Something else that strikes me is how so many so-called 'neorodivrgent' children have missed or been rushed through vital developmental milestones like crawling, spinning climbing, (and social skills like taking turns or basic conversation), in a rush to begin academia before it is suitable.
We slap the label 'neorodivergent' on many unrelated cases. It is conceivable that some differences are innate but others are definitely the result of the environment. It frustrates me how little is commonly known about basic child development! And a lot of what we de with is fully preventable through age-appriate games and activities, as well as healthy diets, sleep, play and exercise.
I lived this problem with my son when he entered public middle school. It was an English teacher suggesting that he "may" have some issues that needed to be addressed by his pediatrician. I informed her that it was her boring "lesson plans" and "packets" of common core drivel that were the problem.
Best money we ever spent was putting him into a private, all boys high school. They know HOW to teach boys and they do a very good job of it....even the ones who were considered "behavior problems".
Having millions of kids being diagnosed with ADD/ADHD is a total indictment of the school system, were essentially drugging kids in order for them to be compliant within the system. Everyone involved in this, teachers through doctors, really need to take a step back and examine what it is they're doing to these kids, rather than trying to fit them into a broken system maybe it's time to rethink how we choose to educate children instead of handing out amphetamines like jelly beans. After a series of job losses I chose to start taking adderall at the age of 35 and it did help me but now, after being on it for almost 11 years, I am weaning myself off this garbage, would rather be a daydreaming, jop hopping wage slave than a speed addicted drone in the corporate machine.
I am a senior hospital-based pediatrician with more than 30 years in practice. I wholeheartedly agree with you on 'how we handle every chronic illness: manage the symptoms, ignore the roots, generate a lifelong patient.' We become experts in 'palliative care' :symptoms management with little effort on thinking on how we can address the etiology of a problem or tune up our diagnosis skills to differentiate a healthy child or individual with some different presentation from a real sick person. I have seen over and over the same involuntary mental process in almost all healthcare professionals, all specialties. In defense of physicians, including the psychiatrists this paradigm is ingrained in our DNA since early in Medical Education (a huge shortcoming ! of the Med Ed establishment or a concerted effort with other stakeholders ?). Since early in Med School, we are trained to prescribe, prescribe, prescribe... There is no formal training on waiting for the nature to cure the disease- the art of medicine as per Voltaire-, hold treatment for a few days while observing disease course , understand that 'atypical' - including an slightly abnormal blood test in asymptomatic people- is not the same that 'abnormal'. Then we are immersed in a health system where time to think,observe and wait is a scarce commodity, a system that incentivizes and reward transforming a healthy individual with some atypical or different variables into a long-life patient, leading to more, and more prescriptions. Many stakeholders of the system benefits: the income of the hospital, clinic, even personal income increases, and so does the Pharma industry profits. Then at a grand scale the outcomes are not the best, indeed, more chronic conditions, including mental health illnesses, lower quality of life. This combination of great expenses without noticeable improvement in health outcomes is called LOW-VALUE CARE. This is our healthcare system, the paradigm we live in. I follow you regularly and almost 100 % agree with your thought process and opinions. One simple question: how can we make a difference in our lifetimes, other than writing, exposing our views in conferences against a majority of dissenters and immersed in a failed system? How could we be more consequential and impactful? Glad to hear from you.
I think at an individual level, it is important to avoid psychiatrists at all costs and therapists who encourage psych meds. Also, avoid vaccinating kids, and spend as much time as possible with them in nature, where they can use all their natural energy to do what they were designed to do: explore, discover, learn, and build.
Brilliant. I see this too. Also parents so under water in our capitalist machine that they don’t have the bandwidth to figure out a way to manage, modify the lifestyle of or be with those kids. And I see teens struggling to stay the course through inhumane exam schedules that don’t accomodate every brain - and those teens self diagnose and find adhd medication in or out of the system in order to get through. A shit show all around. Great article, thanks 🙏🏻
How you managed to throw Capitalism in there tells me your are a good little Marxist. They created this system to intentionally bring these situations. Might want to read up on Bill Ayers.
