It seems the proverbial baby has indeed been thrown out with the bath water. Common sense will cost you a lot these days.
Several years ago I accepted a job as a long term substitute in a 2nd grade class. They were particularly unruly. Part of their day right before lunch was a block of about 45 minutes for math. For both math and reading the teacher was to literally read from the teacher’s manual. These poor kid in a class of about 30 would lose it during math. I finally started bribing them if they could hang in for a short bit of time I’d take them outside for 5 or 10 minutes. Worked like a charm! Until the principal almost fired me. Because you don’t reward bad behavior with extra recess, you take away recess. I couldn’t convince her that the extra time fixed the “bad behavior “.
My 12 year old boy is like pigpen after school except instead of dirt, it’s all his stuff. His teachers at private Catholic school are not my biggest fans because I’m letting him grow out of it and trying to help him learn to do things himself. We work on it at home, but, with every passing day I’m more and more convinced we need to get on with the business of enjoying life.
It would be great if Adrian could become the nation's pediatrician. Hang in there with your son. Our youngest is now 28 and supporting himself and not in any trouble. We were pressured from the time he was about 2 1/2 years old to put him on ritalin. Later in elementary school, the argument "he could have better grades" was actually used to try and convince us to put him on amphetamines. We left his little body alone and just kept working on his attitude and discipline. He's doing fine and his brain is intact.
Wonderful! I’ve always liked the children’s book “ Leo the Late Bloomer”. I can’t remember who wrote it, but it’s about a little Tiger who’s a bit behind his peers. Eventually everyone figures things out and Leo blooms.
Keeping my son’s body, brain, and soul as intact as possible is my work!
Countless times I had others try and proselytize me with stories of how their disorganized, disruptive and active sons turned into straight A students by taking amphetamines. Then there's the ones who all have sons that turned into rocket scientists after taking ritalin. I ask why it's so important to see these grades, especially in elementary and middle school. My son is happy, productive and law abiding, and that's all I ask. I tell them to look at the possible side effects and they don't want to hear it.
I've always thought that if they tried to convince me to put one of my kids on Ritalin, or whatever the drug dujour is these days, I would have simply filled the prescription, then replaced the pills with some innocous vitamin tablet.
Then just smile when they told us how much better he's doing!
My husband got a Purple Heart in Iraq in 2007. He recently found out it was produced in the 1940s during WWII. They produced 500,000 Purple Hearts in preparation for the American invasion of Japan because that’s the minimum number of casualties they expected. Every Purple Heart given since then was produced for that invasion. Those bombs were horrible, but they saved a lot of lives including the lives of millions of Japanese civilians that would have been killed in the invasion.
Great article. I have a question…Is Ritalin ever deemed appropriate in your estimation? Many years ago (1991-1993) my family had a next door neighbor whose son “Johnny” was maybe 11 or 12, and he was quite a character. Loud, theatrical, funny, rambunctious, quite a handful to say the least, and his schoolwork was suffering. His mom expressed frustration at his inability to pay attention in school and Johnny himself would comment that he couldn’t sit still and read like my boys could. A couple of years after we moved, I got a phone call out of the blue from Johnny and he was excited to tell me about his report card, having received his first A ever. He then explained that he was put on Ritalin and it was life changing. We didn’t keep in touch with that family after that so I have no idea what happened long term, I just remember his exuberance at knowing how it felt to do well in school and perhaps go to college one day and not be trapped in the kind of jobs his non-college educated parents had. Yes, he used to talk about this. (In no way an indictment on not being college educated, as none in my family were either and I didn’t go back to school until I was in my 40s). I think back to this scene many times over when I hear of yet another child out on this drug. I agree that it is way over prescribed, seemingly for the teacher’s benefit and I’ve also witnessed plain old drugged out kids who seem to reap zero benefit, therefore my original question. I appreciate your thoughtful posts.
It’s a great question. Dr Conners, who I mentioned above railed against ADHD stimulant *overprescription*, felt it was still needed for the 1-2% of kids he felt had true ADHD; Alan Schwarz, who wrote the book on Conners, agreed.
My problem with that position is that it’s impossible. as soon as you allow it for the 1%, it will be given out to the 20,30,40% The medical establishment and the pharma companies simply cannot be trusted to control themselves and reign themselves in, whether out of profit pursuing or outright irresponsibility.
So the question is, in the real world, do you want 30% of kids on this mind altering muck for no good reason, in order to cover that 1% it may truly help, or would you prefer to leave all kids unmedicated, even if it means that kids like your neighbor get bad grades?
I could write a book about why that neighbor kid shouldn’t be drugged even if it does help his grades, but that’s a different post. In very brief, our schools stink and make a terrible leadership class so why drug yourself to fit into that mood, especially when there are countless examples of kids who don’t do well in school but left in drugged go on to be Edisons and Michelangelos and saints of all sorts?
