ADD and ADHD are bullshit

[spoonitnow]

ADD and ADHD are bullshit.

Thoughts?

[jyms]

Stop eating so much fucking sugar and starch and watch things change.

[Fnord]

ADD and ADHD are bullshit.

Getting diagnosed was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Fuck you.

[Renton]

It's probably a real problem but one which gets over-diagnosed. Any disease that facilitates the easy acquisition of desirable drugs is going to be prey to this, whether it be ADHD with stimulants like Adderall or fibromyalgia for pain-killers. And it works from both sides, patients anxious to get their hands on the drugs and the healthcare industry anxious to peddle more product.

[Chelle]

It's probably a real problem but one which gets over-diagnosed, as with many ailments.

This. Plus, a lot of the time looking at someone's diet and changing it can make a big difference. A woman I know that deals with children that are diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, she first started asking parents about what their child's diet consisted of - and she said quite a few times the parent would just be like, "We've already fixed the diet, we just want a pill to fix it." - honestly that's the problem. So many things are quickly given a pill to 'fix' - which in my opinion is never going to truly help the way a person needs it.

[jyms]

And teachers and parents quick to diagnose a child that they have a hard time keeping the attention of.

[Chelle]

And teachers and parents quick to diagnose a child that they have a hard time keeping the attention of.

This, too.

[surviva316]

What sort of temperaments/chemical imbalances/moral misalignments/etc do or should qualify as a pathology of the mind is WAY THE FUCK out of my scope to argue. qualifies as a pathology

Whether there are some people who have a tougher time paying attention than others seems quite like duh motherfucking obvious.

Whether the best "solution" for those people is to pump all of them with enough psychostimulants so that they can do the things that society would prefer they did is ... well obviously also outside of my scope to argue, but I don't think it should be expected of everyone. (I put solution in quotes because attention deficit isn't unilaterally negative).

[jyms]

But I will say, I have heard at least a hundred, maybe more people tell me that they, or one of their children have one of these afflictions but have never been diagnosed. I can guarantee none of them have it. If your child can sit through a two hour movie that they are interested in and not make a peep, they don't have ADD. Sitting on a couch for 4 hours a night watching reality TV and saying you can't read a small book to improve your health because you have it is pretty slim pickings.

[surviva316]

A child with ADHD could very easily sit through a 2-hour movie of interest without making a peep. If they have issues with hyperactivity/impulsivity, obviously just the mere act of sitting still for anything is a struggle, but watching an interesting movie isn't at all a problem for someone with the inattentiveness brand of ADHD.

[BennyLaRue]

I couldn't make it through this whole thread. What does it mean?!?

[Chelle]

The thing is, I'm diagnosed as having ADHD, and yes, I sometimes have difficulty staying focused on one thing without going off doing or looking at something else. Usually mine is worse when I'm more anxious, and the way I deal with all of that is just sitting and taking a few deep breaths to really center and ground myself - then I'm good.

Medication is how some people have to deal with their things, but personally I prefer working things out from within VS a pill. Pills made me numbed down and didn't deal with the issues.

[spoonitnow]

Reversal: Neurobiological Origin of Attention Deficit Disorder Discovered

From http://www.iflscience.com/brain/neur...der-discovered

However, the way that ADD is understood and treated could be about to change considerably. A large collaborative study led by Michael Reber of the University of Strasbourg has confirmed the biological origin of the disorder. The results were published in an open-access format in the journal Brain Structure & Function.

The superior colliculus is found in the midbrain and has many sensory- and motor-related functions. The researchers introduced a population of mice to a genetic mutation which doubled the connections between the retina and superior colliculus, creating visual hyperstimulation. Those with the mutation also had a superior colliculus with a buildup of the neurotransmitter noradrenaline, which is “fight or flight” molecule that increases heart rate and prepares the body to react to a stimulus.

Thoughts?

[!Luck]

maybe we weren't meant to sit in a fucking desk typing mindless on a hunk of plastic

[MadMojoMonkey]

Maybe meaning is not a property of the universe, but a symptom (conceit?) of consciousness.
Maybe what we're "meant" to do is not set in stone.

