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This is an interesting perspective, but if we take this at a population level, it does indicate that on the average case, though maybe not your own, that kids will be a disaster to the parents. Maybe your tricks as well as other effective parenting techniques need to be disseminated more, but that's not happening right now.
Not to blow up your replies here, but gog has it right. Millenial parents are really fucking up a lot, IME.
Kids are given tablets and television, so many toys that they fill entire rooms, wall-to-wall activities that require dozens of hours of investment per week, pharmaceutical drugs, spots in the marital bed at 3,4,5,6,7 years old because they just can't say no....
Any fool can make their job insanely difficult, given a weak enough backbone and poor decision-making abilities. If you figure out how to get good advice and think long-term about your children you're going to have a far better time.
(Also note - once your children become a whole person [pre-teen age] your amount of control will diminish. I won't rate myself as a parent until they are in their early 20s, but I can tell you that as of this moment I can judge parental skill for kids under 10)
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There's no trick. You just punish your child when he does things you don't want him to do. My buddy has a terror of a kid, and they struggled for years until they finally got an ADHD diagnosis and put him on brain-zapping drugs. Right before they put him on the pills, I said "Have you tried swatting him?" and my buddy reacted with utter horror- that would be abuse! Better to pharmaceutically alter his mind, probably for the rest of his life, than to cuff him a couple of times. This attitude is extremely widespread- "I tried to take away the iPad, but he got mad," etc. This parenting hack is available to everyone except those who will cross into actual beatings, and even they can get the wife to do it.
As someone who had ADHD (obvious even as a kid, the diagnosis was delayed by willful ignorance on my parent's part, though I've forgiven them now) and was subject to corporal punishment for doing ADHD things, I assure you that the drugs are more effective, and better in the longterm.
(I also happen to think that mild corporal punishment is fine, and that society overreacted when it came to bands. It was just more socially acceptable to the point of being unremarkable when I was growing up)
In a different era I might agree with you, but I’m a teacher and have never seen an unsuccessful bid to get an ADHD diagnosis, which suggests to me that doctors now consider “child is difficult” to be sufficient evidence of ADHD. We tell gymbros to stay away from roids until their training, sleep, and diet are dialed-in. We should tell parents the same thing.
It can be simultaneously true that ADHD is overdiagnosed (in the US) and that it is a "real" condition. My point is that corporal punishment is still the inferior option, though I recognize it as a valid option.
The symptoms of ADHD have enormous overlap with being a "difficult child". What else better sums up absent-mindedness, hyperactivity etc? Stimulants aren't a class of drug that only helps people with ADHD, not like antipsychotics being of minimal benefit to the average person (it can make the insane sane, but it can't make the sane supersane).
In general, they can be quite effective for anyone. They're popular as study-aids for a reason, there are few people who don't benefit from increased attention and focus, even if their baseline is adequate. They are also quite safe, especially when used as prescribed. A world where the tradeoff is children who don't quite meet the ideal cutoff for ADHD (a highly clinical and discretionary diagnosis already) end up on meds while those who also "actually" need them also do is fine. It's not going to burn out their brain or give them cancer fifty years down the line. They probably end up getting better grades.
In other words, drift and expansion of ADHD diagnosis and treatment is about as benign as it gets. It's nowhere near as bad as a hypothetical world where every sad kid gets a diagnosis of depression and receives SSRIs, or is diagnosed with schizophrenia after mentioning an imaginary friend. The reader may substitute their own feels on gender dysphoria and affirmative care.
My understanding is that taking ADHD meds can complicate your career in the United States if you're interested in going into the military, so there's some considerations there that can come as an unpleasant surprise to people who see the meds as pure upside. Obviously that's not necessarily a consideration for everyone.
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