Snug Organics Blog

In Defense of the Tom Sawyers

Tuesday August 31, 2010

I recently read an article featured in The Week by Anne Applebaum called The ADHD-ventures of Tom Sawyer.  As the mother of two boys, I found it refreshing, especially after a 19-hour road trip.  I highly recommend reading the entire article, but here is an excerpt from The Week:

“If he were real and 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’ 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 ‘curiosity, 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”

Thanks for the article, Anne.  I totally agree!