Medications
Dear Doctor,
You must have seen the recent magazine article about drugs and kids.
I wonder what you think. Medication has been recommended for our son, but we have chosen not to use it at this time. We have no trouble with him, but the school does say he has difficulty. They have suggested trying the medication.
Reluctant
Dear Reluctant,
I did read the recent article in Time magazine. It echoes many of my concerns and yet misses the main point. It seems to me the issue is not what drugs we are giving our children but why the phenomenon?
Since I have been in practice ( more than thirty years ), I have watched with a mixture of amazement and alarm as drug after drug is touted as doing away with bad feelings, hyperactivity, learning problems, moodiness, unmanaged behavior, and God knows what else.
Our passion with better living through chemistry promises to create a generation of carefree, utterly manageable children. But why? When did children become sad, uncontrollable, possessed of mania and dark moods, unfocused, or whatever? Were they always this way, and we simply did not see it? Is it something in our food or water? I doubt it.
We are demanding much of our children, and we are not paying our dues as parents and a society. That has changed. In the last thirty years I have watched parents become completely frazzled, schools burning the midnight oil to run the gauntlet between educational fashion and corporate demands for better employees.
Parenting and education, the two essential normative forces for rearing our children have changed drastically. In the midst of it all is the hustle. Whether the child is being sold a video game or a commercial for the letter "A", there is constant image and babble. Educators, often in order to compete, try everything short of popping out of a garbage can.
Families do not eat together and even gather around their own individual computers and television sets. Values, God forbid, are often taught by the media! So, we do not deal well with simple unhappiness, inattentiveness, or any other emotion and thought which would disturb.
Why not whisk them away with a chemical compound! Yet, for many, the medications are life savers, even if the reason for their use is of our own doing.
The problem is mightier than I am, probably bigger than you, too.
Tags: article about drugs, better living through chemistry, hyperactivity, magazine article, moods, recent article
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