***
I am not a mouse. I don't see how visual hyperstimulation in mice is analogous to ADD/ADHD in humans.

***
Psychology and Psychiatry are so nearly solid science, but they're leagues away at the same time. It's hard to get good data when the person under scrutiny can lie (or unintentionally misrepresent) their mental state. It's hard to draw good conclusions when there is so much variance in the human population and circumstance to life.

To the degree that a human is a chemical machine, it makes perfect sense to solve chemical problems with chemicals. There is certainly a lot of information to be gleaned by taking this view of health and wellness. However, we all know that the chemical machine is (in a sense) only the vehicle of our personality... and if you'll pardon the metaphor... fixing the car doesn't make a good driver.

[spoonitnow]

So what MadMojoMonkey is trying to say, if he spoke coherent English, is that ADD and ADHD are bullshit.

I mean it really is just a big crock of shit for big pharma to pump people full of pills so that they can pad their pockets even more and turn everyone into mindless fucking drones.

Right? Right?

[surviva316]

To the degree that a human is a chemical machine, it makes perfect sense to solve chemical problems with chemicals.

For me, it's not so much about whether drugs can "solve" our "problems" so much as it is our conception of "solve" and "problem" when it comes to ADHD. The medical sciences have quite a straightforward conception of pathologies and cures; pathologies are things that kill you; cures are things that get rid of the things that kill you. However, getting a good score on your SATs isn't quite the same as forcing cancer into remission.

Let's say we lived in a world where being a conceited, frivolous asshole was more detrimental to your standing in society than being able to sit still for hour-long increments. Would having a Type A personality suddenly be a psychological disorder? If so, do we "solve" that "problem" by adjusting their chemical balances so that now they're all happy-go-lucky space cadets? Congrats, now we live in a world where no one passes med school.

I'm having a bit of fun with it, but the point is that it's better to come at it from the perspective that the multitudinous permutations of temperaments/personalities/ethical orientations/etc make it so that we all have our abilities and disabilities; surpluses and deficiencies. These deficiencies make it difficult for us to deal with one aspect or another of living in human society. It would be at least as beneficial to have a regular checkup with a mental health professional discuss the things that you have difficulty coping with as it would to have a regular checkup to make sure your teeth still look good.

From there, the solution isn't to eradicate all of our quirks until we've reached some sort of acceptable norm, but to gain an understanding of yourself and learn some ways to harness your strengths and cope with your weaknesses.

That's a lot of generalized, oversimplified, happy-go-lucky language I just used, but I think that's a good perspective to start with, and then you adjust from there. This also isn't meant to create some sort of false equivalencies between everyone's various mental health issues and to belittle the problems of those who have severe difficulties getting along in society. I just strongly disagree that there are bonkers people with bonkers people problems and there are sane people who, sure, they have their issues but they're "normal people's" issues.

[MadMojoMonkey]

I mean... make sure you get your vitamins (not from pills if possible)... and don't forget to breath...
Some chemicals seriously solve major problems (like hypoxia).

When it comes to ADD/ADHD... idk... I tend to think it's a crock of shit. I'm not a trained professional, though... and I only know of anecdotal evidence, so ... talking out my monkey ass a bit... OK... a lot.

***
I know I find it terribly hard to concentrate sometimes when people are talking to me - people I love, who are talking about things that are important to us - and I frequently find my mind trailing off and I have to ask them to repeat themselves. I seriously wish this did not happen and I could focus on them the way I can focus on a logical puzzle or engineering problem. I feel quite guilty about this on a daily basis.

So idk if that's ADD or not, but it's there, and it causes me grief... if it were amplified a bit more, it could be overwhelming to the point where I couldn't communicate with anyone effectively face-to-face.

And that's what we're talking about: it's all matters of degrees. At what degree is a quirk a psychosis? Who's to decide how traumatized you are by yourself?

***
I just want some Spice. "It is by will alone I set my mind in motion." I know it's from the 70's movie, and not the words of Herbert, but I think he might have been a tad jealous over that line.

[MadMojoMonkey]

oh yeah:
multitudinous permutations

[Savy]

And that's what we're talking about: it's all matters of degrees. At what degree is a quirk a psychosis? Who's to decide how traumatized you are by yourself?

