I didn't realize how screwed up things have become with parenting until my son went into school recently. It's a different universe from the 80s and 90s.
I recently almost lost my drink when I had to sit through some power-mom yak on about her 12 yo daughter's crappy behavior and inability to focus -- she now has an ADHD diagnosis and medication.
Her daughter is a successful competitive swimmer who trains 4 days a week, is a talented musician in two different regional orchestras, has a B+ average and runs cross country.
People are nuts. That kid needs sleep, not amphetamine derivatives. There are many like her. My son has kindergarten classmates in 3-5 structured activities.
This. I have 2 kids who are barely 5 and I already see my wife and family and everyone around us sending their kids to 3-4 activities EVERY WEEK. I have resisted successfully so far. Doesn't mean I don't want my kids to be great at many things but take a chill pill all. It is not end of the world and kids will get to do things.
My order of priority for my kids:
1. Get Enough Sleep
2. Eat good food. We don't do Juice or Soda at all. Chips etc. are ok once in a while.
3. No devices. My daughter started getting hooked on to Ipad and one day, we went cold turkey and put it away. She only gets to watch TV now. No more eyes stuck in an Ipad.
4. Dinner ON THE TABLE. Yes, this is so hard these days. We get lazy. But we have tried to enforce this and it has done wonders.
5. Talk to them. Teach them a few things while you interact with them. Give them chores to teach them the value of work. I have a simple one for mine: Turn on the porch lights in the evening. She loves it as "this is my job". Sense of ownership and responsibility.
6. Teach them to have empathy and how to treat others. This is so important. Don't overly reward them for good behavior but always say "You did a great job. I am proud of you" and that's it. Don't glorify it.
7. One activity. For us, it is Swimming. But you could choose any really.
After this (already a lot, isn't it) , it is mostly "let kids be kids". Depending on their mood, our availability and the day, we can do outdoor activities, biking, playing in backyard or go for a drive. No pressure of planned activities. That's it for me. My wife doesn't quite agree but I have been able to keep it like this for a while.
> After this (already a lot, isn't it) , it is mostly "let kids be kids".
Some of your list is just basic quality of life. Sleeping? Eating at the table? Talking to them? This is all general parenting.
> My daughter started getting hooked on to Ipad and one day, we went cold turkey and put it away. She only gets to watch TV now. No more eyes stuck in an Ipad.
How is TV better than an iPad? I mean, seriously? At least with an iPad there's a plethora of different apps, and a good percentage of them will be more enlightening than watching the ever diminishing quality of TV these days.
How much of this is just paranoia about "too much screen time" but reframed for a 21st century approach?
> My wife doesn't quite agree but I have been able to keep it like this for a while.
Parenting is a two person effort. Don't shut out the mother's thoughts on it just because you disagree.
>How is TV better than an iPad? I mean, seriously? At least with an iPad there's a plethora of different apps, and a good percentage of them will be more enlightening than watching the ever diminishing quality of TV these days.
One thing I notice is with TV the kid will sit and watch a program for 20 minutes. On an iPad they open YouTube, they will switch every 30 seconds to a new video, often just showing a random mish-mash of super hero characters with an annoying song in the background. The videos are all derivative, mixing a number of popular things / characters / songs trying to just get clicks from kids. Search for "daddy finger" on YouTube and start clicking through videos to get an idea of the quality of programming kids will watch if you let them.
It seems that constantly being able to pick something new every 30 seconds would lend itself to shortened attention spans worse than watching a kids show with at least some semblance of a narrative arc.
This more applies to toddlers, not older children.
I'd that were my main concern, I'd put the device on a pipe with too little bandwidth to handle video... All the text you can eat, but no moving pictures.
> How much of this is just paranoia about "too much screen time" but reframed for a 21st century approach?
All of it. An entire generation raised glued to the TV is now flipping out about screen time. It would be funny if I didn’t have to deal with other parents all the time.
Educational TV has come so far too! Daniel Tiger is amazing at teaching social skills compared to any show available in the 90s.
From research it seems the biggest issue with kids watching TV is just that it takes time away from other forms of learning. Which means limit it but no need to get rid of it.
I can't say enough good things about the SciShow Kids YouTube channel. My four year old calls Jessie (the presenter), her "science teacher", and routinely surprises me with information she has learned there. They're a great length (usually 3-5 minutes), so you can 'tune' the time.
