[LadyDoc]

I don't prescribe Ritalin and I agree in many school districts that feminist types give hyperactive boys AKA "all boy" types Ritalin to calm them down.

But there are children who need this drug..often because they have interuterine brain damage due to mother's drug use/alcohol use, or (as with some of my relatives) due to hypertension/pre eclampsia or prematurity.

As for anti depressants, scientologists hate them. But despite all the "suicides" and violence of children on these medicines, the statistics show the sucide rates are actually down...so even though they increase the impulsive type of suicide, there are fewer suicides on the whole...

[ClaireSolt]

I want government to get out of medicine. It is just too complicated and changing. Legislators do not have the expertise.

Beyond that, they do have jurisdiction over schools and should consider reforms that empower teachers to manage classrooms better with the children in them. This might include some tort reform, so educators are not always looking over their shoulders, afraid of irate parents. But mostly, it requires faculty and administration creating atmospheres of order and learning conducive to compliance, and many must need help in this area.

[ChildOfThe60s]

It was not my intention to have a thread that was primarily devoted to the pluses and minuses of ritalan per se, but to the excesses of a school system run amock; the harassment of parents that don't toe the party line, the incompetence of teachers and administrators that want to drup children into zombie-like submission.

Nitwits [that barely hit 900 on the SAT] with BAs in education playing medical doctor. In this state (or county at least) the process to *force* a child on to ritalin is very streamlined. All it takes is one teacher (many are not very bright-I have firsthand knowledge) to get the kid sent to a "doctor". Quotes used because I question the ethics of the ones used by the system around here. There is usually a particular doctor that the school will claim must be used. Then a 5 minute exam and judgment. i.e. quacks (IMO) that are there to rubber stamp the claims of these teachers.

In addition to the normal activity of 10 year old boys, we have hordes of undisciplined little monsters raised by day care centers and parents that are clueless about handling children. Ritalin is not a solution to the behavior of children with bad parents.

The school system does not want children to be children. Make all the teachers sit still for 7 hours straight, eat lunch in silence, and have no choice with whom the sit at their [20 minute] lunch. We'd have to put most of them on drugs in short order.

And eliminate the teacher's lounge & smoking breaks. Since the kids have no recess, the adults should be subjected to the equivilent. Sauce for goose is sauce for the gander.

[hipaatwo]

My son has ADHD/ODD. The school couldn't wait for me to get him Ritalin. In fact on the days he was hyper I would get calls at work "Did you give him his pill?" He's hyper today. Needless to say my son, who is now 19, dropped out of high school. Unless totally medicated, sedated, they want no part of them. He couldn't focus on the Ritalin, he was too tired, and without it they didn't want to deal with him.

[subterfuge]

I believe the overall percentage of kids who need these drugs is extemely small. And lots of "doctors" are perscribing them because they are useful idiots.

My daughter a few years back had a school administrator say she should be checked for ADD and ADHD because she'd forget to turn assginments in and other similar stuff.

We took her to the MD she'd seen since birth (she was 12 or so at the time) and ol' Doc Silverstein looked in her eyes and ears, asked her a couple of questions and proclaimed tha she indeed "has a touch of ADD."

I said you're out of you mind and we've never been back to that crackpot since. Oh, and my daughter is doing just fine in school and otherwise.

[AppyPappy]

Anti-depressants compete with the products and therapies sole by Scientologists. That's why they hate them.

[AppyPappy]

Anti-depressants compete with the products and therapies sold by Scientologists. That's why they hate them.