Xander and Chloe's Reign of Terror

On the Epidemic of Disordered Childhood

Meet Xander and Chloe, the celebrated offspring of two educated and very distracted parents. These two little nuggets love to make a stir; being noticed for their endearingly awful behavior is just part of being special—-and to see their trophy shelves, you’d know they are special, indeed.

Their habitual fits of anger and eardrum-piercing objections are “caused” by unfortunate things like red food dye, fatigue, or poor reading skills. Therefore, they must carry fun iPads everywhere the family goes, or they’ll melt down. Their parents’ commands, cleverly disguised as perky questions, are usually met with defiance or ignored altogether.

From a shelf full of soccer trophies to a summer packed with boredom-crushing lego “camps,” Xander and Chloe have impressive resumes. Their academic pedigrees are off to a good start at the local expensive private school. At the after-school Little Tigers club, Xander can learn yoga, and Chloe can design a robot.

Their histories full of travel, art classes and swim meets would shame the average adult. However, those same adults would rather drive or walk than share an airplane row with these budding little Napoleons.

I sat behind a Xander and Chloe on a recent flight to Florida. Both were dressed ominously in trendy sweatshirts announcing “here comes trouble” and “be kind”. Obnoxious, but endlessly coddled by their hipster dad, they bucked the system from takeoff to landing.

Xander (short for Alexander, as in The Great) would not condescend to sit in his boring airline seat, preferring to roam the main cabin. Mom was seated nearby, willing to suffer his cute disobedience. Passengers around him suffered, too, but not so willingly. Poor, sweet Chloe; she could only sit comfortably if holding her snack and her iPad.

It was a mercifully short flight, clocking under two hours and one snack, but service for Xander and Chloe occurred several times during that span. Juice boxes, Pirate Booty and Skittles fueled them through 20-minute rounds of brattiness. Placating these airborne punks on longer flights probably requires a Wonka-level candy experience.

Off the plane, life isn’t much different for these two upstarts; If Chloe is brazen enough to defy her mom’s impotent suggestions, she meets quick justice in a four-minute “time out.” Brave Xander will not leave a playground until his dad counts to 3, at which point he may or may not be dragged off the playground kicking and screaming, but certainly not before. The playground trip is only possible on those insufferably dull days when Little Kickers or Kindergym or Kreative Kidz isn’t scheduled.

If Xander and Chloe sound familiar, it’s because their parents are, too. Chasing cultural imperatives and working, mom and dad have little reserve for anything too serious. Those heady matters are left to the real experts— public and private educators, child psychiatrists and social justice activists.

The main job for these parents is keeping their little people properly entertained (preferably by a sitter) or socialized in groups. When downtime pops up, mom arranges something—anything— to fill that weird gap in the schedule. Other parents know what’s up immediately when they hear the loaded (and dreaded) invitation to a playdate with bored Xander.

No doubt, their parents love them “to the moon and back”. Yet somewhere along the way, they’ve shrunk from the gritty task of training up children. Their void has been filled, though; Group activities and the village have taken their place quite nicely. The doctor even said the kids have ADHD anyways. With that, they settle for a household of chronic, low-level brattiness and meltdowns, unconvinced that things could be any different.

Before digging in further, I must acknowledge a couple things, first about parenting and then about medications. I’ll start with parenting: I’m a very imperfect mom to six very imperfect children. To be clear, I haven’t managed to produce any sinless olympians or geniuses, because I’m not one, either.

People who observed my parenting style probably criticized me, too. Goldfish won’t kill you, but I imagined a slippery slope, so my kids only snacked on whole wheat muffins (or Ryvita, in a pinch). I helicoptered and fretted on public playgrounds, hand sanitizer on the ready. High School Musical seemed edgy to me, so Little House on the Prairie and old Scooby Doo episodes filled the air instead; no harm done, but my homeschooled hyper-vigilance probably seemed a little goofy.

As for medications, they are blessings when they beat back the curse in our broken world. I’m not here to condemn drugs that help mitigate life-threatening situations. I will even allow that some children, due to genetic or environmental factors, have mental disorders that can be helped by medication.