Completely agree. In our house, TV === PBS stations. Daniel Tiger, et al., on PBS Kids are phenomenal. I would also point out that, at least in the case of my son, he is much more socially and temporally present when watching TV than when using his mother's phone (I do not share my devices with him). There's the additional annoyance that when using the phone, he wants to watch one of us play. He doesn't want to play the game himself or with us, he wants to spectate. So, TV is usually my preferred option for screen time.
> How is TV better than an iPad? I mean, seriously? At least with an iPad there's a plethora of different apps, and a good percentage of them will be more enlightening than watching the ever diminishing quality of TV these days.
Kids are all.. different? What he describes was surprisingly the same for my 6 year old. Tablets cause focus and aggression issues with him. Taking away tablet access has done wonders for our household.
Interesting. My five-year old has exhibited some aggression/anger occasionally. I have attributed it to him being tired or going through natural childhood phases. He does use electronic devices a lot. I never would have related the two behaviors, though.
I wonder if this is due to the instant gratification that devices provide, which creates an expectation that the real world should function this way, too, and anger when that turns out not to be the case.
From the reading I've done on the subject and observing our almost 3 year old, the ipad gives a dopamine rush to the brain. Taking it away causes the dopamine to stop and anger/frustration ensues...
At most he's allowed 1 hour a day, half hour after breakfast and a half hour before dinner. Both times he's given a 5 minute warning to turn it off, then he has to turn it off himself. We learned this the hard way, plus a lot if reading to figure out why he got so angry and frustrated when we turned it off.
Nowadays, either we play with him and his toys or he gets bored with that and wants the iPad again. We tell him the times he can watch it and he goes off bored again and starts getting creative with play on his own. The dopamine thing (self made opiate) really opened our eyes to his behaviour when the iPad was taken away.
The iPad IS more dangerous than the T.V. BECAUSE it is so much more engaging. Unless you have super-cable-satellite T.V. with more channels than you could possible ever watch - and sometime still even then - TV watching becomes boring, and people are drawn to do other things. iPad often does not do this - which makes is simultaneously less dangerous (because it is more engaging and therefore educational in some sense) and more dangerous (because the impetus to leave and go away can express itself by loading up a different app or even popping onto the app store for a new free one, or by going on the internet or even youtube with their incredible variety).
I still use and iPad with my little boy, but I always try to be using to together - we talk about what he sees and hears, we watch Daniel Tiger and I sing the songs and ask about specific things he sees on the screen, etc. I feel like this is a good compromise, even if it ruins the otherwise potent ability of the iPad to engage him so I can do other things - I'm willing to sacrifice the other things in most cases. :D (I am somewhat horrified at how simple it is for us both to just get absorbed in one thing or another and spend too much time NOT doing all those talking/playing/interacting things with stuff on the iPad, though! So simple, takes effort and energy to refuse to fall into that trap! :) )
Indeed, but considering some of the comments from other parents on this thread--and accounting for my own experience--spending time with one's children, just being present in the world together, exploring and fostering experiential learning, is not as simple as it would at first appear. Parents' lives are beset by demands and obligations outside those of parenting and managing a household, so it can be incredibly difficult to balance these disparate tasks and still make time to be present in the lives of their children on a timetable that does not begin to negatively impact the children's development.
Quality time is important and possibly one of the scarcest commodities in our economy. The importance of experiential learning (eg, dining together at the table), wherein a child learns about the world firsthand, including how to comport oneself in various situations, cannot be understated.
> Parenting is a two person effort. Don't shut out the mother's thoughts on it just because you disagree
Sometimes one or the other is flat out wrong and it's ok to be firm in that case. For example, it's taken my wife about 6 years (and a small fortune in family therapy) to realize that backsliding on boundaries and discipline undermines all boundaries and discipline, including mine. Thankfully she has finally heard me when I've explained why DD took me seriously, while ignoring and walking all over my DW.
One of the few compelling arguments for TV is that it's excellent for teaching language to first learners. My wife and I have a bilingual family, English and Japanese, but we live where there are no Japanese speakers my children's age to socialize with. A subscription to a few Japanese TV channels has been instrumental in passively supplementing language acquisition. It's the only reason we have a TV in the house at all.
It's complicated for a few reasons. First, my daughter is too young to read, and she won't be ready to read Japanese for a very long time since it's much more work to achieve literacy than for English.