This absolutely reflects my experience, working with young people in a large secondary school and in private practice. The example of the three boys is something I have seen over and over again. One boy, who sticks in my mind, had a very lively mind and was always wondering about the world, the universe, is there a God – the kind of questions human beings have always asked – but in geography classes focussed on immigration policy, this was regarded as aberrant somehow... and yes, he was 'diagnosed' (with both ADHD and autism). But we just don't care – too many professionals lack the capacity, curiosity and courage to address what is really going on.
As a very perceptive young man once said: "Two thousand years ago, they would have been designing and painstakingly creating the mosaics in Pompeii. Now we call them autistic".
We artificially divide the world into the 'neuro typical' and the 'neuro divergent', forgetting that we are all individuals, with different gifts and talents, and different ways of seeing the world and interacting with it – and that is why we have been so successful as a species. We also conveniently forget the impact of environment and relationships on children. And finally, we were not designed, as children or adolescents, to sit still in rows under artificial light for hour after hour, completing work sheets or clicking on multiple choice questions about the latest progressive hot topic. We were created to live, fully, freely and with curiosity, and develop the many diverse talents we all have – to the benefit of us all.
Maybe the great flaw in psychiatry is the failure to distinguish between brain and mind. Do you take your TV for repair when you don’t like the plot of the movie you’re watching?
I was going to say the same thing, but many allopathic doctors do want their patients to believe that they are irreversible. Ironically, as a non-allopathic health professional I could technically cure these people but I’m not allowed to use that word as a non-MD. Upside down world we live in.
Let’s just run a hypothetical, knowing full-well you are not a doctor. How would you advise doctors to treat HBP? This a serious question that some MDs reading here might benefit from seeing answered.
..."All three boys get the same diagnosis. None of them get what they actually need."...that scenario applies to all of the medical mafia and its silly attempts to provide cures. They provide what they have been indoctrinated to provide...deadly and poisonous toxins called vaccines and drugs. That is your cure. That is their lie.
We tried ADHD meds for my son when he was in early middle school. He stopped taking it after a year or so. I was so proud of him recently when we were talking about his experience as a sophmore in high school, where he's not well-matched for the pace and expectations and he said "I don't want to take the meds, I don't like the way they make me feel. I can't feel myself when I'm on them." I love that he was focused on his experience with the medication instead of on how he could meet these arbitrary unhelpful standard of the educational environment.
Neither children nor adults are comfortable sitting for hours in artificial lighting in sterile, industrial-style buildings. Totally unnatural. The modern world works against our biology; the conditioning begins early, so transitioning into the horrible workforce doesn't cause waves. Exuberance is quelled in kids with psych meds. Adults have additional suppressants such as alcohol, street drugs, affairs, sugar, religiosity, cults, etc. Stopping is only the beginning to reverse out.
I am that animal. I had a very bad experience in academic’s, troubled teen. Doctors at that time a lot anyway didn’t regard ADD as real. Prescription was beat him more! I was slapped in the face, thrown against walls, pulled from my desk by my longish hair. Strapped repeatedly because ai was a rebellious interruption and a hazard to others education! I was belittled and insulted even called by one teacher a Neanderthal and a threat to other students even though I had never hurt anyone, even teachers after they had slapped me across the face. I asked to be placed in special ed. You were in school 3 days and working in a trade for two. They laughed at me. “You were four yrs ahead in some subjects when tested such as science and literature ,comprehension.You just need to buckle down! Make yourself interested! Behave in class! I was kicked out of school at 15 yrs old out of home at 16. Did nothing good for my self esteem for sure. Was involved with drugs as well at least smoking pot, which isn’t good at all for anyone especially a troubled psyche like I was. I went to work and actually stopped smoking pot. I did return to upgrading a few yrs later. They actually tested me for I.Q., I think to help bolster my confidence. I scored 140s. Wrote an equivalence test and placed in the top 1 percentile of those tested. Why was I such an utter failure in the regular school system? I’ve held honours in every trade I’ve ever studied. Yet my emotional controls, my fears of rejections or failures, my interactions with others, weird sense of humour and pronounced empathy
have been a challenge all my life. Yet I’ve mostly been well liked and or praised that actually bothers me the most I can’t accept it! I’ve never had a diagnosis of ADHD clinically. My MD Didnt really believe in it. But when I take a stupid online test if you score three or more! Yeeeah it’s a ten out of ten. I’ve accomplished a lot in reality fairly stable relationship. Kids are all very successful. But I look back all I see is failures. Why?
