Take a Pill!

Continuing with yesterday's theme of thinking a pill can cure all of your ills...

The spousal unit and I were discussing the problem yesterday while driving down the road. I finally went in to my theory of why kids are so b0rked up. ADD and ADHD began being diagnosed in "epidemic" numbers when my kids were in pre-school. Everywhere you turned some mom or dad was shoving Ritalin into their kids' face. Why? For the love of Science, why?

Because this was when it became necessary for mom's to work, instead of deciding to work outside the home. Why? Because we could then buy more, get more. But at what expense? We began warehousing our kids in Day Care Centers where many different others watched them. I say watched because with 30 kids to a caretaker I doubt any interaction went on at all. Everyone from the caretakers to the parents just wanted the kids quiet and compliant. The caretakers because they had too much to do already, the parents because they were tired when they got home from their earning pay all day so they could buy more stuff for fun in their spare time. However, spare time was then spent running errands, grocery shopping, cleaners, and any ball game that Junior happened to play if someone could take him to practice.

Keep shoving a pill into their mouth, keep going. Who cared what effect it was having on the kids?

By the time the kids my boys' age were in college they didn't know how to function without some kind of drug in their system. They honestly did not know how to just feel things as they came, they were totally unprepared for life outside a drug induced haze. This may explain why many kids that age never graduated from college. It also explains why the unemployment rate among their age group is rampant.

Better living through chemistry. Yeah.

There is no substitute for spending time with your child, interacting with your child. There is a very strong correlation between literacy and performance in school and children being read to. However, and let me warn you against being a Helicopter Parent. Blackhawk parents utterly ruin their children. I live in a community of parents like this. At my eldest daughter's senior prom, we happened to drive by the high school where they were to have the prom and where they have a "Red Carpet" as the students go inside. It was three hours prior to the start of the prom and parents were already camped out with lawn chairs and coolers so they could take a picture of their little darlings walking into school... An exercise they practiced at least once a day for 13 years to that point.

When my youngest son had attended his senior prom he decided to wear his Batman Mask with his tux. I got phone calls from outraged parents screaming that my son was ruining their child's prom experience. Mom? Dad? Your child thought it was hilarious and understood it because they had attended school with my son since 7th grade. Build a bridge and get the hell over yourself. This is the reason I am not allowed to pack heat to any school functions. There is a very real chance that I will put a bullet into the head of a person who has never used that part of their body in their life.

It's not the kids, it's the parents.

But that's OK, they just need to take a chill pill.