That is not surprising at all. I'll bet that a good 25% of the kids at camp have been stuck there by parents who would rather be doing something other than being parents. Drugging their kids is just one way to avoid the perceived hassle of dealing with them. Sending them to camp is even better.

When I was young my family vacationed together. No camp. I was a lucky boy.

Thanks for teh rant. I agree, Ritalin is way over-prescribed.
"calming down enough to show an interest in television" -- like that's a good thing.

Snippets about the find here: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2007/03/20/ap/headlines/d8o046u80.txt

From the article: "As a Scout, Michael had had some wilderness training... They do a great job in the Scouts of educating the kids of what to beware of and tips."

Like WHAT, for instance??? Don't wander off on your own in the wilderness? If you realize you're lost, STOP MOVING?

It took FOUR DAYS to find this kid a mile or so from camp, and I'll bet it was because he wouldn't stop moving.

Once again, dumb luck and the efforts of a bunch of volunteer searchers saves the day.

Sue

It's way too easy to say that ADD doesn't exist. Almost as easy as a teacher recommending psychiatric drugs because they're incapable of handling a class.

I've got ADD. I've had it all my life. Taking meds makes the difference between functioning and not.

ADD means Attention Deficit Disorder. ADHD means Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. They are not the same, despite usually being run together.

Hyperactivity is a kid thing, and often seen as a fault, which it isn't. In the school system, it replaces dyslexia as the excuse for poor teaching methods. As ADHD is dampered down, another "mental disability" will show up to replace it.

But ADD truly does exist, and by leaving hyperactivity out of the equation, it is probably very much underdiagnosed. Many of the kids who have it are quiet. Some of them even do well in school, simply because they force themselves to learn something.

When I found I had it, I was shocked, and it bothered me for a long time. I always thought I was "normal" (relatively, anyway). I thought everyone's mind worked like mine. Then I found that not only did I seem to think differently from a lot of people (I knew this ), but I had trouble learning things. In school and most my working life, I was able to take notes and refer to them to get the job done until I was used to doing it. Then I got a job where I wasn't allowed notes, and talk about S hitting the F. I felt like a total idiot. They would tell/show/explain something, and unless I could keep doing it right away, over and over, I forgot a lot of it. Talk about having to be retrained after lunch! I guess I'm bright enough, but I just have the attention span of a gnat. It's more debilitating than you could realize without experiencing it.

So please don't blow off the suggestion of ADD if someone dares suggest your kid (or YOU) have it. Have an evaluation done. Educate yourself. Ask questions. INSIST on answers to your questions. If you don't get them, go elsewhere. But don't handicap your child because of your wishful thinking or other people's opinions.

There are naturopathic treatments that really do help (that's what I take) if you don't want 'hardcore' drugs.

Sue

great post martin

No doubt in my mind it took 3 days considering terrain and condition Search and rescue is not just a walk in the park.

To reinforce what Martin said, one thing that a lot of folks don't realize is that Ritalin use is a bar to military service. That might seem like a good thing to some, but certainly not all. Do you really want to red flag your kid for life?

Recently I was asked to help out with a Cub Scout pack here in Brisbane. These are young boys and girls (yes, they have girls in cub scouts here) who are 8 to 10 years old. The first day I was in class, I mostly observed how the class interacted, helped out with setup, and spoke to the kids a bit one-on-one. What was apparent was that every one of these kids must have ADHD, as they seemed incapable of any sort of self control, were constantly distracted from the task at hand, and had the scout leaders (both young adult women) yelling at them to get their attention and try to control the unwanted behavior.

On my second visit, I was asked to teach the kids how to make a survival bracelet (just like the one we've seen here on this forum). At first, I had to deal with all the frenetic energy that had been the usual habit. Instead of trying to captivate a lost crowd, I took one of them aside and began teaching them how to do the weave in front of the rest. Once the kid had it going, I moved on to another one and got them started, and so on. Many were simply unwilling to focus on the task, that is until the first one started getting excited because hers was forming up. I never yelled at any of the kids, I left the other scoutmasters to keep them from wandering off too far, and I actually taught the scoutmasters how to do the weave so that they could also help out. By the end of the session, most of the kids were busy working on their bracelet, a few were still wanting to visit and carry on, but the group was essentially quiet and under control. By the end of the night, I had picked one of the younger kids who stayed on task the whole night and, in front of everyone there, I awarded her my LED flashlight that I had since first going to Baghdad. I told her about how special the flashlight was and with her dad standing just a short distance away I showed her how to operate it. On the side of the flashlight was one word, "Attitude" (how great a coincidence that was). It was time to replace it anyways, though it was still quite functional and in pretty good shape considering.

The next meeting, most of the kids came up at the beginning and asked if I was going to show them any more cool things to make.

IMHO, ADHD is an excuse for adults to justify not dealing with kids in the manner to which we have evolved. ADHD cannot be some new disorder, just recently visited upon mankind. So how was it dealt with in the eons before modern psychology discovered this "novelle clinique"?