Second, with iOS and the Apple ecosystem generally, you have to contend with arbitrary and draconian region lockout. It's not as simple as just switching the phone to a different language, you have to maintain a separate Apple ID to get content from Japanese stores, and in many cases, a Japanese credit card and/or bank account, and sometimes even a Japanese IP address!! Frustrating!
Third, I can't trust unsupervised use of the iPad the way I can with a TV set to the kid's channel, having seen the kind of filth that e.g. Youtube's autoplay will serve up.
>otherwise make sure to include the language in your life other ways?
I generally agree except re: screentime... I think managed screentime without overbearing expectations from the parents is way better than obsessing over the time spent. I worked with kids for 10+ years pre tech and the kids who had strict "no tv" guidelines were generally _obsessed_ with tv, whereas the kids who had parents with a more relaxed approach were pretty indifferent to tv.. Anecdotes, sure, and some kids had zero tv and were incredible kids, and vice versa... but this is just my observation over many years.
I wasn't allowed any TV when I was a child and I definitely had a similar experience, any time I was near to a TV my eyes were glued on it and my attention was completely held. When I was a little older (highschool) I got my hands on as much media as I could and subsequently desensitized myself to it and now don't have the same effect, but I'm not quite convinced that was the "better" option. It lets me operate in the world a little better (I'm not entranced by TV's in restaurants like when I was 12) but is desensitization and normalization of that much stimulus a "good" thing?
I know some people strongly disagree but my toddler learns tons from her tablet.
She has Amazon Freetime and can pick and choose whatever apps she wants to play (we can remove apps and control what age range is available). The apps on it have taught her about animals, letters, words, problem solving, and tons of other things she otherwise would've had less exposure to.
We also play together with her on the tablet and of course do lots of playing/learning without electronic devices at all. Books, blocks, play figures, the usual stuff.
But tablets are an extremely powerful tool for learning so it seems silly to me when people completely cut them out for the "good" of a child.
> 3. No devices. My daughter started getting hooked on to Ipad and one day, we went cold turkey and put it away. She only gets to watch TV now. No more eyes stuck in an Ipad.
Why exactly is TV (passive) better than an iPad (interactive)?
The passive TV can be less psychologically powerful than the interactive iPad.
Sure, kids can still sit slack-jawed staring at some cartoons. The TV producers have learned how to maintain attention with rapid cuts, bright colors, loud sounds, and all the rest extremely well. And that's some pretty scary super-stimulation.
But it's still less addictive than the iPad app that can use all the same outputs and adds interactive, Pavlovian feedback. Push button, get some meaningless numbers to increase: maybe you'll get lucky and they'll increase a lot this time! Keep trying! Check back in 30 seconds when that unlocks again! Some interaction can be educational, but there's more to the decision than the educational value, it's also somewhat about the addictive potential.
My 11-month old likes to hold a phone when he can get one. He turns it over with impressive dexterity in his little hands. He enjoys his reflection, and the weight and shape of the things. I'm sure he's observed that Mom and Dad pick up and use these things frequently, as much as we try to limit it around him. Each time he gets a phone, we take it away, and trivially redirect his attention on something else.
It's terrifying to me that in perhaps 5 years, the attention capture industry will be aided by virtual-reality devices, and my little kindergartner will need to develop the willpower to someday control his use of these future addiction machines.
(And now, I'll ironically push "reply" in hopes that I'll see my HN karma increase a few points due to this comment.)
Not to detract from your point, but to reinforce it: TV producers didn't "learn" as if through trial and error, but something far more sinister. They, and commercial producers, employ actual child psychologists to study the underlying mechanisms of attention in actual children to maximize the impact of their "product".
I completely agree that some apps are inappropriate for various ages though. Pretty much anything that purposely tries to addict the user should only be played by people who can handle the it. Some adults can't.
You need to be very careful with modern mobile games. I'll let my son play minecraft, do the "endless learning" games, Dr Seuss, movies, and a few other selected games. You need to avoid the skinner box games.
Generally speaking, if it has a franchise endorsement (Star Wars, etc) it's garbage.
In general, any game that has a manufactured annoyance that can be bypassed immediately by paying money/watching an ad.
Usually achieved by a stamina system (You can play up to 5 levels in 30 minutes, or play another immediately by paying), balancing play so playing without "Premium" items feels sluggish and uncompetitive (but not so sluggish that the game is unfun), and having a lot of gambling style elements to overcome the first two (No gems? You can spin the prize wheel once a day! Also, you logged in 3 days in a row! Have some gems!)
