Is it me, or are more kids being diagnosed with the Triple A’s these days — ADHD, autism, and anxiety?
No, it’s not me. Kids are definitely being diagnosed more than they were 45 years ago. And I know plenty of kids who are on meds or seeing a therapist to learn to cope with a neurological or anxiety issue.
Except it’s not because there’s an increase in the number of kids with a neurological issue.
A lot of unsympathetic boomers have said, "We didn’t have autism/ADHD/anxiety in my day. No one I know had it." Sure thing, James, now tell me more about how your map collection is alphabetized by cartographer.
I’m not saying we didn’t have ADHD or autism when I was a kid; we absolutely did. We just didn’t recognize it or know how to deal with it. The ADHD kids were pegged as troublemakers who needed to cut sugar from their diet and keep their hands to themselves. The autistic kids were put in classes for kids with developmental disabilities.
The kids who are taking medication these days are the ones who, when I was a kid, were bullied by classmates for being weird, spanked by teachers for being disruptive, labeled as malcontents for thinking differently, and punished by everyone because they couldn’t switch off the part of their brain that races 100 times faster and thinks differently than everyone else's.
We’re not seeing an increase in the number of people on the spectrum these days; we’re seeing an increase in the number of diagnoses.
That’s for any number of reasons: Awareness is growing. We have more and better diagnostic tools. We have a better understanding of how neurological issues manifest themselves. Also, it’s contagious, so when one kid in school gets it, everyone around them will catch it, too.
That last one is completely untrue; I wanted to see if you were paying attention. Autism is not measles, and it cannot be vaccinated against. Because if it were, people would probably say the vaccine causes measles and refuse to get it for their kids.
"That’s nothing. Try getting back to sleep when you wake up at 3:00 a.m. and it’s not time to take your medication yet!"
"You guys sleep?"
The interesting thing was that this was not something they were embarrassed or ashamed of. As one of the students said, "When you’re in college, ADHD is a superpower, not a problem!"
So, now it’s a thing they not only live with, but they’re proud of it. And why shouldn’t they be? They’re not being forced to hide who they are or be ashamed of it. They’re not being bullied for it, and if they are, they’ve already thought of 57 ways they’re going to get you back before you even finish your first insult.
Anxiety is also on the rise these days. I know more students who are taking anti-anxiety medications and are fighting panic attacks than ever before.
Again, not because there are more kids with anxiety. Rather, they aren’t being made to hide their feelings and mask their anxiety, like when I was a kid, only to be surprised when they grow up addicted to alcohol and drugs.
Also, I think it’s because we don’t use pencils anymore.
When I was a kid, we wrote with pencils. We took notes with pencils. We did homework with pencils. We doodled with pencils. We wrote notes to friends with pencils. Other kids wrote mean notes about me to friends with pencils.
And what did the nervous and anxious kids do when they weren’t writing notes or doing homework? They chewed on their pencils. My friends who were always stressed and nervous had pencils that looked like they had played baseball with a bucket of gravel.
Queasy before a quiz? Nibble your number two. Tense before a test? Teeth your Ticonderoga. Grumpy about your grades. Gum your graphite. You get the picture.
Nowadays, kids use phones for everything, and they can’t chew on their phones, mostly because they can’t fit the phone cases in their mouths.
I should also point out that this is complete fiction. This is not how anxiety works, and I don’t actually believe we have an increase in the number of anxious kids because they don’t use pencils.
I also don’t believe Tylenol causes autism; that’s just idiotic.
Instead, we live in a society where there is plenty to be anxious about, and kids are being taught to express and cope with their feelings, not grind them into little balls of rage and wrap them inside the fear of a spanking or detention.
Rather than complain about the mental state of "kids these days," tell me instead why you break into a sweat whenever your food touches on your plate.
Photo credit: FUHMariaM (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.