Reading Between the Years
This is a space for the conversations that don’t fit neatly into headlines, talking points, or inspirational slogans about aging.
We’re two friends in our sixties, living this season in real time — the physical changes, the relational shifts, the unexpected griefs, and the freedoms no one prepared us for. We’re not here to offer advice or tidy conclusions. We’re here to talk about how it actually feels.
Each episode, we read between the years — the years behind us and the ones still unfolding — and name the emotions that often go unspoken. The doubts, the humor, the tenderness, the anger, the gratitude. All of it belongs.
If you’re tired of the rhetoric and ready for the real story, you’re in the right place.
Pull up a chair. This is Reading Between the Years.
Reading Between the Years
Chapter 5: The Plot Twist Years
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(Just when you think you had it figured out)
So we're gonna hi, it's Dana. Hi, it's Judy. Nice to see you again. We kind of had a plan on what we were gonna talk about today, but we've uh already gone off the rails, let's be honest. We're gonna talk about something else because I had a uh I listened to uh the radio, of course, when I'm walking, and we even in this coldness, we've been walking outside, and one of the things that I heard the other day just really sparked something in me. So we're just gonna dig into that a little bit. So a woman was telling a story. Yes, I listened to kind of self-help call-in shows, I dig them. It makes me feel a little more sane or something, I don't know. Yeah, and um, a woman was saying that she didn't know how to help her son who was an addict, a 17-year-old younger person who was having some substance abuse issues. And then, of course, to in order to kind of look at what was going on currently with that person, they wanted to know some information from the pr from the past, right? Want to know what this child's upbringing was, what, if anything, kind of reared its head during their childhood and what was going on. And I thought it was interesting to me that the family member said that, oh yeah, he was diagnosed with ADHD anxiety and depression at like 12 or something like that. And I thought, okay, so if you have a child who's already feeling, I don't want to say off, but feels like something's cooking, right? And they see differences between themselves and the other kids. I mean, who knows in uh in that early age who's the one that's off and who isn't? Um, because kids are kids, right? Yeah, especially boys. Yeah, oh, big time. So did this diagnosis or label perpetuate the addictive behaviors? Or was it something that I guess that's my only question, because I don't know how it could make things, yeah, because they're already feeling off, then all of a sudden everybody else feels that they're off to the point where they get a label. So they can't get away from it, right? How are they ever gonna rise above something that's the first thing on their chart, especially if you're a young child and you don't have a lot on your chart? So every medical person that they go to, anybody they go to where they see their medical records, the first thing it's gonna say is ADHD, anxiety, depression. And I'm sorry, who wasn't anxious and depressed in your young years? Yeah, who wasn't? It's been that way forever. And I felt so bad for this kid because the mom's telling these stories about how you know sometimes addictive behavior is escapism, right? And the reason people do it is sometimes it works, it makes them go to a place where they don't feel this. But did the labeling make that worse? Was my question.
SPEAKER_02I, you know, my gut reaction to that is yes. Yeah, but it all depends on how his parents or family or um you know, whoever his caretakers um couch it. Um it just yeah, it just depends on how they how they say it, how they do it. Yeah, but that label, you're right, medically in his record, it's always gonna be there. And especially if he was on med, he or she were on meds for it. And are we too quick to say, yes, this child has ADHD or even just ADD? Um, and is it normal and are they gonna grow out of it? And why do we have to document this kind of stuff? Did we used to? Yeah. Uh so that opens up whole Pandora's box. I think it does. I think I think labeling, I think any type of what's considered now mental illness is a label.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Even though we try for it not to be, because we say, take care of yourself and you deserve the help. And of course, because so many people have this, just think of how many people have this. You're just one more, you need to do something for it. But is it just one more? And why do so many people have it now? Is it because we're being labeled? Um and if we are, is it normal? Yeah, is this just growing up? Is this hormones? Is this teenage years? Because there's a huge, you know, facet of how those overlap.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And whether they're gonna last up until you know, throughout your life, or did I am I gonna grow out of this like childhood asthma, you know?
