Millions of Kids Are on ADHD Pills. For Many, It’s the Start of a Drug Cascade.

QP! said:
This is something i am deeply bothered by.

My best friend and his wife were threatened by their sons grade school to get him on these drugs or he would be expelled. He was hyper active and a distraction in the class room, as was i as a kid. As are many young boys.

Young boys are often like puppies and if you do not give them outlets to burn energy constantly expecting them to sit still and learn and focus is just not going to happen for many and schools have been so changed to 'how young girls learn the best', while the things that benefit boys (intense and rough paly times) have been shut down.

Lucky for my best friend that his parents were rich and they just paid for the family to move to a new district with an All Boys private school.

The school told them his energy was great and they would use it. He was to get to school at least an hour early where they would numerous HIGH INTENSITY activities going, like basketball, hockey, etc. the day was filled with 'fun' extra curricular items to tax the body and brain.

HIs kid became a top hockey goalie (full ride Uni scholarship), a high level piano player (also provided at school), and a very good golfer (walk on to Uni team), and was a straight A student, all because they channeled that energy and did not drug it out of him.

Who knows how he would have developed on the drugs? Maybe he would be A student regardless but i doubt it. Likely a middle pack 'good kid getting ok grades' with everyone thinking the drugs should get credit for that.
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I think a lot of people share your concern, the idea that “that little boy is hyper, let’s put him on Ritalin.” As someone with ADHD who wasn’t diagnosed until high school and didn’t start taking medication until the end of college, I’m definitely not against kids who truly need it having access to it. But I also get the worry about overmedication and a boy simply being a boy getting treated like he needs to be drugged.
 
cawacko said:
I think a lot of people share your concern, the idea that “that little boy is hyper, let’s put him on Ritalin.” As someone with ADHD who wasn’t diagnosed until high school and didn’t start taking medication until the end of college, I’m definitely not against kids who truly need it having access to it. But I also get the worry about overmedication and a boy simply being a boy getting treated like he needs to be drugged.
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i think it is a massively complicated question for a bunch of reasons :

- certainly some kids will need it and benefit from it
- we will never know the counter factual if the kid would have failed, got in legal trouble, other? ... without out
- or if they would have had much more success like my friends son with another path

So i will never judge individual parents and their kids for the choice they made.

What sucks is that school never talked to my friend and his wife about 'other options' and it was 'medicate or get expelled' they were put to.

And i get few parents can afford what my friends got via the grandparents wealth, but still that option, needs to be presented and imo, tested, before putting a young boy on drugs.

If a pre school exercise program and mid day exercise program can be devised and they show results parents then have some options, even if very hard to act upon.
 
QP! said:
What sucks is that school never talked to my friend and his wife about 'other options' and it was 'medicate or get expelled' they were put to.
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They do the same with kids wanting to be Trans and abortion

Never talk to the parents about other options
 
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