How Do You Know?

I don’t know much about ADD/ADHD.  I don’t even think that any of the kids my kids play with have this.  I’m interested to know how parents make the decision to actually medicate their kids.  Is it a matter of listening to a medical doctor’s recommendation, or do some parents already know their kids need medication before even heading to the chat with a doctor?

I know quite a few kids who have been diagnosed with ADHD. And most of them end up on medication. All the families we know who have made this choice, think the medication is a life savior for their kids.

However, while I think that in some cases medication is absolutely necessary – in many others, I think it is our culture that is at fault. Many boys and some girls just can’t function in our traditional school environment. They get labeled as disruptive or hyper. These kids often do well in active jobs later in life… our school system is not typical of real life success. Who spends their days at a job sitting and listening to someone lecture at them? While some jobs are like this somewhat – desk jobs at a computer – many jobs are not like this. A child does not have to sit quietly for hours to be successful as an adult.

I could go on about our problems with our expectations of kids and how this leads to misconceptions about behavior… but… I will stop

I agree, Debbie. I’ve known several kids who struggled in the school system and were told that their kids had ADD and required medication. In each case, the parents decided against medicating the kids and decided to try homeschooling instead. All of these kids thrived when homeschooled. It isn’t that they couldn’t function away from home or that they needed their parents. It was simply that homeschoolers are freer to experiment with different learning styles. They can do more active, hands-on activities and lessons. They can have kids learn multiplication facts while jumping on the trampoline, they can have frequent breaks, they can customize their teaching to each kids’ individual needs.

I am sure there are kids who legitimately need medication and homeschooling is not a good option for everyone. I do think schools should look at ways to allow kids with different learning styles to thrive.

I was diagnosed with ADHD in the late 70s. At that time, I really couldn’t sit still, my leg was always bouncing, I grasped concepts the first time they were taught and the constant repetition in class drove me bug nuts. They recommended a prescription of tranquilizers at first because I also never slept. I would go to bed late and be up early and function just fine on four hours of sleep (driving my parents even more nuts).  But my parents hated how tranqs made me act.

So they elected behavior modification. Essentially, we had really strict rules for doing things and I had to learn to police myself. I still experience problems with ADHD now—but unlike when I was in school, I can just go do something else for a little while if it’s too darn hard to ignore then come back to what I was working on.

My daughter is a little ADD—but we are doing the same things with her my parents did with me. In some cases, it’s so severe, medication provides a buffer to help parents and kids learn how to cope, but as with anything, coping techniques are vital to success.

One of my students had mild ADHD. In his case, a change in diet really seemed to help. His mother switched him to a very strict, low carb diet. No sugar, no simple carbs like white bread. His behavior had a marked improvement within a couple of weeks. I had another mom tell me that gluten made her special needs son lose focus and when she removed it from his diet, he improved drastically. In my opinion, it would be best to at least try a dietary change before going to medications. Sometimes the medications may be necessary, though.

I’m reading a book right now that makes the claim that some highly processed foods can be a huge contributor to ADHD.  I don’t know if they’re saying these foods cause the behavior, but they at least seem to contribute to it.

One of my daughters had trouble staying tuned in during class. She did very well in some subjects, and seemed to tune out of others that required more attention like math and science. We finally talked to her third grade teacher who had also noticed the same things we had. She recommended we should all bring it up to the school counselor, who had all three of us fill out a detailed questionnaire about our observations. The results showed that our daughter was borderline for ADD, but didn’t seem to have any ADHD issues. Since she was just boarderline, we opted to work on her behaviors and get her additional tutoring in the subjects she struggled with. The one-on-one instruction was exactly what she needed. She will probably always have to put in extra effort to pay attention and focus, but that is how we became aware of the problem and how we chose to handle it.

I am a firm believer that medicating should only be done when absolutely necessary. The fact is that we are relying on medication for a myriad of “illnesses” that could probably be addressed by simple environment and/or attitude change.

If my child started misbehaving then I would seek a cause other than neurotransmitter imbalances, perhaps a child is tormenting her in class, perhaps something happened to her or she saw something that was traumatic.

All that I’m saying is that you should first eliminate all the possible variables that may have caused the situation and then you can usually arrive at the truth.

Nancy, I agree with you. I think that many people -children and adults- are medicated when instead the root cause is something that is not necessarily physiological. On the other hand, though, I think that there are some people who do indeed need medication, and I can only imagine what a tough decision this must be for parents to make!

While there’s no doubt that many kids are over medicated. . .I think there’s a lot of misinformation about ADD/ADHD. ADD/ADHD kids are not automatically poorly behaved. In fact, poor behavior is not even an automatic indicator for ADHD at all.

Having worked with many, many kids who have ADD/ADHD diagnoses. . .medication is and can be a life saver to help them focus. Every hyperactive child is not ADHD either. . .ADD/ADHD is really characterized by the inability to focus more so than anything else. In kids with true issues, I don’t think that simply eating differently or avoiding processed foods helps all that much.

I do think too that our traditional school system complicates the issue-there are just kids who are not meant to sit in a classroom. In earlier times, they probably would’ve taken apprenticeships-something hands on-and done just fine. I think it’s diagnosed more readily/easily now, because our system doesn’t do a good job recognizing and adapting for extremes in learning styles.

My son went to one elementary school where the 1st and 2nd grade teachers basically told me that he needed to go on medication for ADD.  It is my understanding that the schools are not supposed to recommend medication, but they did.  The summer between 2nd and 3rd grade I decided to try it.  We gave my son one pill and he cried all day long.  I told him not to worry about anything, that it was the medicine making him feel that way.  From that point on he never took medication again.  We were, fortunately, swithching to a new school that year.  I went into the office that summer and spoke with the principal.  I told her what happended and she said she had the perfect 3rd grade teacher for him.  Oh boy did she.  His teacher was the best teacher I have ever met.  She put him in the front of the line the first day and just made him feel so welcome.  She sent home letters saying how good he did on his tests.  She never once mentioned ADD.  During his 4th grade parent/teacher conference.  The teacher said she would much rather have a social student like my son, than an introverted one.  Not one time did this new school mention ADD.  It was a blessing.

Wow, what an amazing story! There is a saying in psychology that goes like this: If all you have is a hammer, you’re going to look for nails. In other words, once the school administration got it in their heads that kids who act a certain way must be ADHD, they ran around diagnosing, which certainly isn’t their job.

I’m glad that you were able to find a school that worked better for your son.

Thank you Tamsen.  I do hope things have changed at that school.  I think it is terrible to label children.  I would guess it probably happens to boys more, because they have so much energy.  Mine do anyway.  They are, however, doing well in school.  I am very relieved that things worked out and so happy we moved.