My wife was a French teacher (UK) and would agree with you I'm sure. She had a knack (so she tells me!) of taking the unruly and winning over their hearts. It just takes imagination and integrity and as she would say seeking God's guidance for each pupil.
I could (and often do!) rant for hours about the many factors behind the rise of adhd! Vaccines are honestly not on my list as far as that goes, there are like 20 things I’d blame first.
As far as autism, the free press had a fantastic essay this summer about the rise in rates. The author did not believe vaccines were a factor but I’m no authority in the matter:
For me, I know that the vaccines are 100% protected from liability thanks to the 1986 Vaccine Liability Protection Act.
Since 1986 the rates of autism, adhd, athsma, earaches allergies to foods and all kinds disorders have increased as the vaccine schedule continues to pile on more injections into the first year of life.
The Covid 19 injection was added for children from 0-6 months! We still don’t know what this are doing to adults long term but of course it’s now “immunized” from liability because it’s on the child schedule now.
The article you referenced is sadly not debunking the vaccines at all. There’s no mention if the children were unvaccinated and still got severely autistic, and secondly her reference to debunking was a statement from Dr. Paul Offitt who basically says that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism, so we are just supposed to take his white-coat word for it.
I believe other environmental factors also contribute to autism and ADHD but our public private partnership with pharma and that includes the cash cow VACCINES will never conduct meaningful studies (double blind placebo controlled) on childhood vaccines. There is data that shows long term vaccinated vs truly unvaccinated children over a 10 year period and they get buried because as RFK Jr points out, pharma will not allow such damning studies to reach mainstream.
My husband, youngest son and I went to see Oppenheimer last week. The first half hour I thought I was going to have to go sit in the parking lot or wander the shops in the mall where the theater is located. The silly deification of Einstein and the glamorizing of physicists made me cringe. I am a physicist, and we run the spectrum of character like any other trade, so the hype was painful.
But I started to understand the dialog and have to say, enough came through to paint the characters and give them complexity. Oppenheimer was a womanizer, pretty impressed with himself, and at one point the flick shows him striding a dusty street at Los Alamos looking a lot like Clint Eastwood or Gary Cooper in High Noon.
The participants of the Manhattan project have been criticized for overlooking the death and destruction their project could produce. I saw parallels with the "mission driven science" that the media were gushing over when the "moonshot" gave us the mRNA shots.
I thought the bomb sequence was masterful movie-making. And I did sympathize with Oppenheimer as he had visions of charred bodies that were a product of his project.
But the key, for me, was Truman taking the blame for dropping the bombs on Japan. We don't get to see what Truman's conscience did to him. But I think he did the right thing. My dad fought in the Central Pacific, on Iwo Jima and other islands leading up to it. The Japanese were not going to surrender, the Pacific had been a costly bloodbath, and we would have lost at least as many men invading Japan as in all the rest of the Pacific campaign. And the bombings were Truman's call, not Oppenheimer's.
Nolan is a bombastic headache but this one I thought was interesting.
Thank you for the great review! You know me, I’m a big McCullough fan, so I have to recommend his biography of Truman if you’re interested in the topic. I will see Oppenheimer for sure someday, Nolan or not : )
The screen time and the ADHD stuff are really both manifestations of the same thing, which is my love for what childhood used to be like and my horror at how adults are destroying it (as they also did with covid lockdowns).
I don’t rant at my patients because I save that for substack : )
Amen! How can you become my pediatrician?
It seems the proverbial baby has indeed been thrown out with the bath water. Common sense will cost you a lot these days.
Several years ago I accepted a job as a long term substitute in a 2nd grade class. They were particularly unruly. Part of their day right before lunch was a block of about 45 minutes for math. For both math and reading the teacher was to literally read from the teacher’s manual. These poor kid in a class of about 30 would lose it during math. I finally started bribing them if they could hang in for a short bit of time I’d take them outside for 5 or 10 minutes. Worked like a charm! Until the principal almost fired me. Because you don’t reward bad behavior with extra recess, you take away recess. I couldn’t convince her that the extra time fixed the “bad behavior “.
My 12 year old boy is like pigpen after school except instead of dirt, it’s all his stuff. His teachers at private Catholic school are not my biggest fans because I’m letting him grow out of it and trying to help him learn to do things himself. We work on it at home, but, with every passing day I’m more and more convinced we need to get on with the business of enjoying life.
It would be great if Adrian could become the nation's pediatrician. Hang in there with your son. Our youngest is now 28 and supporting himself and not in any trouble. We were pressured from the time he was about 2 1/2 years old to put him on ritalin. Later in elementary school, the argument "he could have better grades" was actually used to try and convince us to put him on amphetamines. We left his little body alone and just kept working on his attitude and discipline. He's doing fine and his brain is intact.
