On ADHD
This is an article that tries to explain the reasoning behind the increased diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. The author believes it can be explained by the increased usage of the internet. This may be so, but I have a different point of view:
I teach karate to kids every week. It’s easy to observe when they are and are not paying attention. When we are doing something that they enjoy, they give all their focus and energy to the lesson, and they do a great job. When I’m leading them in something not as fun, something they don’t wan’t to do, they tend to not give forth their best effort because, quite simply; they don’t even want to be doing it. Similarly, when one of them begins talking to me about something that interests them; a TV show, an interaction with a friend of theirs, I can’t relate.
Their interests are captivated by things that I couldn’t relate to. I would not be able to sit through an episode of a children’s show, but nobody points a finger at me saying I have a “disorder”. We force all children to a school, often a very stressful and horrible environment from their perspective, and expect them to focus on readings and mathematic concepts that they just don’t care about, and when they can’t focus on these lessons, we wonder why. Our solution is to tell the kids that theres something wrong with them and give them pills to take.
Every person is different. That means not everybody has the same interests, and we all know that it’s much easier to focus on something when you’re passionate about it. As for the diagnosis of ADHD, medicine is a business. We could read off the list of symptoms for ADHD and say most of the kids in the world have it. When a child is diagnosed, the parents are given a prescription and that seems like an easy fix. Everybody is satisfied. The parents feel they have a solution, the doctor thanks them for the business, and the kid thinks somethings wrong with them, but doesn’t really care. Heres my diagnosis; All kids are indeed kids, and kids will be kids. Treatment: Let them be kids.
I found your post interesting, and I feel like I can relate to it because my sister was diagnosed with ADHD when she was in elementary school. When we took her off her medicine, she changed completely. She started being herself again and eating better.
ReplyDeleteOverall, it was well-written and easy to understand. If there was anything that I think you could make better would be that where you are using semicolons, I think those should be colons, to signify that you are making a list of something.
I like the argument that you came up with and overall I think you did a really good job. I like how you established credibility by saying that you work with and teach kids everyday. I guess the only thing I would say that could be added is to consider a counter argument and explain why that is not exactly correct.
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