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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]op - I guess my point is that I do wonder if we are slightly pathologizing 'normal' - or rather my point is more nuanced. I come from a different country and I've noticed that [b]Americans have super high expectations of behavior and self regulation from kids. Where I come from, at school, kids are way more 'rambunctious' when younger - playground scuffles, lots of crying from 5-8, lots of mean words, lots of staring out of the window when should be buckling down.  And teachers deal with it in different ways depending on the teacher and the school. [/b]But WAY fewer diagnoses. Now you could 100% argue that is a bad thing and I think largely that is correct. But I do think we are reaching a crunch point. Either we change our entire understanding of neurology to multiple different neurotypes instead of just 'normal' or 'autism' or 'adhd' (basically the only choices for kids) and start setting ALL humans up to understand their unique learning and communication style, OR we change the parameters for diagnoses and separate them from health insurance criteria (which is an insane yardstick to be using for a lifelong diagnosis). [/quote]

I agree with you that our modern parenting and school expectations are a huge problem.  It didn't used to be this way.  We/Americans used to know that children are children and not mini-adults but we seem to have forgotten.  Is it the increase in small families with 1 or 2 children or childless/child free adults and the disappearance of large families with lots of children? So there's a lack of knowledge and experience of children?[/quote]

I think a big piece of it is the rise of 'professionalism' which America and China are the leaders in. 'Professionalism' - aka absolute emotional regulation, efficiency of output and communication and conformity to strict behavioral standards are probably tacitly considered to be the 'benchmark' by which human success is measured and that translates into expectations of our children. There is no room for even a nt person to deviate substantially from this archetype and so we are holding our children to - essentially - junior corporate standards. That's one theory.[/quote]

This has a ring of truth to it. I think of how emotionality is treated in society and how large shows of emotions (even positive emotions) are often frowned upon. I also think of the rise in anxiety generally among both kids and adults and wonder how much of that is just repressed emotion that people are afraid of expressing in appropriate ways for fear of being deemed insufficiently controlled and logical.[/quote]

I feel this!
I work in a corporate setting and basically feel like I am ‘acting’ all day. It is a real problem for my mental health. Professionalism means controlling all your emotions and having them come out in only a few ways as narrowly acceptable. I see the school training my kid in this same way and having that expectation and it’s so hard to meet! I talked to a mom the other day of an 8 yo at the school who was getting all this feedback about his lack of frustration tolerance and inability to accept losing a game and inflexibility and I was thinking ‘the school is trying to tell you they think your kid has asd’ bc I know how this goes now seeing it over and over. But these things are connected - not sure if I’m expressing myself well [/quote]

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