Generally speaking, anything that requires you to gather funny money to play, and tempts you with the ability to buy credits. Free is usually crap.
A recent one was "Star Wars Force Arena". You really need to shell out to play, but you get these virtual "cards", sort of like electronic Pokémon cards that have characters and weapons. Usually they give you junk characters, but once in awhile you get something good. Your have to connect in specific time intervals to get more cards, and we discovered that my son was actually waking up early to claim his cards.
Other nice games come from Toca Boca. My son and his cousin like to play with "Hair Salon 3", where you basically cut and style hair -- they have little contests to make wacky looking people.
The physical Apple Store is actually a good place to discover new games. They change it demos every few weeks and the staff is often very knowledgeable.
A tremendous amount of games on phones are either glorified slot machines, or a normal game with some kind of slot machine tacked on, such as a loot system.
Some even produce loot that can be traded for real money...
Personally, I prefer TV because we get to see what they are watching. Second, I am a bit concerned with a device like Ipad so close to their body (this could be just me but I am not sure about long term effects of this to a child who is barely 5). Not to mention that TV has limited options (kids pretty much watch cartoons) but with Ipad, the possibilites are endless. My daughter already knows how to unlock the ipad, start different apps and play youtube on the ipad etc.
I am not against restricting anything honestly but when I saw that my daughter started telling us "leave me alone. I am watching ipad", that was the signal that she is getting addicted. Mind you, she is not even 5. With TV, it is not that bad as they watch it while doing other things like roaming around the living room etc. Much less addictive in our specific case at least. YMMV.
Imagine you lived in a house with no doors. People could come and go as they please, and they did. There wasn't any corner or closet where you were guaranteed solitude. Moreover, you were _stuck_ in that house, as you had no means to leave of your own accord, even just to walk down the block alone.
I think my son first barked, "stop talking", to us before he was 2. That first time he was just tired of being peppered with questions and wanted to be let alone. No devices were involved. Sometimes he says that or something like it when he's being reprimanded, which is of course not acceptable. But in any event I've always tried to appreciate the sentiment. I appreciate (and require) solitude more than my wife, so perhaps I more sensitive to that need, or at least more credulous.
Our household got vastly easier, and our kids happier, when we did the opposite: got rid of the TV, and only watch shows on the iPad. The big TV screen was a constant suggestion looming over the living room.
It's easier still when the iPad runs out of batteries; we just haven't managed to get rid of it entirely yet.
I don't have any kids, but I still got rid of the TV. Passive, environmental entertainment is problematic. If you had a bowl of chocolate on your desk, it's easier to snack on them during the day - the same with media distractions.
Now, anything I watch is something I specifically seek out - pull, not push.
I do the same with video games, and I choose games that are more exiting, as opposed to long slogs - fixed-level/single-player FPS, or fixed length multiplayer sessions, as opposed to "stat-building" games, or candy-crunch "physiological manipulators".
TV is social. Everyone is seeing it, which creates a whole world that can be talked about. As it is the world has too many +4 sigma cognitive skills (which will be partly IQ but also learned throughout life) with below-median social skills. It would be much, much more useful to have then be +3 sigma for cognitive skills and +1 sigma social skills.
I don't think it's the case with TV today. Not anymore. There are too many channels, and also significant amount of people decided not to have TV.
Watching Game of Thrones is social, whether you do it on TV or on-line. Watching a random TV program on a random TV channel is about as social as watching a random YouTube video.
We needed to go cold turkey off the ipad too. Its different from computers or television. The apps they choose to play are like literal drugs, constant events and things to tap on.
Anyways after the cold turkey we now have 40m of video games per day, if they talk kind to one another and listen quickly. They can choose what they play.
They always choose the damn "addictive" tablet apps.
i personally feel 40min/day is too much. I have 2 young kids (7 and 5) and used to do similar to you. The problem with allowing some amount per day means that's all they can think about, because before "media time" (tv, tablet, or computer) they anticipate it, and after "media time" they miss it.
I switched my kids to "no media during weekdays" and after about 3 or 4 days of withdraw, it's much, much better. now they have time to play, do homework, and practice piano during the week without the constant complaining that they used to exhibit.
