Children Making medical descisions
Mood:  irritated
Topic: People
I had been watching something on PBS about medicating children, specifically those with ADD, or as it is now called, ADHD. I thought it was rediculous that one set of parents were letting thier daughter basically decide what to do about it, in terms of:

"hey," says the doctor, "did you know there is a new medication called aderal?" "Oh there is," exclaimed the girl who supposedly has ADHD? "Maybe I can take aderal in the morning and then riddlin before gymnastics." "That's a good idea," the doctor promoted (who gains some cha-ching out of all this crap, by the way).

Then a teacher said they need to give her all the tools they have (calling riddlin a tool) and that she and other teachers liked this girl better now that she is on riddlin again.

You see, instead of just dealing with the fact that this girl has attention problems, by finding ways to keep the girl busy with task after task or other things to promote the girl wanting to control her attention, this teacher was more pleased with drugging the girl so that she would never learn to deal with her "ADHD" and she would then have to take medication all her life in order to focus on anything!

One parent said it best. She said that she loved her little boy for who he was and she loved that he was so full of energy. She did mention that he was a handful, but also that is no excuse for covering the problem with some drug, just because other people (mostly teachers) say they should.

You see, these drugs (such as riddlin and aderal) do not fix ADHD, or ADD, or AADD, or any other "problem." All they do is relax the individual who is taking them so thier hyperactivity is suppressed and they can then focus a little better. They do not get rid of, or cure ADHD. They simply allow the parent (or teacher) to not have to worry about thier child so much because the riddlin has calmed the child down. Heck, I have a hard time focusing about a lot of things, especially things like school (which I, along with every other child, teen, and college kid hate). So should I take some riddlin? No! If I allowed myself to think that there was an easy way out by downing a pill every morning then I would start to use my "disease" as an excuse for being lazy! I would say that I cannot pay attention and it is not my fault. When I told people that I had an attention deficit dissorder and was on riddlin, they would excuse my behavior and do nothing to try and help me. When I don't take my medication, people would then encourage me to get back on it, instead of just accepting the fact that the me not on drugs is the real me and they will have to deal with it.

ADHD is stupid. Some doctor may be able to link crap to other crap and say it's scientifically right. But people like teachers should not be looking for the easy way out, especially when it comes to prepareing children to function as mature, social, self-reliant adults. They should be doing everything in thier power to teach these kids that they may have some malfunction, but they need to learn to focus at certain times, and play around at other times (except in a more extreme degree than others).

I guess this is another example of people wanting a quick solution so they don't have to deal with it anymore. The ME/Now generation is headed for preoblems in the future. Are you ready to deal with them?

[by the way, i'm not really sure if I'm spelling the drug names correctly, just to let you know]

[I'm also sure I have misspelled 'thier' a couple times and probably in this sentence as well]