I taught high school Mathematics a year. Not a professional educator possessed of the usual "tricks" teachers universally resort to, I leveled with the kids on the first day of class: I am NOT a teacher, but a trained Technical Professional who uses higher mathematics every day applied in practical ways, to provide the ability to design and build things such that they will not break, or endanger safety, and yet perform as expected. They instantly liked that! I felt "in", and stopped quivering inwardly. Soon, they began confiding in me, trusting me. Soon, one big kid, about 5 inches taller than me, approached me to explain he had run out of his medicine, holding out the empty prescription bottle. He said he was feeling the need, badly, for it. I looked the bottle over closely, his name, date info, authentic, the medication? Adderall. For ADHD. Real fine print: Dexamphetamine. I blinked. AMPHETAMINE?? The stuff we imprison folks for possessing it? This kid takes it by PRESCRIPTION?? I closed my mind, at that moment, to the "War on Drugs". Absolute hypocrisy. If you care, "Adderall is a combination drug containing salts of the two enantiomers of amphetamine, a psychostimulant of the phenethylamine class. Adderall is prescribed in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy." More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall
Way too many children these days are medicated and/or overmedicated. Often, it's because the teachers or parents (or both) don't want to deal with them. I can't put too much blame on the teachers, because the kids are disruptive, but many times it's because they have never been taught to sit down and shut up. We have a society full of precocious children that have been worshiped and never disciplined. Almost every foster child I worked with was on medication, usually a combination of several, with multiple diagnoses. Many, if not most, of the CPS children I worked with were the same. Many of the parents had no clue how to act, let alone how to raise children. Without a diagnosis, the child won't get SSI, and that's a check going to the parents. If a parent has 3 or 4 kids on SSI, that's around $1,800 - 2,400/month, and Medicaid goes along with it. So do other benefits. The less the parents discipline their children, the more they act out, which increases the chance that they'll get referred for a diagnosis.
It's almost like it's fad but I suspect a more sinister reason. What the reason might be would be another matter.
These is an aspect of 'flavor of the month' diagnosing that I noticed when I was working in the field. At one point everyone was ADD/ADHD, then BiPolar, and Conduct Disorder and ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) were other favorites. Many of today's youth are lost in medicated hazes. I can't imagine many of the ones I worked with will end up functioning well in society. I think some of the problem is drug use in either or both parents prior to birth and/or mom using while pregnant, but many of them didn't have a chance based on who their parents were, and their lack of maturity and parenting skills. I don't doubt there's a more sinister reason. The kids are given the medication so they're more docile and easy to control. That won't change when they come of age. They will be on stronger drugs, still receiving government benefits because they can't function in society, and I'm sure there will be someone ready and willing to steer them in a particular direction.
@Diane Lane : Is it at all possible that, beyond the sinister aspects of doling out various drugs to kids, that during adulthood their minds will have become flaccid enough to accept indulgence in the illicit drugs? Frank
It could go that way @Frank Sanoica, especially if they received positive reinforcement for taking the medication, and experienced positive effects from it. Many of the boys I saw didn't like taking the meds, and would refuse to take them, especially when they experienced negative effects. A lot of times, they would dull their senses and personalities, and who of us would like that? Alternatively, every girl of or over the age of puberty was given birth control, whether they wanted or needed it. They were all given Depo-Provera shots, whether or not they were sexually active. I never heard one of them complain about that the way they complained about their other medicines, which always surprised me.
Most of these children are only children who are on a sugar high but they want to put them on drugs because they are more active than the teachers. There is an interesting thing about Ritalin the drug they use to slow down children but if this drug is given to an adult it speeds them up. So if the doctors want to give this to the children they should instead give it to the teacher to speed them up to the children.
A lot of the kids don't even take the medication, because they don't want to be slowed down, and a lot of the moms do take the meds, because they want to be sped up and lose weight. Here's an interesting report on the subject, and it has additional links, in case anyone's interested enough to read them. http://ahrp.org/texas-foster-care-i...s-young-as-3-are-drugged-with-antipsychotics/
When I adopted a seven year-old, he was on Ritalin and some other drug when he came to me. He had a bad home life and, while medication might dull the ways in which he reacts to this reality, the medications weren't going to make it go away. Since he was with me for a year before I could adopt him, I first discussed it with a doctor and then had to ask permission for child protective services to take him off the medication. That was granted, and he did just fine without them.
Ken I am glad you seen the insanity. The love treating symptoms because they will always have a costumer. If the look for the cause or cure it they lose a costumer.
That's how I see it also Martin. Kids have been kids forever ... now it requires drugs to contain them! Such a sad situation that shouldn't be.
When we were kids we got real food eggs vegetables or oatmeal and a glass of milk. Now kids get fruity pebbles with extra sugar apple juice this is not nourishment when half is sugar.
How often are kids medicated because their behaviour is "disturbing" to lazy adults, rather than because they are disturbed? My son was born high energy, like my mother. We stopped giving him naps when he was two, else he would be up to eleven pm every night. Providing he was kept busy with a variety of things that piqued his interest, no problem. Otherwise, he would become hyper. Today, he is happily married, successful, and very busy, grabbing life with both hands, and squeezing out every last drop of enjoyment. Sometimes it scares me to think of what might have happened if I had listened to the psychobabble of a counselor who labeled him as ADHD, solely based on the fact he gesticulated with his hands. Of course he did, our whole family talks with our hands, and he was in French Immersion from the time he was in kindergarten. Les Québécois use their whole bodies as expressive tools in conversation. Had he been female, nothing would have been said. Said counselor was looking for pathology, but backed off quickly when I went mother bear and waved my creds at her. Lol.