Well, I personally feel 40min/day for a 7yo is bordering on too little. Personally I had mostly unsupervised and not strongly limited access to a computer since about 9, and I definitely owe at least my career and my English skills to that. I mean - how can one expect a kid to learn to do anything creative/productive with technology, if one gives them so little time that learning and creating isn't a viable option?
It's tricky to strike a balance. I'm on the computer for literally like 14 hours a day so I'm def not a good example. As a kid I had a lot of access too. I'll keep in mind your thoughts.
I never understand the 'no devices' thing. It seems wrongheaded. Not just from the 'an inability to be a sophisticated user of technology will be a gigantic deficit to them in a multitude of ways' standpoint, but it seems like it's trying to take away a solution the child has found to a problem their parents created in the first place. Many parents complain that their child doesn't want to go outside and play, that they just stay inside on their tablet or in front of a videogame console. Most of those parents, if you ask them, fully intend to go WITH their child if they DO decide to go outside and "play". They intend to watch over their child, make sure they don't do anything too risky, make sure they don't use 'dirty words', and stand on hand to judge their every move.
Kids gravitate to devices because they give the kid power. They are the only outlet in our society where THEY get to make things happen, THEY get to decide what to do next. In every single other arena of their life, those choices are taken away from them by people who think they know better (and people who do not consider control itself to be inherently harmful, which it is).
I would imagine that if you give them other situations in which they are unobserved, unregulated, and empowered, the device use would fall off of its own accord. It's like the 'rat park' studies that upended addiction research in the past. Sure rats hit a bar to get cocaine until they die - if they're in a cage. But put them in an outdoor area with other rats with lots of things to do and they'll never get addicted in the first place. And if you put a rat that IS addicted in that environment, they wean themselves off of the drug naturally.
5 of those a week is only 30 minutes a weekday. What's the problem with that? Hidden hours in preparation and transportation? 30 minutes is not even a tenth of a school day.
When they are 5, it's the lost time in transit and gaps of wasted time.
When they get older there's a 4:1 prep:activity ratio. If your kid is going to play majors or minors in little league, you're doing multiple leagues, workshops and practicing. When he isn't doing that, you're dealing with little league politics.
Multiple activities means you never eat dinner at home, may not see siblings for days as well. You also never see your spouse. If your 7 year old is at dance until 7, you're stopping at chipotle and not getting home until 8. Your spouse is tucking in the 5 year old, who needs to go to bed at 7:30 to wake up at 6 to get to before school care.
7. One activity. For us, it is Swimming. But you could choose any really.
I think it’s good to have 2 activities, one for the mind (eg chess, chinese lessons, painting, etc) and one for the body (eg swimming, soccer, a martial art, etc)
The quality of TV is atonishingly terrible these days.
Back when I was a kid I would watch countless documentaries on Animal Planet, Discovery, History, Science, and TLC. Now literally all they show are reality shows.
Not the OP, but I'll reframe that as "teach them the value of accomplishment" because I've always had an issue with the concept of work being its own reward.
One of my 7 year-old's chores is refilling the bird feeders. He really likes doing it and is excited when new birds come to visit. There's a clear work->reward path there.
> He really likes doing it and is excited when new birds come to visit
But will he feel the same about flipping burgers? I agree - it's a dangerous thing to teach work is it's own reward. Work can be enjoyable, but not always.
Teach them that it takes work to run a house. Dinner doesn't just magically appear, dishes don't wash themselves, your socks don't pair up on their own. Makes them more grateful and also capable of taking care of themselves.
Depends on the age. For an older kid, maybe extra spending money. For a younger kid, maybe a special outing, or a special treat like a frosted cupcake.
My wife's a teacher. Parents are insane. Schools/admin don't push back much.
If you're lucky they're just up your ass—"Why does my kid still have a 0 for this assignment in the online gradebook? They turned in their late paper at 10am and it's 3pm now and you should have gotten to it in your 1 hour plan time, and you should have returned my stupid call that I never should have made, nevermind you have literally 100 other kids to worry about and you send weekly updates on all kinds of stuff that I don't read". That kind of crap.
If you're not lucky they're the sort that loudly accuses every teacher their kid has of racism every year within the first month of school.
My SO is a HS teacher and has been in very good (publicly funded) charter schools (100% admit rate to 4 years Unis) and the bottom of the barrel public schools (50%+ non HS degree completion), so there is a breadth of experience.
