Who is Hyperactive?

In his book, Who Dies? Steven Levine asks us to look beyond the obvious and consider the deeper side of the grief we experience around the death of a beloved person. He suggests that much of our pain, (more than we think), is about our own fear of death projected onto the one who has died. In this sense he suggests that the one who is left behind has an opportunity to awaken to the death of their own illusions about their immortality and the nature of their own eventual death.

In a similar way I think we are seeing our children take on the burden of our own denials in life and I am asking us to earnestly reconsider how we often brand our children out of our failure to see what we are projecting onto them.

In a book called The Hurried Child this topic is dealt with at great depth, but I will offer my observations and concerns more briefly, in the hope that people will turn for deeper understanding to such literature that is now available about the effects that our lifestyle choices are having upon our children.

I am not denying that children, in some cases, may be manifesting symptoms that lead to a diagnosis of ‘hyperactivity’, what I am concerned with here is the life process in the family and society that has led to the symptoms in the first place and then to the child being treated as if the child is the origin of the symptoms. Perhaps we really have here a case of the pot calling the kettle ‘black’. If that is so then the only way out of what is called an ‘epidemic’ of hyperactivity and a growing dependence on the pharmaceutical industry, is for each parent and teacher and adult to take a very thorough and honest look at the world that we are demanding children accept and respond obediently and even happily to.

If a plant that is potted in known-to-be dehydrated, malnourished, even toxic soil, fails to thrive, would we focus upon treating the plant directly or would we add water and nourishing soil? I am suggesting that most children today in so-called developed or developing countries are being born into dehydrated and malnourished social soil and then being largely blamed for failing to thrive or for manifesting behaviours that we adults find difficult to integrate into our lifestyles: behavious that are a natural, even healthy response to an unhealthy environment.

I am addressing in this article the issue of children growing up in a society that is primarily focused upon attaining and maintaining its material affluence for the price of mental and emotional and ‘spiritual’ well being. Often the assumption behind such a personal / social agenda is that the material affluence will automatically, one day, set everything else right: that enough material comfort will spontaneously engender an abiding, gratifying even permanent happiness in individuals and families and the society as a whole. There is no evidence, to my knowledge, that affluence leads to such outcomes.

Besides, the nature of ‘happiness’, as I understand it, is that it is fleeting. While deep peace in spite of both happy and unhappy moments may be something that we can aspire towards with some hope of attainment through rigorous self-responsibility, the ephemeral nature of the sensation of happiness places it always beyond our control. When we place the burden of our adult happiness upon the shoulders of children, or even adolescents, we are really placing the mantle of the scapegoat upon them. If you remember the original Hebrew story of the scapegoat you will remember that the High Priest would transfer the sins of the community onto the goat and then send the goat out into the wilderness. How often do we act like this with our children: diagnosing them with ills that we have helped to inflict upon them by forcing them into lifestyles that are totally ill-fitting for the needs of a child’s natural growth: adult food, adult entertainment, adult information, adult timetables, adult issues, adult activities, and the list goes on.

Unless we make the decision to have children in the light of knowing that it will necessarily change our adult lifestyle irrevocably, and then choose to be at peace with the ‘losses’ to our pre-child aspirations, then we are punishing the child for those losses if we try to force the child to live according to our adult needs. Children are not ‘little adults’ who should be able to accommodate our adult lifestyles and behave so as not to disturb our adult plans.

The presence of a child or adolescent in a room should change the nature of what happens in that room from what it would be if it only contained adults. The presence of a child or adolescent in a family should change the nature of the family. The presence of children and adolescents in a community should change the nature of that community.

When we try to turn children into little adults, or expect them to behave like little adults, or praise them when the act like little adults we are telling them that they are here to meet our perceived needs, needs that are largely unconscious and largely based upon our own imbalanced natures, driven by cravings and aversions.

When a child ‘stops to smell the roses’, and they do this naturally and without any ability to control it, as part of their becoming part of the world, and when we interrupt this constantly or punish the child, we do damage beyond repair that lasts a lifetime. It is part of our job as adults to facilitate ‘rose-smelling’ in a child and adolescent’s life. Do we know this when we choose to have a baby? Do we accept this, when it comes to us in ways that we did not anticipate and that do not fit in to our picture of our personal or professional life? Are we adults so busy hoping to get to our own rose-smelling ‘one day’, say at our retirement, or so jealous that we don’t get to smell roses ourselves, that we have to stamp it out in our children?

I am not suggesting that we are doing this consciously or deliberately; in fact I would suggest that we have even forgotten what roses smell like.

Rudolf Steiner’s work suggests that unless we learn to linger on the sensations that we experience every day, and by lingering form conscious relationship, then we risk drying up our own souls, those of our children, and the world soul.

Rather than dwell-into-immobility upon the guilt of our past deeds, let us awaken to the possibilities for inner-ecological transformation.