is nothing wrong with her feeling that she needs to earn my esteem.

Not necessary for love, but would
earn esteem.

This does not mean that I expect her to win a Nobel Prize before she is old enough to drink. I will be proud at every achievement. When she learns to walk, she will earn my esteem. When she learns to multiply, she will earn my esteem. When she scores the winning touchdown before heading home to work on her award winning science fair project in which she reveals the cure for cancer, she will earn my esteem.

There will be times when I may say to her "You know I love you, I will always love you, and I will always be here for you, but you really blew it this time." And this brings me to the strategy I believe I will employ: explicitly telling her often that I love her and will be there for her so long as I can, but also letting her know that while my love is unconditional, my praise is not.

This may seem a bit harsh, but one thing I have seen has a theme in biographies is that many successful people have done so seeking the esteem of a parent, usually a father. I have no intention of being a harsh or distant figure, but I also do not want to lead her to believe that life is so simple that all she has to do is show up.

Life is hard, success takes work, and teaching her anything different is doing a great disservice.

Late Night Koalid

Every night between midnight and 1 AM or so, I get up. Newborns don't sleep more than 3 hours or so, and when they wake up they need to be changed and fed. When I first envisioned this, I assumed this meant getting up, taking care of things, then going back to sleep.

The Koalid being cute and awake,
which she has been doing much
of tonight.

In fact, the Koalid is never done with her ablutions in less than an hour, and two hours is not unreasonable. So, I quickly gave up the idea of trying to feed her and get back to bed. Instead, I now go to bed earlier so that when it is time to take the night shift, I get up, take the Koalid in the other room, put something on Netflix (for a while it was Voyager, but I'm quite enjoying The West Wing lately) and maybe get some work done on the computer. The trick is that Amy goes to work for 9 AM, so if the Koalid gets back to sleep early enough, then she'll wake up before Amy leaves for work and Amy can take care of her. If I miss that window, which I likely will tonight, then she'll wake up too late for Amy to take care of her, and I'll get the three hours that she sleeps before I have to get up.

As I was looking at her adorable, fussy face tonight it got me thinking. Within the next few months, she'll start sleeping through the night, but I'm sure this won't be the last time she needs me at 4 AM. Maybe she'll have a bad dream and I'll have to reassure her that there are no monsters in her closet. Maybe some night we'll be up late discussing the mysteries of life... or maybe just some topic of geeky interest. And, I'm sure there will be late night talks about boys (or girls) and why they are so stupid.

Perhaps she will need me in other ways in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe one day I'll get a call at 4 AM saying she needs me to pick her up. Maybe she's at a party she doesn't want to be at, or her ride is drunk. Then, as now, Dad will be on duty and will rush to the aid of my Koalid, because no matter how big she gets, her father will always be ready to get up in the wee hours to help her... just hopefully less often as time goes on.