^

It's quite annoying and disrespectful when you have people who are so quick to diagnose themselves with what can be life ruining diseases like OCD because they like to put stuff in a "right" place.

"omg I'm having a panic attack", no you're just dealing with some low level anxiety that is completely normal.

[d0zer]

As lazy as spoon's trolling is, goddamn does it produce RESULTS

[BennyLaRue]

I am not a mouse.

Just in the pants area.

[spoonitnow]

As lazy as spoon's trolling is, goddamn does it produce RESULTS

"To give a person one's opinion and correct his faults is an important thing. It is compassionate and comes first in matters of service. But the way of doing this is extremely difficult." --Hagakure, Yamamoto Tsunetomo

TRANSLATION: YOU'RE WELCOME

[MadMojoMonkey]

God damn, that's a good quote.

Epic quote.

I need to change my monkey pants over that quote.

Benny sent me mousey undies in the mail... I don't know what to do with them. Except that now I want to meet someone with the cahones to name their pet "My Enormous".

[spoonitnow]

As lazy as spoon's trolling is, goddamn does it produce RESULTS

I actually made this thread to illustrate the difference:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...pe-197412.html

That thread is, however, very closely based on a true story. The time it happened is the only significant detail that's been changed.

Spoiler: The chick that I got eventually turned on her fat friend. To be fair, the fat friend wasn't bad looking.

[d0zer]

I believe that if a female accuses a man of rape, that we as a society should take her word at face value and lock him up, just in case. Men are dangerous beasts unable to control their carnal urges

[spoonitnow]

Here's a great example of this kind of thing.

http://stfurapeculture.tumblr.com/po...hen-i-rape-you

These people think they have found a picture and personal information of the person in question, but it could very easily not actually be that person. In that case, they have really fucked over someone who has done nothing wrong.

[surviva316]

As lazy as spoon's trolling is, goddamn does it produce RESULTS

I've long-since realized that spoon's OPs aren't to be taken at face value. That said, spoon's method is basically to take a controversial topic, say something that's maybe a bit extreme or blunt but still very representative of what a lot of people think on that topic, and then we all jump in and discuss that. Whether spoon does or doesn't himself believe those things is kind of irrelevant because it's not really like any of us take it personally anyway.

In other words, they're like discussion cues. Spoon could just as well speak out-and-out hypothetically, admitting that he's playing in-character, and it really wouldn't change anything.

If the Commune were more active and the community were less monochromatic, this sort of thing might happen more naturally, but as it stands, spoon's provocations are about all we have to work with.

[surviva316]

oh yeah:
multitudinous permutations

Agreed that's a disaster. Couldn't come up with anything better than multitudinous on the spot. Thesaurus has 3-5 good alternatives. Seemed pretentious to break it out for a forum post, but not nearly as pretentious as that wording.

[d0zer]

And that's what we're talking about: it's all matters of degrees. At what degree is a quirk a psychosis?

Yes we all have hints of various psychopathologies, but until it reaches a point where it's negatively affecting our ability to function on a day to day basis, it's typically not considered a pathology.

Who's to decide how traumatized you are by yourself?

Trained professionals are. No they're not perfect, human error exists, and psychology is still in its infancy compared to many well-established academic disciplines, and that probably results in more human error.

[surviva316]

Trained professionals are. No they're not perfect, human error exists, and psychology is still in its infancy compared to many well-established academic disciplines, and that probably results in more human error.

It's not just human error or the infancy of psychology at play. Pathology in psychology is necessarily, by definition subjective (or at least when it comes to "Deviances" and "Dysfunctions"). Again, medical sciences generally work on curing things that kill you or accelerate your death, which is a pretty damned objective benchmark to work against. Even when the goal is subjective (like improving quality of life), the subject is the patient and pretty much the patient only.

Oh, you value the ability to play tennis? Well then being unable to swing your arm laterally with low resistance several times in a couple hours' span is an ill. Let's cure that tennis elbow.

Something like Asperger's is more complicated. The ill the patient might want cured is for people to not give such a disproportionate shit when they don't perfectly apply meaningless phrases like, "Hi," or "Thank you," or "I'm going to go use the loo now." So psychopathology is (very often) contingent--not just on want the patient wants, which is relatively easy, but on the entire ecosystem of every given patient's life.

