Let kids be kids, without 'magic' pills

Good column from Canton Ohio

Are we overmedicating our kids? Do parents today expect their children to be perfectly behaved adults by age 8, and, if they're not, do we look for a magic pill to make them act the way we want?

Kids who would once have been termed "rambunctious" are now diagnosed with one disorder or another, and in many cases, drugs are prescribed to settle them down.

Does your youngster talk too much? Have trouble concentrating on his school work? Spend too much time thinking about a computer game or TV show and not enough on his homework?

Don't worry. There's a professional somewhere who would be happy to declare your child suffering from some condition, for which, of course, there is a powerful drug to combat it.

TRUE STORY

Consider this:

Six years ago, my daughter was attending a parochial school in a Cleveland suburb. Mary was not doing well. Her grades were abysmal and the principal suggested that she suffered from ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. She urged us to take Mary to a psychologist and get treatment.

So we did.

The psychologist referred us to a psychiatrist, who wanted to place Mary on some hardcore psychotropic drugs.

I wouldn't let her. The "symptoms" that she recited to us - Mary's inability to focus on her schoolwork and her obsession with things of interest to her - seemed to me to be the normal tendency of a child. I felt she just needed to be redirected a bit. A lot of successful people did a lot of daydreaming when they were children, I believe.

So we bid farewell to the shrink and instead transferred Mary to another school - a public school - and an amazing thing happened.

Mary got all "A's" and "B's." And has ever since.

And all without drugs.

AN EPIDEMIC?

In Tuesday's Repository, a story headlined, "Are more kids bipolar? Study points to surge; experts doubt 'epidemic'," revealed that there has been a huge increase in the number of U.S. children diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But, the story went on to say, "experts question whether the surge is real and say some kids have been mislabeled. ... The jump coincided with children's rising use of antipsychotic medicine."

Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute suggests that heavy marketing of psychiatric drugs could have contributed to the surge.

Mike Johnson, CEO of Child and Adolescent Service Center in Canton, which provides mental-health care for children, said that of 100 youngsters preliminarily diagnosed with ADHD for whom medication was urged, only 40 actually had the disorder. The rest were basically ordinary kids acting like, well, kids.

I believe too many parents want an easy way out. Instead of providing discipline in the home, teaching a child right from wrong, taking the time to talk to them and guide them on the right path, we want a pill that will keep them quiet and out of our hair.

And what does all this medication do to these kids when they finally reach their teens?

A frightening question, indeed.