project kb

"You consider medicating kids with drugs like Ritalin over-parenting.

Parents go out of their way to have their kids declared defective so that they can get the drug and so that they can also have "accommodations." This is a big deal. It has been going on for five or seven years now. Parents go out of their way and spend fortunes. Neuropsychologists do the testing. It's a huge business. "Accommodations" is not an informal word. It's a formal thing that schools do. Almost all of the accommodations are centered around prolonging the test time the kids have. It's no longer something that gets marked on your record. So colleges don't know if you had twice the time to take your SATs. That's why parents find it so highly desirable. But in the course of doing it, they have their kids tested to find some little quirk, some little vulnerability� And that's a measure of parental anxiety. And the parental anxiety is willing to put a negative label on kids. That's really something very new. You don't boast your strengths. You boast your weaknesses."

Excerpt from Andrea Sachs article Are you Turning Your Child Into A Wimp?
Time