Let Children Act Like Children

Photo by Kathy Sanchez

How many children do you know or at least know of who’re on some type of medication to calm them down, suppress their childish impulses, and help them focus and pay attention? Okay, so how many children do you know or at least know of who aren’t on some form of medication to calm them down, etc.?  Chances are, based upon what I’ve heard from parents, read in the paper and magazines, heard on the news, and witnessed firsthand when I was teaching high school, the number you provided in response to the first question exceeds the number you provided in response to the second question. Am I right?

What I wonder, and have been wondering for some time now, is when medicating children with mood-altering drugs became so prevalent in this country. It is, you know, a fairly new phenomenon. And before you accuse me of being heartless, ignorant, and/or totally uninformed, let me establish that, first, I am not trying to make light of children who actually suffer from mood disorders and in whose case pharmaceutical intervention is warranted. I am questioning, though, why doctors so frequently prescribe potent mood-altering drugs to prevent children from acting like children have been acting since the beginning of time.    

Back in the 50’s and 60’s when my siblings and I were growing up back in rural Georgia, children, the three of us included, had the attention span of gnats. Heck, Vicki, Bud, and I couldn’t sit still for more than, oh, maybe fifteen minutes at best. We daydreamed. We fidgeted. We squirmed in our seats at school, in church, or pretty much anyplace where we were expected to remain stationary for any length of time. We were disorganized and usually downright messy. We only half listened to our parents or any other adult—when and if we listened at all. We lost our toys, books, galoshes, lunchboxes, jackets, and other belongings. We were easily distracted. We were sometimes rowdy, noisy, and impatient. We were sometimes disheveled. We got dirty. We ran, we jumped, we screamed, and we argued and fought. In other words, we were pretty obnoxious at times. We were also trials and tribulations to our parents, who often became exasperated to the extent they threatened to disown us or give us away to the first band of gypsies that happened to pass through town. 

But did Mama and Daddy ever once rush us off to see the town’s only doctor? Did they stand in his office, wring their hands, and moan, “Oh, please, you’ve just got to do something about Vicki, Bud, and Carol. Please calm them down. They can’t sit still. They have the attention spans of gnats. We simply can’t take it anymore. They’re driving us nutty. They’re hard to control. They don’t act normal. “(Of course, admittedly, my siblings and I were a bit strange, but that’s another story.)

The answer, of course, is no. What our parents did was accept that my siblings and I were just acting like children. Of course, Mama and Daddy also let us know when we went too far” “All right, you young’uns,” they’d say, “if you don’t start behaving, you’re not gonna be able to sit down for a month.” And, then, our parents would follow through.

But, alas, the times have changed, and many parents today don’t discipline their children, nor do they want the mess and hassle of raising children. What they want is for their children to be docile, quiet, obedient, and undisruptive. In other words, they want miniature adults, not children.