SPEAKER_00Well, and you brought you brought up a good point when we were talking off off camera, was then they add medications to the mix. So this poor person already feels anxious, and then medications are added. It's like you're you're especially if we're going into puberty and all that kind of stuff, too. You is that does this child have a chance? Does this child have a chance? They already could have been totally normal already. I mean, and I I understand because I I kind of raise this concern a little, probably a little rudely, with some coworkers who have a a child that's now what is it, oppositional defiant, blah blah blah, ADHD, you know, has all those at like four years old, has those diagnoses. And she said that it in order to get this the help that she needed, they had to have that diagnosis. Because so then she said they couldn't get the meds and couldn't get like counseling and stuff and and training or however you the behavioral consults or whatever, unless there was a diagnosis. So that's a trap of the medical system, then or the mental health system. It's like, yep, okay, so I get it. You feel grateful to have the diagnosis, and I know a lot of people feel grateful when they get a diagnosis. You think you're going crazy when you don't think, but if it meets some criteria, then you get a diagnosis, so it makes you feel better that you're not crazy observing it, and it gives you more access to resources. What a trap is that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's crazy. That is absolutely crazy. And you you brought up something. Um, what do you need help with? Do you need help overcoming something that is a normal part of your life as a four-year-old or a 12-year-old or a nine-year-old? Or do you need help with what you've been labeled now because of the former? So, what is that? Are and and and the fact that you have to be diagnosed with something in order to get help for it, is ludicrous. Yeah, that's just I mean, that's obviously insurance related. Yeah. Um, and we all know how messed up the US insurance health insurance are.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I'm can I'm convinced that if my older brother, who is now brilliant, who was always very smart, very brilliant, and probably one of those kids who just had too much, just couldn't tolerate the stupidness of being a child because he was already probably so advanced. But he was very active. And if he was probably a kid now, he would have been medicated at a young age. But my parents instead decided to get us into a sport, and they chose swimming because that was big in our area. So he would come home tired and chlorine pool, right? He'd come home clean. He hopefully wouldn't smell, but he would be worn out. But it's like, why sleep? Yeah, I I so he that's how we dealt with it. But I guarantee if he was a kid now, he probably we would have been labeled something and would have been gone down a completely different road. Yes. I mean, we can the yeah. I mean, we watched a kid at my grandson's hockey game the other day, one of the little brothers of one of the players, and it's a weird situation. It's freezing cold in the ice rink. You know, it was actually colder in the ice rink than it was outside. And if you're anywhere near Michigan or anywhere, it's cold outside. So this kid was going nuts, throwing himself on the floor, um, like doing this booty popping thing, which was hilarious. He was probably four years old, just doing all this crazy stuff, wrestling with his buddies, and out of control, his mom was holding this child and there was kicking and flailing and all this kind of stuff. And it's like for a moment, I was like, Yeah, I could see that that kid would be labeled something, but also, hey, mom, pay attention to your child. I mean, I don't want to judge parents because I'm sure I wasn't the best parent ever, but it just makes me wonder is it a I mean, we all hear this conversation, is this just a shortcut to making your kids behave so you don't have to deal with them?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that's always been my first thought. You know, you mentioned your brother about how your parents decided to put him on the swim team or get him swimming, or you guys and swimming. It gives a whole new meaning to physical therapy. Physical therapy, you know. I are you yeah, it's kind of scary looking back at it because we would have done the same thing with our youngest, who's now 33. He was he was advanced um um mentally, he was advanced when it came to you know knowledge and stuff like that, but it came out as um um like complacency with homework in high school. We're talking high school, and by the time he was a sophomore, he was failing regular classes, and and it wasn't because he wasn't doing the work, which he wasn't, but he wasn't interested because he was past it.
SPEAKER_01He was bored, yeah.
