In class, we were discussing children with attention disorders and one of the students mentioned that a kid she knows is taking drugs for ADHD only on weekdays. He is ‘perfectly fine’ on the days he stays at home, he needs drugs to adjust at school. This information and the discussion that followed just sent a chill up my spine.

A child with ADHD is a child with ADHD, 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Why is that he needs drugs only on the days he goes to school? Obviously the drugs are for his ADHD like behavior caused by something else.

A 6-hour or an 8-hour school is simply not for all children. This is where ‘Goodness Of Fit’ comes in. A child cannot simply be branded as lazy or stupid or hyperactive based on his behavior. We also have to look at his temperament, family’s values, the learning system, his teacher’s patience and accommodating tendencies before we tag him. Looks like the present system of learning is not compatible with the child and he is drugged to fit in to the current school system. I am not judging the parents. The minute I became a mother, was the minute I stopped judging parents. Either they do not have the right amount of information or they deliberately took this decision because they desperately want their child to fit in!

Why this gets scary for me is because US is a country with options….lots and loads and tones of options. If the child does not want to go to a regular school, they can be home schooled or they can go to a different kind of school. But consider a country like India. What options do we have? At least I am not aware of any. We believe in route learning with a fierce emphasis on academics. Even if we have options we tend to pick a school that values academics more than anything. We derive our pride from the fact that our children can read much before the other kids. This mother I met at a Parent and Me class told me that she does not prefer a Montessori kind of teaching because, ‘They encourage the kid to do what the kid likes to do. What if my kid wants to paint and draw, when will she learn math and science? What good is it?’. First of all, that is not what goes on in a Montessori. They do teach math and science, but in a different way. Secondly what if the kid does not want to learn 1+5=6, in the traditional way, at the age of 3?

The lack of options is based on culture. Indian culture, for that matter most of the eastern cultures, is all about fitting in. While the western culture teaches independence, eastern culture teaches interdependence and conformity. The western culture encourages you to be unique and be proud of one’s achievements, the eastern cultures tells us to take no pride in our actions. So culturally we lack the ability to analyze a rebellious behavior and end up blaming it in the individual.

I know how hard it is when you don’t fit in. I spent my whole school life trying to fit in. I loved math and biology but sitting down and memorizing and spitting it out on paper in three hours is simply not my style. Boo talked about hating school, I can so empathize with her. I spent four years of college and three years in a software company making sincere attempts to fit in. All through college I kept telling myself that I am making my parents proud. The three years of work, I told myself that I can do it, I can do anything, only if I put my heart to it. Well, I was able to get things done, but I lacked initiative, I lacked imagination and I was not 100% myself. It kills me when I am not 100% myself. Do you know what a big toll that takes on a person’s confidence and self-image? You cannot give pep talk to yourself every single waking moment. Analyzing every single action and coming up with a reason is so draining.

The two things I commend myself are discontinuing my MS after the first semester and now pursuing what I like, of course, much to my parent’s displeasure. Don’t get them wrong, I had a happy childhood, but it could have been happier if I had studied something like home science/bio tech/bio chemistry.

Sometimes we parents tend to ignore what is best for the child because we want the child to fit in. No I take that back, parents do it because thee want to fit in. It takes a lot of guts to explain to friends, relatives and the whole world why you are doing something different with your child. When there is no goodness of fit, life can be tough.