Tom Sawyer, ADHD, ODD, CD
I cam across this nice article today. Now you and I, we've read Tom Sawyer, and liked him for goofing off. The Washington Post's Anne Applebaum says he might be the victim of several psychiatric disorders.
No, seriously. She's not being an over-imaginative or money-seeking shrink seeing disorders where there are none. She's making a deeper point. Tom had many avenues to expend his energy on. If not school and studies, he had a hundred things to do. He didn't have to worry about grades (anyway he found treasure and got rich, but that's another matter).
Today we've got kids who go to two tuition sessions after school. Their physical energy goes unspent because there are no playgrounds or places to run about it. Few opportunities can satisfy their curiosity about life, without putting them in mortal danger (think lorries, dug up roads, diseases that come packaged in street food). Parents absent from home are unable to answer their questions.
What Tom could completely work off, our kids cannot. Instead they get ADHD, ODD, CD etc. Do read the article. I don't know if it's a lament or a comment, but it is quite disturbing.
P.S. I also love other 'dysfunctional' boys like Dennis (the Menace), Calvin and William Brown. Would they too be diagnosed with all manner of psycho disorders today? Are we all to be like the laboratory boy Dexter?
No, seriously. She's not being an over-imaginative or money-seeking shrink seeing disorders where there are none. She's making a deeper point. Tom had many avenues to expend his energy on. If not school and studies, he had a hundred things to do. He didn't have to worry about grades (anyway he found treasure and got rich, but that's another matter).
Today we've got kids who go to two tuition sessions after school. Their physical energy goes unspent because there are no playgrounds or places to run about it. Few opportunities can satisfy their curiosity about life, without putting them in mortal danger (think lorries, dug up roads, diseases that come packaged in street food). Parents absent from home are unable to answer their questions.
What Tom could completely work off, our kids cannot. Instead they get ADHD, ODD, CD etc. Do read the article. I don't know if it's a lament or a comment, but it is quite disturbing.
P.S. I also love other 'dysfunctional' boys like Dennis (the Menace), Calvin and William Brown. Would they too be diagnosed with all manner of psycho disorders today? Are we all to be like the laboratory boy Dexter?
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