Again, this isn't meant to belittle certain psychological orders, and a great many of them would be disastrous in just about any society, human or otherwise (being prone to hallucination or catatonia or depression or panic attacks are pretty close to ills unto themselves).

Anyway, this relates back to ADHD very easily. We live in a culture where the motto is "80% of life is just showing up." This context alone makes it pretty clear why ADHD is so wildly overdiagnosed (putting the demand on psychostimulants aside). Being inconsistent, untimely, mistake-prone, disruptive, inattentive to detail and instruction is the quickest way to fail in our society, so anyone who struggles with any of these in the slightest is given disproportionate incentive to "cure" those "ailments." If we lived in a society where the motto was "80% of life is thinking divergently/being interesting/smart/funny/talented/etc," then mediocrity would probably be the most overdiagnosed psychological condition.*

There are, for sure, people who struggle so much with stringing consecutive thoughts together without interruption, and people who are so prone to impulsive decisions that put themselves at risk that it would be debilitating in just about any context, but I don't think these 1-2%** of people are the ones under the microscope. It's the 5-10%** who have a pedestrian deficiency, but the problem area itself magnifies the problem to point that we have an interesting debate.

This isn't sour grapes or anything. We live in a certain kind of society that values certain types of things, so whatever, that's fine. Welcome to the real world, Jeremy. I only mean to point out that psychopathologies (or all of the most debatable ones, at least) involve contingencies that the other pathology fields don't. It's probably the only one, for example, where the phrase "contemporary studies" has any important meaning whatsoever. All that we know about about gender dysphoria, for example, might be wastebin material in a hundred years; not because it's wrong, but simply because it's no longer relevant.

*Wild speculation

**Guesstimation

[spoonitnow]

Adderall is great until you're a goddamn mindless drone.

[d0zer]

I believe that the subjectivity surrounding psychopathology is a byproduct of its immaturity as a discipline, and that eventually everything will be quantifiable.

[Chelle]

Humans are weird. That is all.

[surviva316]

I believe that the subjectivity surrounding psychopathology is a byproduct of its immaturity as a discipline, and that eventually everything will be quantifiable.

I don't just mean subjective as wishy washy or open to conjecture. I mean it very literally; as in many pathologies are, in their essence, contingent. As in, not all pathologies are absolute.

Even if you perfect the testing criteria for the DSM, let's say, you would would only be able to determine the exact level of each -ism or -itis or whatever in each patient. What it wouldn't be able to determine is what level qualifies them for being deviant or dysfunctional. From what I understand about Asperger's, if Asperger's were the norm, then Asperger's wouldn't be a disorder; you and I would be the one who can't properly relate in society. So getting a DSM result that reads, "This guy is Aspergered as fuck" wouldn't in itself prove they have a disorder.

Of course, a society run by people with Aspergers is an extreme example. I only mean to say that any pathological field that defines itself in terms of how much it affects people's relation with their world is going to be, by definition, subjective (as in, it will only produce contingent truths).

Of course, there could--in theory--be some sort of joint psychological/sociological field that could perfectly evaluate someone's mental makeup, while also (god knows how) perfectly evaluating their social ecosystem--the culture they're in, the economic system, the patient's family, the people they're likely to meet, the education system, and on and on and on--to set a baseline for what degrees of different -isms are going to make them dysfunctional in that context, but again, this is a different scientific field than curing cancer.

[d0zer]

I don't just mean subjective as wishy washy or open to conjecture. I mean it very literally; as in many pathologies are, in their essence, contingent. As in, not all pathologies are absolute.

Yeah, so what?

[surviva316]

Yeah, so what?

MMM said a thing, and you responded to that thing, and I responded to that thing, and you responded and I responded and now this is my response to your response of that response.

Something about "who's to say" something something Matt Damon.

[d0zer]

When things get a bit fuzzy, you draw a line in the sand out of convenience. If you have the luxury of making the distinction, you consider many fuzzy lines, and weight them the best you can. games of incomplete information something something.

[sah_24]

Even Snopes has to admit Eisenberg (doctor who first named it) admitted it was all made up lol . . .

