Dunno why, but this makes me sad. I think it's a "end of innocence" or "growing out of childhood" kinda thing, like when you stop believing in Santa Claus.
As for the notion of fixing things with drugs (see comment below), yeah, that's sad too. Whoever did this spoof could've used another reason, like just plain growing up.
"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being an adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
Furthermore, that cartoon has depressed the hell out of me.
Thank you very much for that quote. C.S. Lewis is, obviously, a genius. It depressed me too. I am, for the most part, opposed to medicating children, because I think it's nothing but a psychiatrists quick fix to a "problem" that the parents should take the time to learn to deal with ... or they shouldn't have become parents in the first place.
I was on ritalin all through high school. it was the worst idea anyone ever had. it kept me up nights so I was always tired, it made me moody as hell. I was tempermental, angry, violent. I got into more fights in high school than I have in the rest of my life combined. i was a really awful person back then.
The idea of this script is that any child that is 'difficult' is fixed with medication. In reality, medication can make the difference between a child that can't get enough education to survive in life and one that can function. As someone who KNOWS how much antidepression medication can make the world better, I see this as perpetuating the 'medicine is bad' myth that keeps thousands of people living in hell. Its not funny and its offensive as all get out.
I have to second this. It took becoming borderline suicidal in college before I got treatment, but I'd been in almost the same state even before entering highschool. If I'd recieved some kind of treatment as a child (and it looks like in my case it would have taken medication to stabilize me long enough to recover) I could have avoided a lot of misery.
I think what really bothers me is the implication that "being a child" is what's being fixed here. Calvin, for all that he's charming and entertaining, and obviously a bright kid, were he a real child he'd at the very least should be getting some therapy to help him learn how to cope with himself before he or someone else gets seriously hurt. This is the same kid that throws slushballs with rocks in them after hiding them in the freezer, and managed to crash his parents car, remember.
On the other hand, Calvin is a cartoonish character. Very few cartoons are sane, balanced, rational people. Sane, balanced, rational people aren't fun to write or read about for years on end. You don't fix Bugs Bunny and his rather sadistic prankish streak, and you don't fix Calvin either. But you don't ever ever suggest that a child who is mentally disturbed should be abandoned until they're an adult.
> I have never once left her office without having been prescribed something,
Time for a different doctor. No, really, what you describe is negligent and probably dangerous, and your statement is a sign that you don't trust her, either.
None of that is good, at all. Go to a different doctor, man.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 03:16 am (UTC)Makes me miss being a child.
A.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 03:31 am (UTC)(Also, note the title of the strip.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 03:53 am (UTC)As for the notion of fixing things with drugs (see comment below), yeah, that's sad too. Whoever did this spoof could've used another reason, like just plain growing up.
A.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 04:32 am (UTC)When I grew up, I gave up childish things, like wanting to be an adult and caring about appearing childish.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 01:24 pm (UTC)"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being an adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
Furthermore, that cartoon has depressed the hell out of me.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 06:50 pm (UTC)It depressed me too. I am, for the most part, opposed to medicating children, because I think it's nothing but a psychiatrists quick fix to a "problem" that the parents should take the time to learn to deal with ... or they shouldn't have become parents in the first place.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 06:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 07:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 03:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 04:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 11:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 01:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 02:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 02:22 pm (UTC)On the other hand, Calvin is a cartoonish character. Very few cartoons are sane, balanced, rational people. Sane, balanced, rational people aren't fun to write or read about for years on end. You don't fix Bugs Bunny and his rather sadistic prankish streak, and you don't fix Calvin either. But you don't ever ever suggest that a child who is mentally disturbed should be abandoned until they're an adult.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 10:51 pm (UTC)Time for a different doctor. No, really, what you describe is negligent and probably dangerous, and your statement is a sign that you don't trust her, either.
None of that is good, at all. Go to a different doctor, man.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 11:01 pm (UTC)