Michael Reist

“I have said earlier that the typical attention span of a child is his age in minutes. If a parent or teacher expects that a ten-year-old should be able to focus uninterrupted for twenty or thirty minutes, those are unrealistic expectations. When the adult gets to the part of the questionnaire that says, “Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities,” she has to check off one of the following modifiers: always, often, sometimes, rarely, or never. Because of her expectation that a ten-year-old boy should be able to focus for twenty or thirty minutes, she is likely to check off always or often. Is this realistic? Will these kinds of answers lead to a diagnosis of ADD in a boy whose behaviour is perfectly normal? Two other statements on the questionnaire are, “Often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected,” and “Often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly.” Let’s imagine a December-born boy in grade one sitting with a January-born girl on each side of him. How will he appear? Does he have ADD? I have heard it suggested, and I completely agree, that no child should be assessed for ADD before the age of seven, and even that is pretty young. The “clay” is still very soft. In our modern schools, where we are in the business of making kids “normal” and measuring normalcy, our yardsticks may be flawed. Our standards for normal have two aspects: the tools we use for measuring, and the attitudes and expectations we bring to interpreting the results. We should have great humility when it comes to diagnosing kids. Are our tools accurate and our expectations realistic?”
― Michael Reist, Raising Boys in a New Kind of World

“Today, especially since the advent of the Internet, the distinctions between child and adult knowledge, experience, behaviour, tastes, and interests are becoming blurred. Increasingly, we have a kind of adolescent society in which children become little adults at thirteen and adults remain big adolescents until fifty or later.”
― Michael Reist, Raising Boys in a New Kind of World