This may sound a bit crude, but I believe it is consistent with our history, and I know it sure works well. When I was growing up, I spent a good deal of my time doing chores. School, playtime, and even meals were a privilege. If I didn't get the chores done, then I would be prohibited from my privileges until they got done. I hated doing chores, but I had no choice. It taught me to value my free time, to appreciate my provisions, and to focus on doing well (if I didn't bring home good grades, then I got more chores, dad figuring that manual labor would be more in my future and wanting to condition me accordingly to that lifestyle, or motivate me to aspire to greater accomplishments). I only ever missed a few meals (surprisingly I didn't die, just got really hungry). I also didn't just sit around when I had the chance to go play either. Sitting around was a sure invitation that I needed something more to do.

I believe there are some kids who need medication. I met one who had suffered some brain damage at birth. You could run that boy into the ground, and he would still fidget so much he would scratch sores on his face. He was otherwise fairly normal. When he got on the right medication (and that didn't happen right away), he became a lot more functional and able to integrate with his peers. However, I do not think that most of the kids on meds today really should be. I look for cause and effect. Without physical cause, there can be no associated manifestation. That means that whatever abberrant behavior is observed can be conditioned and trained to be under control (I suspect that sounds suspiciously Dianetic, if so, then that's what I've been doing with all my dogs over the years, with great success I might add). I won't say you can eliminate it, as it is a personality trait, and I abhor the notion of conformity. I think we are all different in many ways, and the dynamics of human psyche challenge the notion of labels for normalcy, thank God. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses, some would say alchohol really helps them do better. To each his own. Susan's example is a great indication of how we can adapt to overcome inherent difficulties to accomplish great things.

Back to the point, I reckon it was the extra clothing and the modicum of training he retained that had a bigger impact on his survival than all the drugs he's been given over time. I doubt very much that Ritalin or any other mind altering chemical is going to make a huge difference in our ability to survive such an ordeal.

I thought I'd share an interesting reaction I received from the Scouts in my troop tonight. After we opened the meeting, we all sat down in a big circle, and I asked them if they had heard about the Scout that had been lost since Saturday, and was found today. Many of them had, some hadn't. I gave a basic recap of what we knew about the story to get them on the same page, then I asked them what they thought of the situation, what they think went wrong, what they'd do differently, etc. Then I let them talk for a while.

I was actually a bit reassured by what I heard.

The initial reactions were disbelief, not that it couldn't happen, but, that it took 4 days to find a kid that was a mile from the campsite. I tried to jot down some of the things that came out. They said things like:
"What an idiot, didn't he STOP when he knew he was lost?"
"Why didn't he blow his whistle, or bang some rocks or sticks to make noise?"
"Why did he leave the campsite by himself?"
"If he made a fire, they would have found him faster, and he could have stayed warm while he waited."
"Yeah, and maybe he could have boiled that water he was drinking out of the stream, might be nasty bugs and stuff in there, he could get the runs from bad water like after eating too much of Mr _____'s Dutch Oven chili" (LOL on that)
"He should have used his flashlight at night to try to signal"
"Who walks out in the woods by themself, especially without a map or compass?"
"If he had his trash bag, he could have made a sleeping bag out of it"
"In the woods, he could make a lean-to with some branches like we did at camp last year"
"He should have had something shiny to flash at the helecopters"

I stopped taking notes at some point, and was amazed to watch a couple of the older guys start to "coach" the new guys. After a while, we kinda broke up this activity, because they had some planning for our upcoming camping trip, but, it was a good 15 minutes of these guys basically brainstorming about the scenario. It was really pretty cool to watch. It was also interesting that they just assumed the boy had certain things on his person if he was in the woods, something we kinda drill into them once or twice a year, maybe 4 or 5 months ago most recently. I asked them at one point what they figure he probably had in his pockets, since the story said his backpack was left at camp. They said he probably had a knife, flashlight, matches or a lighter, maybe a trash bag or space blanket, a whistle, and water bottle.(Most of them hang a Nalgene water bottle on their pants with a caribiner around camp.) They rattled off other things he should have in a daypack, but, I think they all thought about what they carry around in their pockets anytime we're camping. They knew he should have a map and compass, for example, but, seemed to conceed that most of them don't have them in their pockets hanging around camp. The whistle, knife, fire, trash bag, and water kept coming back. Not a bad place to start if you are already wearing appropriate clothing. Not exactly all of the 10 essentials, but, some pretty key things to make waiting for rescue a little easier.

When we were locking up the church for the night, one of their dad's, who isn't at many meetings, but, tonight had been lurking and listening off to the side because he came to bring us some camp paperwork and a payment, basically said something like: "what you're doing here is important"

I gotta say, sometimes you wonder if anything you're doing with kids penetrates their skulls full of mush... tonight, I really felt good that some of them had actually absorbed basic survival knowledge over time, and were at least marginally better prepared than average. I wasn't teaching anything tonight, just kinda doing a "quiz" that turned into a great discussion. There is hope.

Great story. And definitely, this job is really something to be proud of! In Russia we had the obligatory course of "Civil defense" once every week for several years of study in the school. They were in fact really useful urban and wilderness survival lessons. I'm still remember (past more than 20 years) our class on wilderness trips full of survival games. So sad it was discontinued with the Soviet Era collapse.