Failure is only a construct relative to arbitrary societal values. We do fail spiritually when we identify with the word. Break identification with the success/failure labels, and you are free of their emotional hold. Practice, practice, practice. The real you is eternal and priceless. Look at babies; one does not have more value than another. Value never changes an iota since birth, but we are wired to copy to learn early, and what we learn for the most part are lies.
I appreciate the nuanced analysis you have brought to "ADHD" here.
Though I believe that some of these cases (probably most) are a result of vaccine injury nowadays. That would not have been the case when you or I were growing up.
When I was in my 20’s I was teaching art at a community centre during the summers. It was heartbreaking to see a little girl who had been diagnosed with ADHD be medicated into becoming languid and compliant. Her mother was influenced by staff & clinicians to medicate her child. I don’t think “integration” is a model that works well for children who learn differently (neither dose my twin sister, herself a primary teacher) I was myself almost flunked by my grade 3 French immersion teacher. But my parents fought for me & had me tested. I was diagnosed with Dyslexia. We worked hard to treat it (no medication) and I made progress. Also, I was placed with other children a few times a week in a special “Listening Program” ~ lots of classical music & sensory activities. I was teased, but I benefited from the program & my parent’s support. Unfortunately, this teacher flunked 2 other girls. If I had been held back it would have been devastating, especially because I have a twin sister (fraternal, but still).
I’m curious to know your thoughts on other learning disabilities and later mental health diagnoses, and creativity. Thank you from Montreal Canada❤️🇺🇸🇨🇦❤️I hope that voices like yours and your guests (that you interview) start a real movement of change in the west to make reforms in mental health care that actually provides true healing rooted in genuine caring, truth, united responsibility and dignity. Thank you for your leadership and innovative movement towards meaningful change.
Excellent piece.
Something else that strikes me is how so many so-called 'neorodivrgent' children have missed or been rushed through vital developmental milestones like crawling, spinning climbing, (and social skills like taking turns or basic conversation), in a rush to begin academia before it is suitable.
We slap the label 'neorodivergent' on many unrelated cases. It is conceivable that some differences are innate but others are definitely the result of the environment. It frustrates me how little is commonly known about basic child development! And a lot of what we de with is fully preventable through age-appriate games and activities, as well as healthy diets, sleep, play and exercise.
I lived this problem with my son when he entered public middle school. It was an English teacher suggesting that he "may" have some issues that needed to be addressed by his pediatrician. I informed her that it was her boring "lesson plans" and "packets" of common core drivel that were the problem.
Best money we ever spent was putting him into a private, all boys high school. They know HOW to teach boys and they do a very good job of it....even the ones who were considered "behavior problems".
Having millions of kids being diagnosed with ADD/ADHD is a total indictment of the school system, were essentially drugging kids in order for them to be compliant within the system. Everyone involved in this, teachers through doctors, really need to take a step back and examine what it is they're doing to these kids, rather than trying to fit them into a broken system maybe it's time to rethink how we choose to educate children instead of handing out amphetamines like jelly beans. After a series of job losses I chose to start taking adderall at the age of 35 and it did help me but now, after being on it for almost 11 years, I am weaning myself off this garbage, would rather be a daydreaming, jop hopping wage slave than a speed addicted drone in the corporate machine.