What I’m addressing here is medicalized disobedience and pitiful parenting. I’m not talking about the normal ups and downs of saints and sinners struggling to raise other saints and sinners. I’m contending that our growing legion of ill-behaved, over-celebrated and medicated kids are products not of disorders, but of disordered thinking. They suffer the dysfunctional ideas of parents, educators and doctors, as well as those that flow naturally from their own, digitally jumbled brains.

Raising six children in an affluent community has given me lots of thoughts on parenting. Nobody in my area lacks for anything. Most have iPhones by 5th grade, organic meals, club memberships and private educations. Nobody sits at home in the summer; children are busy at camps when the families aren’t vacationing.

Amazingly, in this wealthy enclave of college-educated parents, a large number of kids must do an obligatory stint at one of two elite language remediation schools. Many of these children are diagnosed with ADHD or dyslexia. It’s hard to imagine that so many successful adults in an expensive zip code have offspring that have disorders, but that is what we’re told.

I’ve observed children who attend these schools, and for many, “disorders” and disobedience seem to go hand in hand. You can spot them easily at little league games and playgrounds; their parents pacify them negotiations, iPads, treats, and choices. Parents trained in pop psychology are less willing to fight the good fights, so their little people are emboldened— and often unpleasant.

Years ago—when it started, I’m not certain—parents my age were discouraged from disciplining with spankings. We were encouraged by Today Show parenting experts to “empower” our kids through choices. Far along into that fad, we have a generation of kids sporting blue-haired, genderless looks, dependent on medications, and riddled with anxiety.

We know what built the Greatest Generation, but how did we get the Brattiest Generation? We could trace our problems to some very basic things, like our neglect of the sobering influences of faith and family time. We could point to our breathless calendars of good things that have crowded out first things.

In the end, though, we must lay the real blame on adults, and primarily parents. A leadership vacuum at home creates a void that worldly wisemen and woke influencers are happily willing to fill.

Parents around here pay big bucks for private educations designed by the academic far-left. Educators who spew expensive nonsense shun old-school sensibilities because they reek of intolerance, patriarchy, or some other woke sin. Meanwhile, these privileged children are taught to cheerlead for transgenderism or crusade for climate justice.

In many of these schools, traditional ideas about discipline are also frowned upon. Just years ago, social justice activists pushed to bring “restorative justice” into schools. It was cheered as an equitable alternative to traditional discipline, and on paper, some of it sounded nice. The results are in, though, and that woke experiment (like most progressive projects) has fared poorly.

So what can you do if you can’t really discipline your kids anymore? Parents are told to empower kids by giving them choices, correct them by using time-outs, and asking how they feel about things. The advice seemed to have worked—now kids are choosing their genders and sitting around making TikToks about their feelings. Ideas have consequences, after all.

Modern parenting advice is often full of psychotherapeutic ideas that complicate discipline from the earliest ages. An example from one educational discipline website tells parens how to deal with a 3-year-old’s grocery store fit:

“Be encouraging. Get down at eye level with him and say, “You can handle this. Breathe with me. You’re safe.” Scoop him up, hold him in your arms and breathe deeply with him. When his body relaxes a little, say, “There you go, you’re calming down.” Then tell him he has a choice, “You can sit in the cart and hold the list, or you can sit in the cart and hold your truck.” Once he makes his choice, celebrate your success together, “You did it! You calmed yourself down and that’s hard to do.”

For the loud meltdown and emotional manipulation, this little gangster was rewarded with affirmations, choices and a deep-breathing exercise. Our kids do need compassion when they fail, and showing grace can unlock a stubborn heart. However, the Stuart Smalley act, with its psychotherapy vibes, isn’t doing that three-year-old any favors.

Many in my generation had a different understanding of authority. We learned quickly that moms had a certain tone and touch that meant someone was getting a spanking when we got home. (I also recall the way my mom could “guide” me out of a room with a pinching hold on my arm. ) Maybe mom didn’t behave like a therapist, but she did remind us that we weren’t the center of the universe—and dang sure not at Publix.

Some of us failed to pass those lessons on, perhaps thinking we’d advanced beyond our parents’ dated sensibilities. Maybe we have, but moving beyond common-sense discipline isn’t necessarily advancement.

Adding to our problem, we’ve consulted doctors who happily provide drugs to mitigate our parenting messes or boost grades. When a parent or school can’t engineer success, doctors can try their hands, although even the psychology experts have warned about that. (In fact, in some homes, both parents and kids use medication to navigate the day.)

