Reply #4: I've always felt that way

[sybylla]

We were told that both our boys needed to be medicated at one time or another in their school career. Usually it was by teachers who were either uninspiring or just didn't want to do their job. We never took their advice. Both our boys did fabulously in school - finishing in the top 10 percent. They are both currently attending college with engineering majors.

It seems when a teacher or sometimes even certain parents are presented with a problem involving a child, the first thought is that there must be something wrong with the child. It's never about their approach in dealing with the child. This isn't to say that there aren't legitimate problems that do need legitimate assistance in some form - whether that's medication or one-on-one help. But it seems the more common solution is to drug first and worry later whether or not that was the best course of action.

I don't know if I would have stood so strongly for my boys if I didn't have a nephew who was medicated beginning at age 2 because his mother didn't have a clue how to deal with him. Therefore, the problem must have been ADHD. They've spent their lives justifying what they did to him, justifying their abandonment of him. They really stopped raising him the minute he went on drugs, as if ADHD wasn't something you could teach a child to learn to live with or to get beyond. The kid's now nearly 30 and totally messed up psychologically.