SPEAKER_02His classes in high school were completely boring to him because he was advanced, and so, and of course, they wouldn't let him take the AP classes because of his grades, he didn't apply. And um they wanted us to, I'm not real fond of the school system, but they wanted us to, in fact, the uh the principal even said take him out of school and let him do the the um well, well, take him out of school part-time, but when he's in in the building in class, they suggested taking all the hall walking classes. You know, you can do study hall and you could do this, and you could do shop and you can do all this kind of stuff, but you pay extra for to get him through the English and the math and the history classes from home. And I said, absolutely not. That's your job. He could hall walk and take that stuff at home. It's your job to get him through the classes that will make him eligible to go to college. That's ridiculous for you to say that you're um discounting what he needs to graduate. We ended up homeschooling him for the last year and a half of high school, and he was fine. But it gave him the freedom, at least we recognized it gave him the freedom and more structure to say, you're doing this between 10 and noon, and then you're you're free between 10 and 3, and then you're doing more homework between three and five, which fit his physical and mental schedule. Yeah, but they refused to recognize that. And if we had taken him to a doctor for being ADD, which he is, I mean, I am, and well, not ADHD, just ADD, just attention deficit. Um, he would have been on meds, which he didn't need. He needed a different lifestyle, and until maybe six, seven, eight years ago, people didn't recognize that. And I think it's one of the reasons why homeschooling has become such a huge choice for some people, is because they recognize that their kids don't have a traditional, you know, 7 to 230 um you know, school course in their head, their body just doesn't adjust to that. Yeah, it it doesn't make any sense. So, yeah, meds, would they put him on meds as well, like your brother? Yeah, they would have. Yeah, but we were gonna let that happen because we knew he didn't need it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that would have been a label that he has he would have lived with, you know.
SPEAKER_00I wonder, I wonder if parents these days feel the horrible word empowered to say no to meds and stuff to say, I wonder, like I wonder if the push is from the parents. I'm sure it's situation specific, you know, it all change. But is it parents pushing it or is it doctors pushing it? I wonder, or teachers saying you need to get this fixed, or you know, I it's interesting. I wonder who is the primary pusher of all of this.
SPEAKER_02I think it's a lot teachers, because teachers don't want to deal with it even more than you don't. And when I say you, I mean a parent. Um, do we want to put our kids on a med so they don't act like children? Some people do. Yeah. The teachers also will very quickly put your kid in a, you know, um the not special education, but what's the uh what's that called? Uh EAP, you know, um for special, you know, like attention, not special needs, but just special attention, they'll you know, eagerly do that because it's one less child in their class that they have to worry about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, you're gonna go to this class because those kids are doing you know different things, and I'm got the blinders on, so you don't fit here. And the teachers are calling the parents, calling school counselor, calling school nurse, calling you know the principal or anything, and saying, Okay, we need to have the parents in and talk about this child, blah blah blah, because they're out of order.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And what's the definition of that? You know, what's the definition of all of it? Yeah, that's uh it reminds me ADHD. Yeah. And then you get into different other complications of say a divorced parents. One parent wants to put them on a medication or even a non, you know, um, an herbal type of medication or something like that, and the other parent doesn't. What do you do? And then that hangs out for a couple of years, and then the child changes. And so does he still need it now? What what are your thoughts now? And they're just still hemming and hawing and fighting over it, and nothing ever happens. And then, you know, that everything changes every week, every month, every year, and three years down the road, you know, now they're um a ninth grader, and what are they like now? Oh, went and stole a car, you know.
