School knows best.
Chad Taylor is a concerned father and when he noticed that his 12-year old son Daniel was suffering severe side effects including weight loss, sleeping problems and lack of appetite he took the boy off of Ritalin. The side effects faded but Daniel’s disruptive behavior returned.
Daniel seemed unable to sit still and was inattentive. His teachers ultimately learned that he was no longer taking Ritalin.
School officials reported Daniel’s parents to New Mexico’s Department of Children, Youth and Families.Then a detective and social worker made a home visit.
“The detective told me if I did not medicate my son, I would be arrested for child abuse and neglect,” Taylor said.
I can’t say it any better than Kevin of WizBang, my source for this story:
There’s an old saying that when your only tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail. It’s no different with Ritalin. ADD, ADHD, and behavior problems are all multifaceted problems that require individually created and diligently applied solutions. Ritalin is the “magic pill” that the system is rigged to prefer, because it’s easy not because it’s the best solution.
Well, I can make one correction to Kevin’s statement. Change “magic pill” to “silver bullet”. They’re not interested in fixing the problem, they’re concerned with killing the monster.
If you think that Taylor’s situation is frightening, consider that his story is just anecdotal to the massive influx of heavy drugging for elementary school aged and younger children.
A recent study by Express Scripts Inc., a medical benefits management company, found antidepressant use increased 49 percent among consumers younger than 18 between 1998 and 2002. Preschoolers up to age 5, the study found, were the fastest-growing users of prescription antidepressants.
So we have a massive increase in psychotropic drug use in very young children and schools reporting parents for child abuse if they refuse to medicate their kids. Frightening.
Grrrrrr.
I think I’m probably lucky in some ways in that I wasn’t diagnosed until college.
I’ve had to go off meds after losing 25 to 30 pounds in a month. I’ve had to go off meds due to not sleeping more than 2 or 3 hours a night for a few days in a row.
IMO, the SCHOOL is trying to use legal methods to force medication that is injurious to the child. Hmmm. Who’s looking out for the child again? Oh, right, the person about to be arrested for child abuse and negligence.
Luckily, there’s a decent amount of case law AND legal stuff saying that this crap doesn’t wash.
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The other day my daughter (a 5th grader) and I were talking about this. Out of their little friend group of 5, only 2 (one is my daughter) are not on medication for some kind of behavior problem. Two take meds for “anger management” not sure what exactly they are taking and the other takes ritalin. When I asked her if most of her class was on meds she replied that they were. Pretty scarey. I know that some kids DO need medication. But the majority? I find that highly unlikely.
Huxley was right, 1984 is finally here!
This is unbelievably outrageous. It is absolutely criminal that ANY child is taking Ritalin. This is another example of these sleaze ball drug companies manufacturing a disorder in order to market a dangerous drug. There is no such thing as ADD. This is not a diagnosable disorder. The drug companies would like you to believe it is. People cannot accept the fact that children have different personalities and that not all will learn at the same rate. And some will be disruptive. So be it. This is life. So what do we do? We medicate our poor innocent children with a drug that has very similar properties to cocaine. This is a travesty. The only child abuse taking place here is with the parents forcing this crap down their child’s throat. 100 years from now we will look back at this nonsense the way we look back on the lobotomies of 50 years ago. That any child take any form of psychoactive drug is criminal. Including depression. It is time we take a real good look at why 8 year old children are getting depressed and other emotional disorders. This whole chemical imbalance crap is nonsense. I find it very difficult to believe that the brain chemistry of children has changed over the years to the point where we now have some sort of epidemic. The drug companies would like us to believe that however. Have we ever stopped to consider that it our deranged society that is causing these problems in children????? We really don’t want to face the music. It is far easier for little Johnny to pop a pill. This is beyond sad.
That…. is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life.
I used to be on Ritalin-type drugs myself when I was younger. I finally refused to continue taking them in senior year of high school. I don’t think that it’s at all a coincidence that it was almost exactly that time when my focused field of interest made an immediate and radical shift from physics (an exact, rule-based, very restrictive environment) to political analysis (a field that requires far more creativity). The fact is that these drugs severely stifle creative expression.
Me personally? I’m not going to pump my kids full of psychological drugs. These things don’t cure anything that old-fashioned parental care can’t cure. Except, of course, for disruptive activity in class — and that’s part of creative expression, remember? Everybody knows the famous stories about how Einstein failed math, how all the famous scientists and artists were disruptive as children. How many future Picassos and Feynmans are we destroying through the use of these pills? By forcing uniformity on our children, how much of them are we killing?
I disagree with Kevin, ADD is real and quite able to be diagnosed. I have three children with it. I am quite conflicted that two of my three children are medicated. My middle child suffered through 8 years of hell in elementary school trying to fit into the sausage grinder that passes for American Education.
There are now non stimulating medications for ADD, one is working wonders for my youngest.
The villian here is not the medicine but that fact that the school has any input on the childs medication. There are numerous bills working their way through State and Federal Legislatures that will end this problem.
The real tragedy is the the Child Protective Services is so far behind the times, and so uninformed regarding what is best for the child.
ALTERNATIVE TO MEDICATION:
I am surprised that so many people knowledgeable of ADD, ADHD are ignorant of the alternative treatment WITHOUT MEDICATION: Neurotherapy aka Neurofeedback aka EEG Biofeedback.
For information (beyond a Google search) look at
www.eegspectrum.com for the closest practitioner and personal training if desired (one can do like the founders of that company — parents of 3 kids in need of mental treatment: buy the machine and get a few days training and take the kids out of Ritalin quickly without any danger since teh kids take the head of their class — and keep it up to COllege as the past 20 years of such practice have demonstrated!)
and www.eegresearch.com for the list of 130 ailments that can be cured by neurofeedback.
Note: ADD patients are also called “post-encephalitis” patients hence who can treat ADD patients by Neurofeedback can also treat BRAIN INJURY! And have people recover instead of staying “mental” all their life on medication that only controls behavior — at least during a few hours a day!– never heal!
WHO IS GOING TO LOOSE FROM SUCH NEWS???
Of course, the pharmaceutical companies and whomever doctors are profiting from their kickback cruises at the other end of the world in recognition for their prescribing long lists of medications…
And neurofeedback remains a secret, well-kept secret as a result (almost destroyed some 50 years ago by the same $$$$-making people!)
Kevin, I suggest you look at Dr. Amen’s research sometime. http://www.amenclinic.com/ac/whyspect.asp
He does SPECT scans of the brain and has shown six different distinct types of ADD.
Alla, I am looking at www.amenclinic.com right now and I will read it in more detail later. It doesn’t prove anything to me so far. Just subjecting a child to this procedure seems pretty cruel to me. I find it extremely difficult to believe that such a large number of children in this country have brain disorders that need to be medicated with nothing more than pharmeceutical grade “crack”. I still find the drugging to be outrageous and VERY wrong.
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I think, that until they completely revamp the school system, we’re going to continue to see a rise in kids diagnosed with ADHD/ADD and put on drugs.
Our schools were originally based on the Prussian system, which was designed to produce good little cannon fodder after Napoleon.
Our government spends millions more on education for disabled students than for gifted ones. Many of the characteristics of ADHD/ADD are very similar to characteristics of gifted students. Which one do you think the school is going to recognize the same characteristics as?
As for it being pharmaceutical grade “crack” - I thought it was pharmaceutical grade speed?