Kids with ADHD need more time on playground

By Lyman McLallen

School psychologists and drug company salesmen maintain that Ritalin, Adderall, and other stimulants help children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) become “manageable,” meaning they no longer cause trouble, thanks to the effects of these drugs.

The school nurse medicates the child in the morning — and at lunchtime too — and he sits in his seat holding onto his desk all day, no longer “disruptive” as school authorities say. But is he teachable?

Not if being teachable means he can learn things he can put to good use in his life, such as how to write a readable sentence or how to solve a complicated math problem. (Mostly, boys are diagnosed with ADHD probably because girls tend to be smarter than boys about hiding their audacity.)

Stimulants won’t put a child in a frame of mind so he can gather firewood in the woods, say, and start a fire with it. Nor will the drugs let his brain calm down so he can discover how to keep the fire going safely so he can cook over it. Children learn skills such as this in the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts and maybe even at a good school — whether they have ADHD or not — but not if they’re drugged.

In the 1980s I knew a young teenager who could take apart a gasoline engine and put it back together so that it ran better than it did before he worked on it. Yet this boy was diagnosed with ADHD at his school because he was bored in class and wouldn’t learn what his teachers wanted him to learn. Fortunately for him, his parents refused to let him become medicated.

If the school authorities — principals, teachers, counselors and school psychologists — can label a child as “wild” or “rambunctious,” and cite specific incidents where the child has exhibited such behavior to back up their claims, they will concentrate on “getting him straightened out for his own good.” (“Intervention” is the “clinical” word they use for this. It sounds cleaner, more “professional.”)

With the full force and authority of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), they will get an MD to diagnose him with ADHD and, with the permission of the child’s parents, drug him.

Weren’t we all wild when we were children? But isn’t it the duty of the school, along with parents, to help children become responsible human beings? How can that happen if a child is drugged up all the time?

On occasion children will get into arguments with other children, sometimes turning into fights, sneak comic books into school, chew gum in class, and instigate or take part in food fights in the school cafeteria with gusto, notably on days when the food is worse than usual. Children also love to doodle in their notebooks during class, especially with colored pencils. All of this is normal.

Still, there are children who need special attention and help so they can learn to become valuable citizens for society and especially for themselves. But this help will not come from a stimulant or any other drug.

The best way to “cure” so-called ADHD and other conditions such as being “learning disabled” is to get the students outside on the playground early in the day and let them run around for a couple of hours. Let them play basketball and softball, soccer, volleyball and tetherball, help them plant and tend gardens on the school grounds, even let them rake leaves, shovel snow or help the janitor cut the grass and pull weeds — anything to get them moving vigorously.

Back in the classroom, let them take a nap for half-an-hour. For the rest of the day, the students are relaxed, alert and ready to learn.

In any school, the teachers who are genuinely concerned with helping children have fun and learn are easy to find. They aren’t making spectacles of themselves and politicking at the school board, but are working their hearts out in their classrooms and on the playground helping children learn what they need to know so they can live good lives. These teachers work with all the children whether they are diagnosed with ADHD or not.

Ask the recent graduates of any school, or the students at the school now, who these teachers are. They’ll tell you because students always revere teachers like these. That’s all the evaluation you need, and the best you’ll ever get.

McLallen spent more than a decade sitting in classrooms at the University of Memphis State in the company of many decent and learned professors. Some of their wisdom even rubbed off on him despite suspicions of him being ADHD. For years he worked as a college teacher and now works as a copy editor at The Korea Times.