SPEAKER_00I'm just kidding. Well, so much of that is is the yeah, it's so hard to know. I remember a kid when uh my granddaughter was in a gymnastics class, and my son was so upset because the whole class, half an hour, no, 50 minutes of little kids doing gymnastics was spent on these two sisters that were losing their minds and wouldn't want to do it and couldn't do it, and crying and throwing a fit and all this stuff. And so I get the teacher's perspective, I understand that. And I think if there was good partnership with the teachers, the parents, and the medical society and the medical world to, like you said, go back and check every couple of years. Because I tell tell my son that all the time, oh, you don't like how she is now? Give it two weeks, there'll be something else going on and it'll switch, like when the babies are in the crying fit, or when they only want the mom or they only want the dad. Right. It'll change because they're growing. And that I get, you know, it seems like everybody's trying to solve for the easiest path. And when you have education system parents that are busy doing all their stuff, and like we talk about, they're dealing with their stuff too, and then the medical system doesn't really work well for it, and the mental health system and insurance, it's like the old Swiss cheese, right? Where they're just happened to find the holes through all of that, and the child ends up paying the price for it. Yeah, yeah. I was just so sad for this little boy because I thought he he never stood a chance. And really, ultimately, maybe the depression and anxiety was us, you know, reaching looking for a connection somewhere. Maybe there was something just simple, simple, something easy. That's why I spend a lot of time with my granddaughter just saying things that I would have loved to adhere at 10 o'clock or 10 years old from my grandparents. They didn't do anything wrong by not saying it because that's once again a generational thing. Sure. But maybe all it takes is one positive, one hug at a certain time that can make them realize that they are connected. There is, they do belong. Because I think so much of it is just looking for belonging. But I don't I mean, I I could be talking about I mean, I know I'm talking about something I don't know anything about, but I wouldn't I wouldn't say that's not true.
SPEAKER_02That's not true. Sure, you do.
SPEAKER_00But I don't know. I mean, I'm guessing I'm acting like kids have a choice in some of these diagnosable behaviors. Maybe they don't have a choice. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I don't think they do. Yeah. I mean, uh I mean once you get into your teenage years, if it's that late, yeah, they would probably would have something to say about it. But when you're, you know, like you said, the four-year-old, they don't have you know, they don't even know what's happening with themselves, let alone have a say. No, it was ten-year-old, maybe, you know, a 10-year-old you can reason with and you can have a discussion, but a seven-year-old, maybe not.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Watching this little boy at the hockey game do his little booty dance was so Jim, you know, was laughing, of course, because it was hilarious. Yeah, it's one of those situations as a parent, and I don't think people realize, yeah, your kids are hilarious, and sometimes you got to pretend you're not laughing at what they're doing because you need to tell them not to do that again. But it's so funny. It's like, what are we supposed to do? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's like so much energy, so much energy. Do something with the energy. Like you said, your brother, you guys swam. Yeah, it's physical therapy.
SPEAKER_00It was a brilliant choice, brilliant choice. Yeah. So share a little bit about that study that you found from the 70s about this. I know 70s is a long time ago, but it was it's very interesting, and I have to believe there are studies, it'd be interesting to know now. But like you said, this shows that some of this stuff's been going on for a long time.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, really, very long time. You're referring to the Rosenhan experience, and you guys can look this up online if you want. I'm sorry, experiment, not experience, I think. Um so there were a group of people who um admitted themselves into psychiatric hospitals as and they were considered normal people. But like I said, it was it was a controlled experiment. They all um faked a diagnosis of hallucinations or someone telling them something. And um even though once they were in the hospitals, they acted normal. But everything that the psychiatrists or the psychologists saw them do, they labeled them. So what they did was act the patients acted normal. They wanted to see, and the doctor who created the experiment, which was uh David Rosenhan, um instructed them to act normal, just take notes on what was happening, what they were doing, and things like that. And so eventually, even back then, when you admitted yourself, you couldn't um um discharge yourself like you can today. So they kept them and they wouldn't let them leave. They diagnosed them with their note-taking as something that was, or even flushing a toilet was obsessive-compulsive, and they gave them labels just about the normal things that they were doing every day. Um, and they wouldn't let them leave until they admitted to the doctor that they had a problem, and then they were allowed to be discharged, which is crazy. Um they wrote a paper on it what that was published. And um, like I said, you guys can look this up on Google or whatever, the Rose and Han experiment. It's scary to think that that was done in the early 70s just to test out these psychiatric hospitals to see where this trend was going. And now, it and like you said in the very beginning, do these labels follow us and are they necessary, or is this just a normal course of life? Yeah, and it's to me, it's one extreme or the other.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that's why having someone to talk to or having your grandma hug you, like you were talking about, is gonna create that connection of conversation. And throughout our whole series, we've been talking about communication, communication, communication, communication. And if you can't, and a four-year-old obviously can't say, I'm feeling a little you know blank, um, because they're four.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But as parents or grandparents, we need to recognize the fact that are our kids normal? Well, they're normal until said otherwise, but who's gonna say that they're not normal? Yeah, and it's such such a trend, it's such a problem. And it just it's like the roots of a tree just goes, actually, the roots of a weed, it just goes everywhere. Everywhere, yeah, invasive, it's an invasive weed, it's like poison ivy.
