From the guy that was on SNL......"yeah......yeah.....that's the ticket".



atp

 

Well, actually it WAS recognized by most parents.

In those days the treatment consisted of timeouts and occasional spankings. Every now and then a kid could also be grounded.

Nowadays - we've replaced common sense parenting with Ritalin and counseling...

 

Well, by recognized, I meant recognized by the medical establishment as its own disease with a name and treatment. I almost said diagnosed when
I wrote my earlier comment, but I thought diagnosed sounded too much like it referred to an individual rather than the disease itself.

So to rephrase, ADHD 20 years ago was unknown as a separate disease
needing medical treatment.

Of course some parents saw there was something different with their children they needed to control. And there are some children with ADHD that definitely do need the Ritalin because they hit or kick others in school and are more disruptive than the normal fiddling and talking out.

So some kids really do have ADHD, but I would guess most are just kids being distracted, fiddling with things, being bored. Heck, most of public school is boring. You sit 20 kids in a seat for hours at a time with one teacher, what do you expect?

 

I know what you meant.

I was saying that it's too bad this 'disease' was ever recognized to begin with.

According to some health publications some 95% of Ritalin users really do not need the drug and the limitations that come with it (such as not being able to get an FAA medical for at least 5 years after the last prescription).

Very few children might actually benefit from ADD drugs but in my opinion this disease was "created" to make the lives of some parents easier by doping up their kids...

 

I agree in most likelihood, probably most Ritalin using kids do not actually need it. But I've seen one kid (one of the 5%) who really, really needs it. He was kicking, poking and punching children in his 2nd grade class and could not sit still - always whacking at another kid in class. I spoke with his mom and she was adamant that he and his twin brother really needed it to function. I feel bad for her, I'm sure it was no picnic for her at home.
They did end up removing both brothers from that public school to go..? If it keeps the parents from killing their kids, can you argue with a Ritalin RX?

But yeah, it is probably over prescribed in this country. At least I think we are recognizing the possibility that it may be over prescribed and there might be a pulling back or trend in the opposite direction now that we've gone too far with RXing Ritalin. Or at least one can hope.

 

Yeah, you pretty much summed it up. Some really need it but most of those who're on Ritalin probably don't need it at all.

 

This post is so accurate it's scary. Seriously. It's like the doctor who diagnosed me with depression because I was a ****ed off teenager at one point. So then I went to get a medical.....

If I hadn't been able to get that straightened out, then they'd have seen their depression.


Now, I do realize that it's a real condition, that real people have. However, I also think that when you have a class of 30-40 kids at a school, the class moves at the pace of the dumbest ones. So the smart kids get bored, and restless, and then doped up so they'll sit there and do nothing.

 

Just remember that is the new education moto "Leave No Child Behind" That means every kid in a class operates at the lowest level. I found this to also be true in college as well, the only classes I could stand to take were on-line ones that did not have time restraints on completing the course. I would finish a quarter long course in about two weeks, and move on to doing something else more interesting to me...like flying or learning about flying!

One of my friends is a social worker in SoCal and she says that one of the newest scams in order to get more money out of the government is to label your children as ADD or ADHD and get social security money for them in order to pay for caring for staying home and caring for them! Not only are these people a leach on our system but now they labeled the kid for the rest of their lives as having a social problem, no military, police or government agency will ever touch them!

 

I'm sorry dude but that's total nonsense. State enforced drugging of our kids started in the 70s and is part of the ACLU legacy or "don't hurt anyone's feelings” generation.

It has nothing to do with the much newer "Leave-No-Child-Behind" which was a way to get rid off lazy and worthless teachers (the unions prevented that).

In the past they could get away with simply signing the kids off to the next level without any new skills being measured on those children, nowadays though because kids get tested it's easy to spot the bad teachers, which is also why the unions are so vehemently against the program.

Especially in the Socialist State of California they've been trying to block that law from the very beginning. They believe that no teaching skills should be required; of course, the teacher MUST speak Spanish but otherwise they don't care...

It's not a perfect program but it helps to point out the weak teachers; the program should be renamed to "Leave-The-Worthless-So-Called-Teachers-Behind."

 

The world needs ditch diggers too.