This is so horrible. I am so against children being given ANY psychoactive meds. They aren’t very good for anyone else, either.
http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/news/20090126/adhd-drugs-hallucinations-not-uncommon
Interesting link here. I just saw an ad in a magazine for some ADHD medicine and the warnings that came with it were unreal. There’s no way I’d put ANY kind on that stuff with those kinds of warnings.
Too many people just don’t want to go to the trouble of investigating other causes of the behavior issues.
Aside from the exercise needs that kids have and the discipline issues, food reactions are another factor that very few people consider to be valid and look into. My son was sensitive to artificial vanilla flavor. I was real careful about what I fed my kids. They didn’t get a lot of preprocessed snacks so it was fairly easy to figure out. Whenever he had certain kinds of vanilla ice cream, graham crackers, or Nilla wafers, he would almost literally bounce off the walls for a couple hours, til he was red in the face and his hair was wet with sweat.
If I had not noticed what was causing his behavior because of the careful way we ate, I doubt we would ever have figured it out. It would have been very frustrating trying to control a kid who had no control over how he was acting because of a chemical reaction of some kind in his body.
If we had not homeschooled, I have no doubt either, that they would have insisted that he be on these drugs.
As it was, I kept him away from the artificial vanilla and put him on a swim team and 90% of the behavior issues were settled. His whole childhood was not spent fighting with me.
This poor kid in this article certainly had more issues than the drugs. Being in foster care no doubt played quiet a role in this.