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/adhd.asp

[d0zer]

I mean the fact that america has ~5-10x the adhd rates of europe has to scream overdiagnosis. Or something in the water maybe. Or maybe it's diet, or america's shitty public schools. I blame Obama.

[BennyLaRue]

Daven, you're not even American. How would you know?

[surviva316]

I mean the fact that america has ~5-10x the adhd rates of europe has to scream overdiagnosis. Or something in the water maybe. Or maybe it's diet, or america's shitty public schools. I blame Obama.

It could very well be all of those things. Surely poor performance in school is the main impetus for just about all of the doctor visits that lead to a diagnosis. Is standardized testing emphasized nearly as much in Europe as it is in the states? Is a normal cafeteria lunch pizza, french fries and a 32 oz soda (it definitely is in the US)? Are there as big of stigmas against therapy? Do parents work less (my understanding is that this is a huge yes in European countries)? Do kids regularly participate in more/less extracurricular activities? Are those activities more academic/arts based than US's predominant sports extracurriculars (I was a straight up nerd who loved math, reading and board games, but my spring schedule was lacrosse + baseball + karate all at once)?

Are there key differences in the teacher/student relationships? Different authority dynamics? More/less one-on-one time? Smaller/bigger classrooms? Does grading emphasize avoiding mistakes (spelling, grammar, 5 paragraph structure, placement of the thesis, handwriting, doing math problems the way the teacher expected, citing reasons not covered in classes, etc) or does it reward good ideas and punish a lack thereof? Do report card grades emphasize homework more than classwork/tests?

Are there important differences in class schedules? Are kids given more time to take tests? Is there more/less time between periods?

Do guidance counselors have a more/less active role in the schools?

I legitimately don't know the answer to almost all of these questions, and obviously it's silly to generalize for an entire goddamned continent, but all of these questions have a MASSIVE affect on what skills and deficiencies become pathologized and which are glorified.

[d0zer]

isn't it 'effect' not 'affect' here? I ain't no pro writer or 'nuthin', just a simple type who believes that ain't no child should be leff behind

[surviva316]

No, I meant affect in it's clitorial usage.

[The Bean Counter]

Everybody's somewhere on the scale and some people no doubt have a real problem, but I'm inclined to think it's bullshit for the majority of kids diagnosed and just weak parents looking for a medical reason as to why their kid is badly behaved, rather than face the fact that their kid's bad behaviour is a function of their parenting. I think some are also looking for the easy solution that medication provides once a diagnosis is made.

The subject of this thread reminds me of an interesting Louis Theroux doc I was watching recently called America's medicated kids. The only link I could easily find is here, but doesn't work in the UK for some reason despite being produced by the BBC - no doubt you can find a working version easily if you're interested..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZlpN...fNGh_XQr0NT2er

[surviva316]

While we're sharing videos on ADHD, I highly recommendthis one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U.

I'll post thoughts at some point. Gotta make Easter guacamole for now.

[jyms]

http://showyou.com/v/y-5GBMS7WPFSs/h...u=robertma4171

Holy shit I guess I have ADHD

[surviva316]

As I was gonna say earlier:

I'm very willing to agree that ADHD is overdiagnosed in the US and far too many kids are far too easily offered powerful and very addictive drugs. (I probably would agree if 1) I were qualified enough to take arms against the the APA and 2) I cared enough about that part of the debate.)

This does not mean, though, that the kids who shouldn't necessarily receive adderall are "just lazy" or that the stigma that goes with that phrase is deserved.

Let's imagine that attentiveness were treated like intelligence, and there were an Attention Quotient test (just like there are IQ tests). Let's say that a 100 AQ is average and <70 AQ means you have ADHD. Okay, so if you have an 85 AQ, then it might be a bit dramatic to say you have ADHD, but the reality is still that you struggle more than the average kid with taking copious notes, following directions, finishing tests in the allotted time, getting assigned reading done, etc.