I am a senior hospital-based pediatrician with more than 30 years in practice. I wholeheartedly agree with you on 'how we handle every chronic illness: manage the symptoms, ignore the roots, generate a lifelong patient.' We become experts in 'palliative care' :symptoms management with little effort on thinking on how we can address the etiology of a problem or tune up our diagnosis skills to differentiate a healthy child or individual with some different presentation from a real sick person. I have seen over and over the same involuntary mental process in almost all healthcare professionals, all specialties. In defense of physicians, including the psychiatrists this paradigm is ingrained in our DNA since early in Medical Education (a huge shortcoming ! of the Med Ed establishment or a concerted effort with other stakeholders ?). Since early in Med School, we are trained to prescribe, prescribe, prescribe... There is no formal training on waiting for the nature to cure the disease- the art of medicine as per Voltaire-, hold treatment for a few days while observing disease course , understand that 'atypical' - including an slightly abnormal blood test in asymptomatic people- is not the same that 'abnormal'. Then we are immersed in a health system where time to think,observe and wait is a scarce commodity, a system that incentivizes and reward transforming a healthy individual with some atypical or different variables into a long-life patient, leading to more, and more prescriptions. Many stakeholders of the system benefits: the income of the hospital, clinic, even personal income increases, and so does the Pharma industry profits. Then at a grand scale the outcomes are not the best, indeed, more chronic conditions, including mental health illnesses, lower quality of life. This combination of great expenses without noticeable improvement in health outcomes is called LOW-VALUE CARE. This is our healthcare system, the paradigm we live in. I follow you regularly and almost 100 % agree with your thought process and opinions. One simple question: how can we make a difference in our lifetimes, other than writing, exposing our views in conferences against a majority of dissenters and immersed in a failed system? How could we be more consequential and impactful? Glad to hear from you.
Well said. We must change the collective consciousness by waking up the masses
I think at an individual level, it is important to avoid psychiatrists at all costs and therapists who encourage psych meds. Also, avoid vaccinating kids, and spend as much time as possible with them in nature, where they can use all their natural energy to do what they were designed to do: explore, discover, learn, and build.
Brilliant. I see this too. Also parents so under water in our capitalist machine that they don’t have the bandwidth to figure out a way to manage, modify the lifestyle of or be with those kids. And I see teens struggling to stay the course through inhumane exam schedules that don’t accomodate every brain - and those teens self diagnose and find adhd medication in or out of the system in order to get through. A shit show all around. Great article, thanks 🙏🏻
How you managed to throw Capitalism in there tells me your are a good little Marxist. They created this system to intentionally bring these situations. Might want to read up on Bill Ayers.
This absolutely reflects my experience, working with young people in a large secondary school and in private practice. The example of the three boys is something I have seen over and over again. One boy, who sticks in my mind, had a very lively mind and was always wondering about the world, the universe, is there a God – the kind of questions human beings have always asked – but in geography classes focussed on immigration policy, this was regarded as aberrant somehow... and yes, he was 'diagnosed' (with both ADHD and autism). But we just don't care – too many professionals lack the capacity, curiosity and courage to address what is really going on.
As a very perceptive young man once said: "Two thousand years ago, they would have been designing and painstakingly creating the mosaics in Pompeii. Now we call them autistic".
We artificially divide the world into the 'neuro typical' and the 'neuro divergent', forgetting that we are all individuals, with different gifts and talents, and different ways of seeing the world and interacting with it – and that is why we have been so successful as a species. We also conveniently forget the impact of environment and relationships on children. And finally, we were not designed, as children or adolescents, to sit still in rows under artificial light for hour after hour, completing work sheets or clicking on multiple choice questions about the latest progressive hot topic. We were created to live, fully, freely and with curiosity, and develop the many diverse talents we all have – to the benefit of us all.
Maybe the great flaw in psychiatry is the failure to distinguish between brain and mind. Do you take your TV for repair when you don’t like the plot of the movie you’re watching?
Great analogy.
Please mention that both type 2 diabetes & high blood pressure are indeed reversible. These are both dealt with by improving diet & exercise.
I was going to say the same thing, but many allopathic doctors do want their patients to believe that they are irreversible. Ironically, as a non-allopathic health professional I could technically cure these people but I’m not allowed to use that word as a non-MD. Upside down world we live in.
Let’s just run a hypothetical, knowing full-well you are not a doctor. How would you advise doctors to treat HBP? This a serious question that some MDs reading here might benefit from seeing answered.
..."All three boys get the same diagnosis. None of them get what they actually need."...that scenario applies to all of the medical mafia and its silly attempts to provide cures. They provide what they have been indoctrinated to provide...deadly and poisonous toxins called vaccines and drugs. That is your cure. That is their lie.
We tried ADHD meds for my son when he was in early middle school. He stopped taking it after a year or so. I was so proud of him recently when we were talking about his experience as a sophmore in high school, where he's not well-matched for the pace and expectations and he said "I don't want to take the meds, I don't like the way they make me feel. I can't feel myself when I'm on them." I love that he was focused on his experience with the medication instead of on how he could meet these arbitrary unhelpful standard of the educational environment.