SPEAKER_00I mean, because I remember vividly we moved overseas when I was eight and came back when I was like 13 or something, and we were a big swimming family, so we always had someplace we had to be. We'd go to school and then we'd go swim. And then we ours was sports too. Yeah, and I just desperately did not want to have to didn't want to have to do anything. I wanted to be able to just be left alone. And I remember our pool was broken, so we lived in a town that was a royal spa, so it had a spa, and then of course, from the Roman times they had since turned it into a pool. So we would go work out in the pool, and our pool was broken, so we had to go somewhere else. And I have no idea where this was. It'd be interesting. Unfortunately, anybody that could tell me, of course, has passed away. But um we drove by a mental health hospital, or of course, back then we probably called it an insane asylum. Don't judge me, that's what we called them. Yeah. Um, and I thought I had heard somewhere that they could just put you to sleep, put you to sleep and give you like rest and just let you kind of take a break, and then they'd wake you up like a week later and then you'd go back to your life. And I'm sure it was wrong. I'm sure it was nowhere near what really happened at this place. But I remember desperately going, Can I just, I just want to, can I just go to sleep? Can I just not do this for a while? And if you think about that now, if I were to say that, if I was 10 years old right now and say that, holy cow. Yep. You know, and I uh it just depression and suicidal tendencies. That's a great thing. Yep. And I would it something would have happened, and you know, eventually I was out of that season. It was probably winter too in England, which is about pr is pretty dreary. And uh it was probably just a phase, and I don't remember ever feeling that way again. But it was just, I think about how grateful I am. Well, I never told anybody that's too true, too, but you know, it passed. I'm grateful to myself that it passed. Yeah. And if you grab that instance and you grab that instance, like it's that's who you are, that's where you are, and you're not gonna change or evolve out of this, and that's where you hit them with the diagnosis and the medication, you don't stand a chance. Right, right.
SPEAKER_02And we're not, I just wanted to clarify, we're not talking about people who need true mental health. Oh, sure. We're just talking about the more of a surface thing, um, and things that I think every doctor or parent would see as normal that other people don't, especially teachers. Yeah. Well, I mean, you and I are both teachers in a way, but um, but yeah, we're not talking about a true um psychiatric health of people, we're just talking about a different realm of all of that, um more toward the surface. Um, but yeah, you're to pinpoint that for you, that would have been very different. Yeah, very and everybody, every child, no matter what age, yeah, gets to a point, especially how old were you then? 10?
SPEAKER_0010 or 11, probably.
SPEAKER_02Everybody every child feels overwhelmed with tasks and what they have to do and do this, and you have to do that. Now I got homework, now I got this, now you're making me go to bed and brush my teeth, and stuff like that. Everybody needs a break, everybody needs a brain break, a mental break from I just don't want to do anything for a while.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you can just leave me alone, right? And that was, and I think that's why going back to some previous conversations we've had, that I am so like this with my granddaughter who's 10. Because I remember being 10. I remember it vividly, and I really don't want her to to feel. I mean, I can't, it's part of her journey, her journey's gonna be whatever it is. But if I could help her not feel that way at any time, absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I'm I'm she's so lucky to have you to have to recognize that, to be a part of all of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it's it's it's how those generations just collide. You want to think they won't, but they collide.
SPEAKER_02I would love to continue this. We need to wrap up, but I would love to continue this next week, and then we can get into what we were talking about last week was losing a family member somehow. But I think we have more, a little more to say about this whole thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Wonderful. Thanks everybody. Stay tuned.
SPEAKER_02Stay tuned.
SPEAKER_00Bye.