the darker side of r/Homeschool

As I continue to learn from the r/Homeschool Reddit community, one of the things I've come to notice is just how many parents on that subreddit are dealing with what's politely called neurodiverse children. I seem to have discovered the dark side of this online community. 

The term neurodiverse is used in contrast with neurotypical, and neurotypical is a word to describe us normies, i.e., the people who generally know to deal with other people and situations by being civil, being polite, and behaving in expected, rational, socially acceptable ways. By contrast, neurodiverse kids—the ones on the autism spectrum, the ones with ODD (oppositional defiance disorder), the ones with ADD and ADHD—are a frenetic, neurotic, agitated, screaming handful, especially for well-meaning parents who are at their wits' end. I can't help such people, so I usually don't contribute to threads about problem children, but I find myself disturbed that there are so many kids who are neurodiverse, i.e., who are overwhelmed by sensory data and unable to process reality normally.

This may actually be one of those times where I appreciate the oppressive steamroller of Korean conformism. There's a proverb famous in East Asia: the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. If you're the lone Asian who—like Gary Larson's energetically nonconformist penguin singing Sammy Davis's "I've Gotta Be Me" amid a sea of other penguins—can't help but be loudly different, you're going to end up crushed, and you'll come to know your place. In Korea, neurodiversity just means trouble. The social situation may be changing, but if it is, the change is happening at a glacially slow pace. Asia is not where you want to be if you have any sort of mental illness. Here, mental illness is still stigmatized. My point, though, is that, by being less accepting of neurodiversity, Korean parents are less likely to let their neurodiverse children get away with a lot of princely or princessy bullshit, and I suspect that a good portion of neurodiverse Korean kids grow up as more-or-less functional members of society, precisely because their parents wouldn't put up with their shit and kept hitting their kids with heavy doses of reality: when you're around other people, you WILL behave this way, etc. To me, this is all well and good. Am I a mean, unfeeling bastard to think that way? Maybe. But I suspect that, whatever its negatives, the pressure of social conformity in Korea may actually serve a constructive function, at least within limits.

I guess the unpopular opinion I'm stating is that, in America, the problem with neurodiverse kids may be, in part, a function of parents who allow their kids to act out because they've been hypnotized into thinking that the traditional forms of discipline (e.g., spanking, banishment to the bedroom) all amount to child abuse and should never be employed. The result is what you see: frazzled, emotionally retarded American kids with no impulse control running roughshod over their parents, who have been trained to "accept their kids' individuality," i.e., to fetishize personality disorders. I admit I'm too much of a coward—especially since I'm still fairly new to Reddit—to voice this opinion over at r/Homeschool. If I were to suggest something like, oh, spanking over there, I'm pretty sure I'd get rugby-tackled by dozens of angry moms screaming about abuse and torture. So I remain silent when this type of topic comes up.

But it's still unsettling just how often the topic of neurodiversity does come up.