If someone sheepishly admits that they can't do 8th grade maths in their head, then we let sleeping dogs lie ... to the point that calling them stupid is impolite. In fact, we'll laude the things they ARE actually good at, like how they're stronger at the arts and humanities or how they work hard or any other number of things. On the other hand, if someone with an 85 AQ were to say that they can't possibly read a Shakespeare play in a week while keeping up with their other studies, then, well, the response is so obvious that I don't even feel obligated to finish this sentence.

So this goes back to my first and simplest point I've made in this thread: some people struggle with attentiveness more than others. That should be such a plain and obvious fact, but it gets so lost in the drugs debate and the overdiagnosis debate and our culture of "putting your mind to it" that it's somehow become a controversial statement. Being able to do anything you put your mind to is a very hopeful and pragmatic outlook on life for everyone ... except for the point whose very weakness is putting their mind "to it." Well, those people wonder, how do I put my mind to fixing the problem of being bad at putting my mind to things? The answer society seems to give them isn't that they're helpless so much as they're unworthy of help.

It's why I'm not surprised that there are so many people like Fnord who treat being diagnosed as a massive relief. After however many years of being told that you've only been a fuckup because you chooseso persistently to fuck up, you can finally talk to someone who has something to say other than Nike slogans and Darwinist truisms. Finally, there's someone who sympathizes with the difficulties you have, actually understandswhy they arise (spoiler alert: it's not necessarily from being a worthless sack of shit), and offers actual techniques to survive the day-to-day struggles you've had just about every school/work day of your life. Drugs or no drugs, it's like there's reason to believe that you might, one day, be okay.

[surviva316]

http://showyou.com/v/y-5GBMS7WPFSs/h...u=robertma4171

Holy shit I guess I have ADHD

If you have several of these qualities more than just anecdotally--as in, wellllllllll beyond just being like, "Oh man, remember when I locked my keys in my car TWICE in a row?" or like, "Oh yeah, I'm totally not as good at keeping up with conversations as my wife is"; as in, everyone who knows you well enough has at some point had a very serious and concerned look dawn on them as they say, "OMG, you {did/didn't do/forgot/etc} what for the 100th time?! There's no excuse for that. You have a serious problem. Something has to be done with this if you ever hope to be a functioning human being"; as in, you have shown tangible signs, like testing as a slower reader than a 7th grader or having handwriting that is (regardless of how diligent you are) illegible--then a mental health professional might be able to help you with your very serious problem that is making it seemingly impossible to get along in society.

Otherwise, you might be performing the kind of equivocation that Savy mentioned earlier with the panic attacks thing.

[Galapogos]

http://showyou.com/v/y-5GBMS7WPFSs/h...u=robertma4171

Holy shit I guess I have ADHD

I opened up the page, saw the content was a 5 min video and quickly got the fuck out. I am now legit adhd.

[spoonitnow]

I think I have ADD.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Hours-long grind sessions (just not much poker anymore)... probably not ADD.

[surviva316]

I think I have ADD.

It's the least of your mental ailments. The world's only hope is that you remain unfocused and fragmentary.

[spoonitnow]

It's the least of your mental ailments. The world's only hope is that you remain unfocused and fragmentary.

To be fair, they're not supposed to diagnose "antisocial personality disorder" (aka being a psychopath) until after you're 18.

[spoonitnow]

Imagine if most teachers were male and they were encouraging parents to drug 20% of little girls.

http://www.esquire.com/features/drug...rican-boy-0414

[surviva316]

Wow, such an interesting topic, and I can tell that there are interesting facts buried somewhere in there. Unfortunately, it was written by Esquire, so I have to wade through paragraphs-worth of 100% editorialization, like this gem:

"Imagine you have a six-year-old son. A little boy for whom you are responsible. A little boy you would take a bullet for, a little boy in whom you search for glimpses of yourself, and hope every day that he will turn out just like you, only better. A little boy who would do anything to make you happy. Now imagine that little boy—your little boy—alone in his bed in the night, eyes wide with fear, afraid to move, a frightening and unfamiliar voice echoing in his head, afraid to call for you. Imagine him shivering because he hasn't eaten all day because he isn't hungry. His head is pounding. He doesn't know why any of this is happening."

Anyway, I'm not at all surprised that diagnoses have skyrocketed since 2003, since that would be about when the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act really started to take effect (I'm not saying this statement alone passes as an argument, but there's been a lot of ink spilled over this).