Neither children nor adults are comfortable sitting for hours in artificial lighting in sterile, industrial-style buildings. Totally unnatural. The modern world works against our biology; the conditioning begins early, so transitioning into the horrible workforce doesn't cause waves. Exuberance is quelled in kids with psych meds. Adults have additional suppressants such as alcohol, street drugs, affairs, sugar, religiosity, cults, etc. Stopping is only the beginning to reverse out.
I am that animal. I had a very bad experience in academic’s, troubled teen. Doctors at that time a lot anyway didn’t regard ADD as real. Prescription was beat him more! I was slapped in the face, thrown against walls, pulled from my desk by my longish hair. Strapped repeatedly because ai was a rebellious interruption and a hazard to others education! I was belittled and insulted even called by one teacher a Neanderthal and a threat to other students even though I had never hurt anyone, even teachers after they had slapped me across the face. I asked to be placed in special ed. You were in school 3 days and working in a trade for two. They laughed at me. “You were four yrs ahead in some subjects when tested such as science and literature ,comprehension.You just need to buckle down! Make yourself interested! Behave in class! I was kicked out of school at 15 yrs old out of home at 16. Did nothing good for my self esteem for sure. Was involved with drugs as well at least smoking pot, which isn’t good at all for anyone especially a troubled psyche like I was. I went to work and actually stopped smoking pot. I did return to upgrading a few yrs later. They actually tested me for I.Q., I think to help bolster my confidence. I scored 140s. Wrote an equivalence test and placed in the top 1 percentile of those tested. Why was I such an utter failure in the regular school system? I’ve held honours in every trade I’ve ever studied. Yet my emotional controls, my fears of rejections or failures, my interactions with others, weird sense of humour and pronounced empathy
have been a challenge all my life. Yet I’ve mostly been well liked and or praised that actually bothers me the most I can’t accept it! I’ve never had a diagnosis of ADHD clinically. My MD Didnt really believe in it. But when I take a stupid online test if you score three or more! Yeeeah it’s a ten out of ten. I’ve accomplished a lot in reality fairly stable relationship. Kids are all very successful. But I look back all I see is failures. Why?
Failure is only a construct relative to arbitrary societal values. We do fail spiritually when we identify with the word. Break identification with the success/failure labels, and you are free of their emotional hold. Practice, practice, practice. The real you is eternal and priceless. Look at babies; one does not have more value than another. Value never changes an iota since birth, but we are wired to copy to learn early, and what we learn for the most part are lies.
Brilliant. I’ve been saying this, just not this well. I’ve watched behavioral interventions work when medicine didn’t.
I appreciate the nuanced analysis you have brought to "ADHD" here.
Though I believe that some of these cases (probably most) are a result of vaccine injury nowadays. That would not have been the case when you or I were growing up.
https://substack.com/@sanityunleashed/note/c-222279443?r=lcwte&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
When I was in my 20’s I was teaching art at a community centre during the summers. It was heartbreaking to see a little girl who had been diagnosed with ADHD be medicated into becoming languid and compliant. Her mother was influenced by staff & clinicians to medicate her child. I don’t think “integration” is a model that works well for children who learn differently (neither dose my twin sister, herself a primary teacher) I was myself almost flunked by my grade 3 French immersion teacher. But my parents fought for me & had me tested. I was diagnosed with Dyslexia. We worked hard to treat it (no medication) and I made progress. Also, I was placed with other children a few times a week in a special “Listening Program” ~ lots of classical music & sensory activities. I was teased, but I benefited from the program & my parent’s support. Unfortunately, this teacher flunked 2 other girls. If I had been held back it would have been devastating, especially because I have a twin sister (fraternal, but still).
I’m curious to know your thoughts on other learning disabilities and later mental health diagnoses, and creativity. Thank you from Montreal Canada❤️🇺🇸🇨🇦❤️I hope that voices like yours and your guests (that you interview) start a real movement of change in the west to make reforms in mental health care that actually provides true healing rooted in genuine caring, truth, united responsibility and dignity. Thank you for your leadership and innovative movement towards meaningful change.