Last week, Esquire published a story I wrote called "The Drugging of the American Boy." The process of reporting and writing the story was, in many ways, completely depressing. As an editor at a men's magazine -- and more to the point, as a former boy -- what I discovered was enraging.

To an astonishing degree, boys are being diagnosed with ADHD reflexively, absent any meaningful evaluation and, as a result, a lot of them are being put on powerful medications that can seriously mess with their health and development, both physical and mental. The problem of unreliable ADHD diagnoses and overmedication has been acknowledged before, but I came away believing that few people understand just how pervasive the problem is.

Few people understand that it's a crisis.

One true high point of the experience was encountering Howard Glasser, founder of the Center for the Difficult Child in Tucson, Ariz. Glasser created a therapeutic method called the Nurtured Heart Approach, which is now practiced by a growing number of therapists in the United States. (You can learn about it in the article and here.)

Photos by Sarah Wilmer

Read Ryan D'Agostino's "Drugging of the American Boy."

By the time they reach high school, nearly 20 percent of all American boys will be diagnosed with ADHD. Millions of those boys will be prescribed a powerful stimulant to "normalize" them. A great many of those boys will suffer serious side effects from those drugs. The shocking truth is that many of those diagnoses are wrong, and that most of those boys are being drugged for no good reason—simply for being boys.

Now, in the news, comes another glimmer of hope, from Bruce McLachlan, principal of the Swanson School in Auckland, New Zealand. (Coincidence: Glasser was nearby, in Australia, last week training teachers to use the Nurtured Heart Approach.)

According to a story in Canada's National Post, McLachlan has rattled the world of education by doing away with rules during recess. Students can play however they please, even if someone gets hurt. From the story:

"'My son broke his arm in the playground, and I just want to make sure…" he began.

"And I'm thinking 'Oh my God, what's going to happen?'" Mr. McLachlan recalled, sitting in his "fishbowl" of an office one hot Friday afternoon last month.

The parent continued: "I just wanted to make sure you don't change this play environment, because kids break their arms."

Kid fell out of a tree and broke his arm? It happens. Boys are using sticks as swords? Let them. (We're assuming that deliberate physical attacks are still off-limits.) McLachlan reports that there have been fewer reports of bullying and vandalism, fewer injuries on the playground, and more focus in the classroom -- all, at least in part, as a result of his new policy, the Post's Sarah Boesveld reports.

We were raised among boys and would have loved such lawlessness, though we wonder how many kids would have been left standing at the end of recess. Still, we appreciate the inclination. This kind of thinking should be happening everywhere, and yet too often it's the opposite: More rules about sitting quietly and not throwing stuff. Kids, especially boys, need to throw stuff. If they aren't allowed to, they might act out in class, and then someone might try to put them on drugs.

Here, they're allowed, or even encouraged, to get their hands a little dirty. And it's working.

Ryan D'Agostino Ryan D'Agostino is Editorial Director, Projects at Hearst, and previously served as Editor-in-Chief at Popular Mechanics and Esquire's Articles Editor.

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