I'm also the very opposite of surprised that boys are diagnosed way more than girls. I went to an all-boy's high school and had a lot of friends from our sister schools, and one thing that is very apparent is that boys and girls are very different when it comes to studying, doing homework, taking notes, handling authority, participating in extracurriculars, etc. There are all sorts of statistics on college campus behavior between girls and boys, too. To oversimplify it all, boys are more defiant and less engaged and girls are much more likely to do what's expected of them (even going beyond what they're explicitly told to do). I have no idea if this is a sex thing or a gender thing, and don't really care; I'm just not surprised that boys jive less with the education system than girls do.

[spoonitnow]

Wow, such an interesting topic, and I can tell that there are interesting facts buried somewhere in there. Unfortunately, it was written by Esquire, so I have to wade through paragraphs-worth of 100% editorialization, like this gem:

"Imagine you have a six-year-old son. A little boy for whom you are responsible. A little boy you would take a bullet for, a little boy in whom you search for glimpses of yourself, and hope every day that he will turn out just like you, only better. A little boy who would do anything to make you happy. Now imagine that little boy—your little boy—alone in his bed in the night, eyes wide with fear, afraid to move, a frightening and unfamiliar voice echoing in his head, afraid to call for you. Imagine him shivering because he hasn't eaten all day because he isn't hungry. His head is pounding. He doesn't know why any of this is happening."

Anyway, I'm not at all surprised that diagnoses have skyrocketed since 2003, since that would be about when the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act really started to take effect (I'm not saying this statement alone passes as an argument, but there's been a lot of ink spilled over this).

I'm also the very opposite of surprised that boys are diagnosed way more than girls. I went to an all-boy's high school and had a lot of friends from our sister schools, and one thing that is very apparent is that boys and girls are very different when it comes to studying, doing homework, taking notes, handling authority, participating in extracurriculars, etc. There are all sorts of statistics on college campus behavior between girls and boys, too. To oversimplify it all, boys are more defiant and less engaged and girls are much more likely to do what's expected of them (even going beyond what they're explicitly told to do). I have no idea if this is a sex thing or a gender thing, and don't really care; I'm just not surprised that boys jive less with the education system than girls do.

Being masculine has been turned into a pathology. Boys are expected to act like girls until they're 18, and then women wonder why they won't "man up."

[surviva316]

Being masculine has been turned into a pathology. Boys are expected to act like girls until they're 18, and then women wonder why they won't "man up."

You're succeeding in trolling insofar as you're saying things that people might very well say. But the rhetoric of "masculinity" and "acting like girls" and "manning up" is all so meaningless to me that if someone sincerely said this to me in conversation (even an internet conversation), I'd just be like, "So let's conversation something else."

[MadMojoMonkey]

+1

[spoonitnow]

You're succeeding in trolling insofar as you're saying things that people might very well say. But the rhetoric of "masculinity" and "acting like girls" and "manning up" is all so meaningless to me that if someone sincerely said this to me in conversation (even an internet conversation), I'd just be like, "So let's conversation something else."

FWIW, the portion you quoted there was the most sincere thing I've said in this thread.

[surviva316]

FWIW, the portion you quoted there was the most sincere thing I've said in this thread.

If you don't mean this sincerely, then my response is "Cool story, bro."

If you do, then "Let's conversation something else."

[spoonitnow]

If you don't mean this sincerely, then my response is "Cool story, bro."

If you do, then "Let's conversation something else."

It's one of the major sources of the problem of ADHD being over-diagnosed: Boys are not allowed to be boys and are forced into acting more like girls if they want to get along in school with their mostly-female overlords.

[MadMojoMonkey]

You're talking out of your ass with watered down words whose definitions are so soft and circumstantial that any sentence constructed of them is perhaps not fully meaningless, but close enough.

***
If a boy is capable of acting in a certain way... then he's acting like a boy... because he's a boy who's doing what a boy does.
If a girl is capable of acting in a certain way... then she's acting like a girl... because she's a girl who's doing what a girl does.
If any overlap in those ranges is causing you cognitive dissonance, that's your beef, and it doesn't make the boy or girl any less of what they are.

