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What appalls me is the label “hyperactive.” For those of us who have worked with genuine psychopathology, “hyperactive” implies a neurological abnormality usually involving the reticular activating system deep in the brain. In many cases the abnormality is so pronounced that it is picked up by as undiscriminating an instrument as the EEG (electroencephalogram). People who have this genuine kind of brain damage are very different from the school child who doesn’t sit still in the classroom and has trouble paying attention to boring seat work. Once you have seen genuine hyperactivity, you will never mistake the liveliness of Erica for this kind of pathology.
Rather than reflecting the pathology of hyperactivity, our squirming and wriggling youngsters resemble other young mammals of every size and shape. What baby elephants, puppies, kittens, rat pups, and colts all have in common is that their activity levels keep their mothers and sometimes their fathers on constant alert.
The elaborate nurseries of elephant, dolphin, monkey, and wild dog mothers are necessary because the energy levels of the youngsters surpass those of even the most energetic adults. As a result, the adults pool their energy resources and create nurseries. The same holds for us humans.
A healthy youngster keeps going long after the exasperated adult collapses in exhaustion. That is why we have Dad periodically take over from Mom, or older sibs, or grandparents, or yes, even our schools. Except that sometimes our schools are resentful of this task which they feel is beyond them.
Why all this energy? Why all this wild running and bouncing about? To build a healthy body. Those couch potatoes that so many schools seem to prefer have obesity problems with elevated cholesterol levels already in childhood! Then there are the social interactions we learn from such simple games as playing ball. The understanding of concepts such as fair play, taking turns, giving someone else a chance: these are the essentials of social living that are learned during childhood’s play. No classroom dialectic can take their place.
The frenetic activity of youngsters in the backyard or on the playground is serious work. To dampen this work through the administration of drugs implies a lack of knowledge of our biology and its purposes. But, you say, Erica surpassed many other youngsters in her energy level. Perhaps we should see her as especially gifted on this dimension. And she may well have inherited her high energy level from her mother who was the driving force behind the family business. That business held the family together as well as giving entry-level jobs to numerous youngsters in the neighborhood.
Human diversity has enriched all our lives. Musical, mathematical, verbal, athletic abilities, and yes energy levels are not evenly distributed among us. Instead, each of us has a special mix of aptitudes with which we can delight and enchant each other. To call a particular mix excessive, especially when there are people all around us showing how successful the mix can be, seems bizarre. And yet, in the last 30 years, I have seen a rising population of children labeled as “hyperactive” simply because they resemble their successful parents. The high energy level of these parents frequently was essential to their achievements.
I am so glad that Erica’s parents understood—that they did not heed the advice of her school, and perhaps destroy, or at least inhibit, the wonderfully energetic and creative woman she came to be!
 About the Author:
Dr. Fuller is a developmental psychologist and creator of the successful reading series, Ball-Stick-Bird. To reach her with comments and questions, please write:
Ball-Stick-Bird Publications
PO Box 429
Williamstown, MA 01267
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Website: www.ballstickbird.com
View article references and author information here: http://pathwaystofamilywellness.org/references.html
 This article appeared in Pathways to Family Wellness magazine, Issue #17.
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