I recently watched the documentary BABIES, an incredible accounting of the first year in four babies’ lives. What struck me immediately (and throughout) was the relaxed freedom allowed the Namibian and Mongolian babies to experience their natural and social environment, while the American and Japanese babies’ “explorations” were so often controlled, structured, and (of course) scheduled.

I was similarly moved by an article on Slate.com, written by Anne Applebaum:

“If he were alive today, Tom Sawyer would be on medication. I recently reread Mark Twain’s wonderful novels about Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and, as the mother of rambunctious boys, found them ‘weirdly reassuring.’

Tom is a high-spirited boy with a short attention span, no use for school or anything that requires sitting still, and a defiant attitude toward adults and their rules. Huck, too, finds  sivilization [sic] unbearably confining, preferring the rough-and-tumble of life on a raft.

Today, both boys would be diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, given a handful of medications, and perhaps sent to special schools or corrective programs.

In the society of the 19th century, both Tom and Huck turn out fine. Their ‘curiousity, hyperactivity, and recklessness’ – the very qualities we’d deem pathological in 2010 – make them heroic and admirable, and there is space for them to carve out unconventional lives.  Nowadays, rambunctious boys either learn to sit down and shut up, or get a diagnosis and a pill.”

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