***
So whatever you're trying to say (if you are being serious) is lost by you choosing ambiguous words.

[d0zer]

Let's not lose sight of what really matters here guys:

The war on Christmas, Christianity, and traditional family values.

The rise of socialism brought on by our Kenyan overlord.

State rights.

The south rising again.

[spoonitnow]

You're talking out of your ass with watered down words whose definitions are so soft and circumstantial that any sentence constructed of them is perhaps not fully meaningless, but close enough.

***
If a boy is capable of acting in a certain way... then he's acting like a boy... because he's a boy who's doing what a boy does.
If a girl is capable of acting in a certain way... then she's acting like a girl... because she's a girl who's doing what a girl does.
If any overlap in those ranges is causing you cognitive dissonance, that's your beef, and it doesn't make the boy or girl any less of what they are.

***
So whatever you're trying to say (if you are being serious) is lost by you choosing ambiguous words.

ITT, MadMojoMonkey is the only person to use the word "capable."

[surviva316]

It's one of the major sources of the problem of ADHD being over-diagnosed: Boys are not allowed to be boys and are forced into acting more like girls if they want to get along in school with their mostly-female overlords.

We may not be too far apart on this; it's just the gender spin you put on this that is kinda meaningless to me.

I agree that there are qualities that are more pathologized than others, and that--in this case--those qualities are more frequent in boys than girls. Defiance, for example, is so explicitly pathologized that it even gets its own pathology (ODD). There might be some sort of inverse for someone being pathologically compliant, but I imagine being a spineless conformist to whatever people happen to expect of you is less likely to get you dragged to the principal's office or concern your parents to the extent that they set up an appointment with the psychiatrist.

In the same vein, I'm not sure inactivity is pathologized quite as much as hyperactivity; that inattentiveness is the most school unfriendly quality to have, but there probably isn't even an entry for ... I don't know ... attentional codependence?

This heightened intolerance for certain qualities concerns me for this reason or that, but none of them have to do with the fact that emasculates boys because I don't really care whether boys act more like girls unless they literally start breast feeding or something.

I might be more concerned about the mostly-female overlords thing if a compelling case could be made for its reality. For one, I don't know what percentage of teachers are female. What I'm really skeptical of, though, is that society's preferences unilaterally matriarchal. No Child Left Behind, for example, was written by an overwhelmingly male congress, signed into law by a male president and administered (if I had to guess) mostly by male superiors. I can see how female teachers might be less apt to relate to boys, so it might very well contribute to the problem that they're the foot soldiers (if you will), but I don't think our education's system belief that there's only one right answer / that following directions than bringing a new perspective / that rote knowledge is the foundation of education / that we should be measured in terms of 100% - Mistakes Made instead of 0% + Merits Earned is driven by some sort of Gender War. I think it's just how our culture fundamentally views education.

[surviva316]

To recap:

spoon: Blahblahblah

surviva: Your attempts to troll me have failed.

spoon: I'm not trolling. I mean it. I swear.

surviva: Nice try. Still don't care.

spoon: [slight variation on original comment]

surviva: RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!!!

[d0zer]

surviva: Your attempts to troll me have failed.

Iunno man, results indicate etc...

[spoonitnow]

Related, more moderate, and close to my true opinion on the subject: http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/19/sch...stile-to-boys/

[Chelle]

y'all mother fuckers need jesus.

[surviva316]

Iunno man, results indicate etc...

That's what I meant, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a joke whose punchline was a 10-year-old South Park reference ended up falling on its face.

[chemist]

So the therapists say if you have OCD you must be forced to lick toilet seats. Which is unnatural, unhygienic and possibly harmful.
But if you suggest they strip naked first, which is natural and carries no health hazards, they decline and declare you physcotic as well as OCD.

Who is the normal, sensible, rational, logical, intelligent, knowledgeable, tolerant, reasonable one?

[OngBonga]

I might have ADHD, I need to check if I get more money from benefits if I have that shit.

[OngBonga]

y'all mother fuckers need jesus.

I believe in Jesus. I just call it the sun like most normal people.

[spoonitnow]

ODD is even worse than ADHD as far as being a crock of shit goes.