Ritalin doesn't equal discipline

Good opinion piece. good common sense.

Preschoolers are so much fun because they are still young enough to be innocent, precocious and cute and rambunctious all at once. They can talk to you, but it doesn't always make sense. They have vibrant personalities and an energy that is unsurpassed.

While reading a newspaper the other day, I was appalled to discover that some people have apparently found it necessary to begin giving active preschoolers Ritalin, a drug that is not recommended for children under the age of 6. Although I now realize this has been going on for years, I wasn't aware of it until last Friday.

I am absolutely opposed to small children being put on Ritalin. I don't believe it's necessary or even healthy for them to be exposed to a psychiatric drug at such a young age. Discipline is the best way to amend a preschooler's behavior. Many adults are simply unwilling to enforce it and therefore claim a child is unmanageable and must be medicated.

This may be a seemingly simple solution at present. But what about the future? How will this mind-altering medication affect these children in five years? Ten years? Twenty years? Is it worth the risk?

The government has completed its first study on the long-term effects of Ritalin on preschoolers, and the findings are not that positive. The overall conclusion of the study was that people should take great caution before putting their preschool children on Ritalin.

Immediately, this warning would be enough to keep me from further considering medicating my child. However, if one were to need further persuasion, there follow some more specific findings of the study.

Eleven percent of the children dropped out of the study due to side effects, which included irritability, weight loss, insomnia and slowed growth. About 40 percent of the children involved experienced side effects. The study can be found in the November edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Researchers did say that the benefits of medicating children with severe ADD outweighed the risks involved. But I'm not convinced. No preschool-age child needs Ritalin.

I realize that there are some children who may need Ritalin in order to combat their attention disorders. However, I believe that far fewer need it than are actually receiving it. ADD has become a catch-all solution to any behavioral problem a child may have.

We need to teach our children at a young age to take responsibility for their actions and to learn to control their behavior. It's possible. People have been disciplining children for years. It works. Sure, it may be easier for you to medicate your child than punish them, but discipline isn't really about what is easy for you.

The function of discipline is to teach a child what is acceptable behavior. It accomplishes nothing to tell a child that he is not responsible for his behavior, except to encourage that behavior more because he believes that he cannot help it.

Ritalin eradicates a need for discipline. Instead of struggling against a child's will and trying to teach him to control his urges, let's give him a pill and simply subdue all those urges. It's easy. Effective. Solves the problem for today. We'll let the kids worry about tomorrow.