We've seen the super-moms and the slacker-moms and at the end of the day, it really just comes down to the kid. Most of the time, whatever drive or interests they have are going to run haywire over the parent's best/worst laid plans. Valedictorians at the best schools still get abortions and go on to meth-out, and slackers in the worst school still go on to be fighter pilots. It's the kid's life, mostly. And, like most people, their life will be average. That's not a bad thing.
Problem is, admin is nuts, typically. Not the unions (at least in this state), just the regular state admin. They are under a LOT of pressure to make sure that they 'improve' and send kids to college (nothing else counts in the metrics). As such, you sometimes see 'non-traditional' grading systems where a 25% is a D and you can only give out 4 question multiple choice tests. Yes, by random guessing, the average student should pass, and they do, if you can get the 14 years olds to knock off the vodka and pot long enough to take a test. The lawyer-based teaching approach is obviously crazy, but here we are.
Strong caveats apply for instability/abuse in the home-life and drug use during pregnancy, of course. Unfortunately, you see that a lot more in the 'poorer' schools. At the last public HS, 90% of the teachers 'dropped out' after 1 year, my SO included. Sometimes it can get that bad, yes.
All of this rings true, but I would also add that there are still places in 2017 where the parenting culture hasn't devolved into a "success"-at -any-cost scenario. You don't necessarily need to go far afield to find these communities, but you are less likely to find them within the crucible of i.e. Silicon Valley or other similarly configured places.
A few factors which I think might give rise to these less "insane" environments:
- A community whose population is employed in a diverse set of occupations.
- A community with welcoming shared public outdoor spaces where unplanned joint activities can occur. This can be in an urban environment, no forest needed.
There will certainly be trade-offs with these places (maybe older school facilities, lower average SAT scores) but for some that might be worth a childhood and parenthood without the additional anxiety that the environment you describe creates.
I have a kid that age too (just entering K) and I concur. It's shocking and disgusting. In 20 years, those nutter parents will brag on Facebook: "Well, my kid is suicidal but at least he went to Stanford!" So sad. Kids need exploration and playtime, not medication and Structured Enrichment Activities™.
Based on conversations with people who work in mental health professions in SV, we're already there with the kids who have been pushed close to the edge.
The news only reports on these situations when it is too late, but there are plenty of kids in bad straits short of that.
I blame college. The fact that many more people go to college nowadays has benefits, but the cost is that it massively increases competitiveness early in life.
The admiration of their Facebook friends is nothing compared to the approval of college admission committees. They are the ones who like B+ students who practice sports and play in orchestras.
That's true, but after college you are an adult who can choose how to deal with that based on your own talents and goals.
It's not like the children submit themselves to a life of hard work and surveillance because they really want to go to college. Their parents are the ones who force them to do it.
I don't think most people look beyond their own immediate vicinity. They never step back and consider the more abstract picture. They see what the neighbors are doing and parrot. They don't bother to notice "Hey... my child is going to reach 18 years of age never having once been involved in an activity which was not regimented, regulated, and immediately overseen by an adult authority figure." How, exactly, are they meant to learn to solve their own problems? How are they meant to learn how to interact with people with vastly different levels of experience to themselves as equals? They're great at acting subservient to their seniors. That's useless in many cases, dangerous in most. And they're great at acting superior to their juniors. That's useless in all cases, dangerous as well in most.
The problem is, that the parents kill the most valuable thing. Iniative, the ablity to have a adeventure, to take a orthogonal way to the throdden road and find something new.
This style of parenting kills the most valuable skill a kid could develop.
Thank you for pointing this out. I did K-12 in the US and it is indeed a different world now. I now have two children, in KG and PK, and I see the same thing with 3-5 structured activities. Part of it is an arms race of getting kids into top colleges, which now starts earlier and earlier. People realize the right college is a way to potentially hockeystick your future.
We have swimming, soccer, and language #3 for the kids. We're hoping the whole college mess gets figured out by society so we can live a more normal life.
I recently almost lost my drink when I had to sit through some power-mom yak on about her 12 yo daughter's crappy behavior and inability to focus -- she now has an ADHD diagnosis and medication.
Her daughter is a successful competitive swimmer who trains 4 days a week, is a talented musician in two different regional orchestras, has a B+ average and runs cross country.
People are nuts. That kid needs sleep, not amphetamine derivatives. There are many like her. My son has kindergarten classmates in 3-5 structured activities.