Posted on 07/29/2006 7:48:15 AM PDT by Pyro7480
They tried me on in for a few weeks in 5th grade, and surprisingly, I can remember it very clearly. I sat in class like a zombie. I hardly spoke. My eyes were almost glazed. I could see it seemed to alarm the teacher and my folks, so I milked it, not allowing the meds to kind of balance out in my system, so they would take me off. And they did.
But it gave me a broader perspective of what behavior was expected, not as hyper as before, not a zombie, but to participate, not hog all the attention, and be polite, hmmmm maybe I could use that advice here! ha!. My behavior did change, and the teachers seemed to appreciate it.
ping to self for later possible pingout.
Our Military will not accept Boys who have been on Ritalin.
Actually it's having been diagnosed as having an attention-deficit disorder (for which the Ritalin is prescribed) that is the disqualifying factor.
I know for a fact that he was on meds in school because my friend told us this when we were anguishing over putting one of our kids on meds.
I bring up the story of my own kid being on meds every time this subject comes up here. I'm not advocating widespread use of them, and I think any parent who'd put his kid on meds just to turn him into a zombie so that the parent wouldn't have to be bothered with dealing with the child isn't a parent in my books. And I think meds are probably seriously overprescribed. However, there are situations in which they can do some good. As with my child. He's been on them for five years. He's never been a disciplinary problem at home or school. I'll repeat, he has never been a disciplinary problem at home or at school. He has ADD, not ADHD. There has never been any hyperactivity.
The problem was keeping him in the same solar system with everybody else, keeping him focused and keeping him from literally becoming distracted by a fly on the wall in school.
The meds have helped. He still has his moments, but they've helped keep him in the same solar system with everybody else, although he still gets into his own private zip code every now and then.
He was on Ritalin for about three years, we discontinued that because it was causing facial tics. He's now on a drug called Straterra which isn't as strong as Ritalin and is also not a schedule drug, we can get a 3-month supply instead of just a month's supply. He takes the absolute smallest dose and we are hoping, at some point, to wean him completely off of it as he gets older, although we're still not quite there yet.
As an FYI, my kid isn't in the public schools, he goes to a private Christian school and they've been quite supportive of us in everything we've done with our child.
And our great NEA is Left of Center...do you see where this is going?
(BTW, spanking in our family was all but non-existant.)
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