Depending on who you talk to and what articles you read, Attention Deficit Disorder and its accompanying Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder are either becoming an epidemic or are being over diagnosed. ADD and ADHD respectively started becoming prevalent when I was younger. Some of my friends were diagnosed, got the medication, and claimed to get better. These days, about 1 in 9 children are diagnosed with the disorder and almost all are placed on medication to help them cope and to "cure" them. But the drugs are not really a cure, they just subdue the symptoms, and to date, no one can actually claim to have found a cure. Well, I think I have. While not scientifically proven through a double blind study or with large quantities of children split into two groups to measure its effectiveness, I'm standing by my meager findings. Granted, my son does not have ADD or ADHD, but upon viewing him during his afternoon witching hour or during a weekend morning where his routine throughout the week is skewed and thrown out the window, one might think that he had the "disorder". In the afternoons, he tends to be a little scattered, jumping from activity to activity, running back and forth like a maniac, and lending plenty of evidence to the phenomenon that every parent knows all to well, the witching hour. On weekends, he can be scattered due to the lack of a set routine as he is used to on the weekdays. All this can make for a child that seems to be fully engulfed with a disorder on par with ADD or ADHD. Yet, I know he doesn't have either despite appearances. So what is this magical cure that requires no prescription and no ingestion of some foreign chemicals miraculously assembled so as to alleviate symptoms of some "disorder"? Simply put, the great outdoors is my magical cure. There is nothing quite like it to settle a cranky, disorderly child. In the midst of the worst tantrum, all we have to do is open up our backdoor, put boots on our sons feet and let him go outside and everything he was feeling and acting up about inside goes away. Its almost as if some magical switch was flipped within him that changes the whole nature of his being and puts him on a new path to normalcy.
As I mentioned before, our son does not have ADD or ADHD, but seeing the difference between our son indoors and outdoors is phenomenal. I bet if he had the choice, he would play outside all day and possibly even sleep out there if given the option. Yet, at 2.5 years old, those are not options that we will entertain at this point in time. Perhaps this summer he will have the ability to play outside for a majority of the day, but right now when the temperature lends itself more to jackets, hats, and runny noses versus shorts, t-shirts, and a tan, we will limit the time he spends outside. Being an outdoor junky myself, I couldn't be happier that he wants to spend as much time outside as possible. Almost every afternoon we have to bring him inside screaming when it is time to make dinner, all because he wants to keep on shoveling the shrinking piles of snow in our backyard or get those last few minutes in his sandbox in. (Yes, even now in the cold he wants to play in his sandbox). And the past two weekends we have gone on family hikes, our daughter who is 2 months old, our son, my wife, and I, venturing into the "wilderness" for an hour to decompress, enjoy nature, and just be together as a family. On both weekends, our son walked the entire way himself and didn't want to leave when our hike was over. The last hike we went on brought us to Southford Falls State Park where our son was enchanted by the waterfall and him and I literally spent a half hour throwing sticks into the water. Every time we ran out of sticks, his response was, "Find more sticks?" To which I always responded, "Of course we can find more sticks". Well, I responded that way up until it was time to go. I guess one of my biggest fears now is that there won't be any children his age who actually want to go play outside. I'm sure there will be a few here and there, but I fear the majority will be stuck inside glued to their TV's, computers, and iphones. It was happening when my brother was younger. His friends mostly wanted to play inside when he wanted to be outside. I can't keep technology from our son forever, but for now, I would much rather have him go fall in the mud (as he does quite often) and get some bruises than be plastered to the couch with a screen inches from his face jostling his young brain and creating a life of dependency on technological gadgets. We shall see what the future brings, but for now, lets celebrate the fact that in addition to loving the outdoors, he put his pants on by himself just the other day. They were backwards, but they were on and he was proud of it.
As I mentioned before, our son does not have ADD or ADHD, but seeing the difference between our son indoors and outdoors is phenomenal. I bet if he had the choice, he would play outside all day and possibly even sleep out there if given the option. Yet, at 2.5 years old, those are not options that we will entertain at this point in time. Perhaps this summer he will have the ability to play outside for a majority of the day, but right now when the temperature lends itself more to jackets, hats, and runny noses versus shorts, t-shirts, and a tan, we will limit the time he spends outside. Being an outdoor junky myself, I couldn't be happier that he wants to spend as much time outside as possible. Almost every afternoon we have to bring him inside screaming when it is time to make dinner, all because he wants to keep on shoveling the shrinking piles of snow in our backyard or get those last few minutes in his sandbox in. (Yes, even now in the cold he wants to play in his sandbox). And the past two weekends we have gone on family hikes, our daughter who is 2 months old, our son, my wife, and I, venturing into the "wilderness" for an hour to decompress, enjoy nature, and just be together as a family. On both weekends, our son walked the entire way himself and didn't want to leave when our hike was over. The last hike we went on brought us to Southford Falls State Park where our son was enchanted by the waterfall and him and I literally spent a half hour throwing sticks into the water. Every time we ran out of sticks, his response was, "Find more sticks?" To which I always responded, "Of course we can find more sticks". Well, I responded that way up until it was time to go. I guess one of my biggest fears now is that there won't be any children his age who actually want to go play outside. I'm sure there will be a few here and there, but I fear the majority will be stuck inside glued to their TV's, computers, and iphones. It was happening when my brother was younger. His friends mostly wanted to play inside when he wanted to be outside. I can't keep technology from our son forever, but for now, I would much rather have him go fall in the mud (as he does quite often) and get some bruises than be plastered to the couch with a screen inches from his face jostling his young brain and creating a life of dependency on technological gadgets. We shall see what the future brings, but for now, lets celebrate the fact that in addition to loving the outdoors, he put his pants on by himself just the other day. They were backwards, but they were on and he was proud of it.
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