Pretty much.
There are a minute few children who may need to be medicated for an actual mental illness. But the greater majority.. It seems that nowdays if a child behaves badly, then there is something wrong with that child. I don't know if it stems from today's society where we expect perfection at all times in that children must never ever missbehave so as to not inconvenience us due to a lack of time.. It doesn't make sense.
A parallel I have often drawn is to the rather huge medication of the late 50s earlly 60s white middle class housewife - both self-medication and psychiatric medication. Of course these women with all their devices lack of material want and nice aprons should be happy, so if they are not, then they are pathological to some degree. That there might be cultural factors or potential problems with the American dream - and who was really dreaming it - was so inconceivable, drugs were dolled out in large amounts.
That children today, especially given the incredible bombardment of stimulation they and their parents underdo, might quite healthily be agitated sitting still, facing forward, on the receiving end of outmoded, let's make them passive pedagogical techniques also seems not to be considered possible. So if they don't just love this mode of existence, they also suffer from some kind of disorder.
Adults should take notice of the fact that these a good number of these housewives hauled themselves out of the barbituate daze and became feminists, many on the very, very bristly end of the spectrum - not that I judge them for that.
Hopefully the children we drug now will also be able to haul themselves out and realize they are not the problem and further can deal with this realization in a mainly non-violent manner.
I've known of some parents who request for medication because their children are too rowdy and run off in shopping malls. They are children. That is what they do.
See that's the great thing about medication. It may well be the equivalent of a beating, but the bearing is invisible. It certainly is the equivalent of a leash, and most of these medicating parents would be embarrassed to leash their children.
What was surprising is that in one of the links I gave above, there is a video discussing these bootcamps or these tough love camps. One specialist was quite adamant that parents should not be denied access to these camps, but thought that what was needed was regulation so that children did not die.
This has become an industry and one that has even had parents sending their children off to these camps for and having it as reality TV shows. So not only are the children being humiliated in the camps, but also humiliated on national TV.
A humiliation that is permanently available. Talk about lack of consent.
This, coupled with drugging them.. One has to wonder how much more we can stuff up the next generation.
First we overstimulate them - each with their own computer, cellphone, ipod, TV, etc. They we overstimulate ourselves with the same, so the whole of life is bristling constantly with information and minievents and no silence is tolerated.
They we drug them because they are not as calm and obedient as we would like.
And yet we demonize drug pushers,
basically I suppose because they don't have the proper permits and liscences.