Schools, for their part, have been proudly introducing neuroscience into their teaching methods, something you’ll see touted in the private school industry. Parents can get it on the game, too; one book title typifies the neueroscience fad: Second Nature: How Parents Can Use Neuroscience to Help Kids Develop Empathy, Creativity, and Self-Control.

Children do grow up, though, and some bring their Adderall to college and beyond—all the way to retirement. According to this article, the coming wave of distracted senior citizens must plan their retirements around their ADHD. Perhaps our retirement homes won’t be so sleepy anymore.

When my college senior was just 11, we frequented the neighborhood park at the end of our street. One day, a boy we’ll call “Ethan” randomly whacked her with a tree limb, causing her to nearly lose consciousness. His nanny just chased him away, and then they left. On another playground visit, angry Ethan spit on my daughter, who wasn’t even playing with him. His mom, subbing for the nanny, apologized and explained that “he has ADHD.”

All the progressive methods and medicines are poor substitutes for yesterday’s spanking spoons and Judeo-Christian mores. Popular PhD tricks aim to outrun the inconvenient truths about human nature and avoid the unpleasantries of real punishment. These lame innovations continue to pile up failures because our minds, hearts and wills are not just circuitry; they’re marked by the Genesis fall and won’t be perfected by neuroscience or medication.

Adderall doesn’t conquer an unyielding spirit, and breathing exercises don’t address belief systems built on lies. They cannot cure the disease at the root of things. The experts may consider faith and truth irrelevant in the age of neuroscience, but as it turns out, they are essential soil for raising sounds minds.

Finally, we must point to the screens that have shortened both kids’ and adults’ attention spans. Our voracious digital appetites have exacerbated all the other failures. As online time has increased, so have ADHD, depression and dyslexia diagnoses, which makes our technologies (and the prevalence of “disorders”) deeply suspicious.

I’m no neuroscience expert, but I’ve been raising children for 21 years now, which counts for at least something. During that time, smart phones and social media have turned children and parents upside down, scrambling healthy brains or drowning them in trashy trivia. I can count my own wrinkles in iPhone years.

Flickering imagery and online games have short-circuited developing minds. Hipsters can mock Andy Griffith and Little House all they want, but our world would be nicer filled with Opies and Lauras rather than the overindulged and screen-addicted patients that roam it now.

Our kids’ devices are also pipelines of the idiotic and crude, and no medication is an antidote for such poisons. Graphic sexual exposures and violence cut deeply into tender consciences; disturbing and perverse images cannot be unseen.

Ironically, digital damage usually occurs through devices paid for by parents and provided at ridiculously early ages. Most of my kids’ friends had phones by 6th grade, and social media soon after. Our rotten fruit is often home-grown.

What is one to do? Parents must learn to say no, with gutsy confidence. The serious calling of raising a self-governed child requires more sense than is found among the elite educators, dubious gurus and TikTok stars that now speak into our children’s lives. Keeping their toxic spew at bay means saying no to woke K-12 schools; no to the disorder industry and its prescriptions; and no to smart phones until high school. That may seem extreme, but regaining ground requires tough measures.

Enough of the bad news, though; there is always a corresponding bright side. When you take something toxic away, you must replace it with something good, something real. Much of the garbage we should reject fails the test of authenticity; it is manufactured pleasure, designed to shield us from realities.

The real stuff—lovely books, lively debate, family dinners, the outdoors, and even housework—sits waiting behind the whirlwind of nagging distractions. Walking a dog in the rain; listening to a chapter from Narnia; building a fire; craning our necks to see shooting stars in 25-degree weather—these all eclipse Pokemon, social media and gaming. Our children need the real things, and so do we.

Reality is sometimes harder, too, and often sweatier, but always closer to the heart of God. Behind each real beauty are glimpses of his genius and hints of his own pleasures. Behind each real pain is the longing only God can satisfy. Our highest endeavors echo the instincts of his own great heart. Real is so much better than easy.

The transformative moments of parenting aren’t happening at seminars on “understanding your child’s emotions”, “the neuroscience of learning” or “navigating ADHD.” It’s in the uncomfortable but necessary exercise of the everyday means of parenting grace; the magical word “no”, good conversations, and real things—but when needed, get out the spanking spoon.