ADHD, Drugs and Children

Children are not the only ones affected by ADHD. Parents often suffer and go through large amounts of extra stress because of their child’s attention deficit and hyperactivity. It is important to keep your priorities in order when dealing with ADHD. Your first priority should be helping the child to overcome the condition. Many people want a quick and painless way to “avoid” the stresses of parenting a child with ADHD. For this reason, parents all over the country have begun turing to prescription drugs as the only viable solution. They make the symptoms go away and that makes everybody happy.... right?

Sure, it makes teachers happy when the child isn’t being mischievous and is actually paying attention in class. Sure, it makes the parents happy when they stop getting calls from the school and the child seems to listen to them more. But what about your child?

The child is under a medication that changes the way his or her brain operates. Read that again and think about it. The child is being medicated in a way that changes the way his or her brain operates. That means that ideas and impulses that would have originally come out of the child’s brain are sometimes suppressed.

These medications are designed to suppress things in a child’s brain. They suppress the brain so other people don’t have to. It might be a good idea to learn alternate ways to help your child with ADHD. The best reason I can think of for this is that these people had ADHD and they did not take Ritalin for it.

Vincent van Gogh	Alexander Graham Bell
Michael Jordan	Ernest Hemingway
Jules Verne	Woodrow Wilson
Abraham Lincoln	Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Orville Wright	Wilber Wright
Beethoven	Sir Isaac Newton
Babe Ruth	Thomas Edison
Henry Ford	Albert Einstein

I think it’s safe to say after looking at this list, that prescriptions are not always necessary. A child must be taught to cope with his or her condition and then the “condition” may become a gift. While ADHD has its cons, it also has its pros.

Many people might ask “what in the world could be a pro with ADHD?” While children with ADHD have extreme difficulty paying attention to things that do not interest them, they can focus as well as anyone on things that do interest them. It’s important to be aware that difficult behavior may indicate special abilities. Can you imagine what might not have been if Thomas Edison was on Ritalin?

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease."
Thomas Edison

People with ADHD tend to be very intelligent, creative and inventive. Don’t think of creativity as just artistic; creativity can be applied to Science, Math, Business, and Technology. People who can think outside the box are very valuable in today’s workforce. Suppression isn’t the best method for helping a child grow to their potential. Suppression and potential do not mix well in the same sentence. Although children with ADHD tend to be smart, they also tend to under-perform in school.

Consider this: Thomas Edison’s teachers told him he was too stupid to learn anything. Sir Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school. Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and could not read until he was seven years old. Robert Frost was expelled from school for chronic daydreaming.

When discussing health side-effects of medication, pharmaceutical companies are forced to tell you things that could possibly affect your child in a negative way. But all of these things are physical, medical side-effects. They do not tell you about what it does to your child if the medication works perfectly. If Ritalin were to work perfectly and cause no bodily harm whatsoever it would still affect a child in a negative way. The child will not do the same things he or she would have been doing during the time they are under the effects of a suppression medication. Are all of those things bad? The child doesn’t just lose the hyperactivity; the child’s personality is effectively suppressed by most ADHD prescription drugs.

What Options do We have?

Do not go for the quick fix. Yes, prescription medications are generally effective in their purpose of eliminating symptoms of ADHD. But that creates a situation of dependence. Think about this, what if your child doesn’t have access to his medication?

If you put your eggs into the “medication basket” then you are steering away from the “learn to deal with your problem basket.” The latter route is not as easy as the former but the results are exponentially more satisfying for children when they know they can do it without the need for a prescription medication. It is a sometimes frustrating road but if there is any person that deserves such an effort, it is your child.

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If you have an understanding that ADHD does not mean your child has to be medicated by prescription drugs then you have taken an important step. Your child can beat it. And once you figure out the things the child can do to recognize his or her own symptoms and become a part of his or her own treatment, then you are on your way.

The bottom line is this: ADHD has existed much longer than prescription drugs, and there have been plenty of people who have made it in the history books with ADHD and without prescription drugs. Before all of these drugs were invented people didn’t just stop functioning when they had ADHD. There are many alternatives to putting your child on a suppression medication, please take the first step in securing a happy future for your child without the dependence of a doctor’s prescription.

Author: Kurt Robinson