Wonderful! I’ve always liked the children’s book “ Leo the Late Bloomer”. I can’t remember who wrote it, but it’s about a little Tiger who’s a bit behind his peers. Eventually everyone figures things out and Leo blooms.
Keeping my son’s body, brain, and soul as intact as possible is my work!
Countless times I had others try and proselytize me with stories of how their disorganized, disruptive and active sons turned into straight A students by taking amphetamines. Then there's the ones who all have sons that turned into rocket scientists after taking ritalin. I ask why it's so important to see these grades, especially in elementary and middle school. My son is happy, productive and law abiding, and that's all I ask. I tell them to look at the possible side effects and they don't want to hear it.
Very true. I’m so happy you had the courage of your convictions!
I've always thought that if they tried to convince me to put one of my kids on Ritalin, or whatever the drug dujour is these days, I would have simply filled the prescription, then replaced the pills with some innocous vitamin tablet.
Then just smile when they told us how much better he's doing!
My husband got a Purple Heart in Iraq in 2007. He recently found out it was produced in the 1940s during WWII. They produced 500,000 Purple Hearts in preparation for the American invasion of Japan because that’s the minimum number of casualties they expected. Every Purple Heart given since then was produced for that invasion. Those bombs were horrible, but they saved a lot of lives including the lives of millions of Japanese civilians that would have been killed in the invasion.
Yes, this is my view as well, didn’t want to get into it in the piece…
God bless your brave husband!
Great article. I have a question…Is Ritalin ever deemed appropriate in your estimation? Many years ago (1991-1993) my family had a next door neighbor whose son “Johnny” was maybe 11 or 12, and he was quite a character. Loud, theatrical, funny, rambunctious, quite a handful to say the least, and his schoolwork was suffering. His mom expressed frustration at his inability to pay attention in school and Johnny himself would comment that he couldn’t sit still and read like my boys could. A couple of years after we moved, I got a phone call out of the blue from Johnny and he was excited to tell me about his report card, having received his first A ever. He then explained that he was put on Ritalin and it was life changing. We didn’t keep in touch with that family after that so I have no idea what happened long term, I just remember his exuberance at knowing how it felt to do well in school and perhaps go to college one day and not be trapped in the kind of jobs his non-college educated parents had. Yes, he used to talk about this. (In no way an indictment on not being college educated, as none in my family were either and I didn’t go back to school until I was in my 40s). I think back to this scene many times over when I hear of yet another child out on this drug. I agree that it is way over prescribed, seemingly for the teacher’s benefit and I’ve also witnessed plain old drugged out kids who seem to reap zero benefit, therefore my original question. I appreciate your thoughtful posts.
It’s a great question. Dr Conners, who I mentioned above railed against ADHD stimulant *overprescription*, felt it was still needed for the 1-2% of kids he felt had true ADHD; Alan Schwarz, who wrote the book on Conners, agreed.
My problem with that position is that it’s impossible. as soon as you allow it for the 1%, it will be given out to the 20,30,40% The medical establishment and the pharma companies simply cannot be trusted to control themselves and reign themselves in, whether out of profit pursuing or outright irresponsibility.
So the question is, in the real world, do you want 30% of kids on this mind altering muck for no good reason, in order to cover that 1% it may truly help, or would you prefer to leave all kids unmedicated, even if it means that kids like your neighbor get bad grades?
I could write a book about why that neighbor kid shouldn’t be drugged even if it does help his grades, but that’s a different post. In very brief, our schools stink and make a terrible leadership class so why drug yourself to fit into that mood, especially when there are countless examples of kids who don’t do well in school but left in drugged go on to be Edisons and Michelangelos and saints of all sorts?
My wife was a French teacher (UK) and would agree with you I'm sure. She had a knack (so she tells me!) of taking the unruly and winning over their hearts. It just takes imagination and integrity and as she would say seeking God's guidance for each pupil.
God bless her!
Never thought of it like this. Very sobering and an issue I haven’t considered very deeply before now. Thank you for making me aware.
I believe there are some things worse than a quick death.
and drugging school children delivers a slow death. physically and spiritually
Prrrrreach!
Loved your American tennis reference! Thanks for your writing here, I so appreciate it.
Adrian, what are your thoughts on the childhood vaccines and the exponential increase of ADHD/ASD?
I could (and often do!) rant for hours about the many factors behind the rise of adhd! Vaccines are honestly not on my list as far as that goes, there are like 20 things I’d blame first.
As far as autism, the free press had a fantastic essay this summer about the rise in rates. The author did not believe vaccines were a factor but I’m no authority in the matter:
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-autism-surge-lies-conspiracies
For me, I know that the vaccines are 100% protected from liability thanks to the 1986 Vaccine Liability Protection Act.
Since 1986 the rates of autism, adhd, athsma, earaches allergies to foods and all kinds disorders have increased as the vaccine schedule continues to pile on more injections into the first year of life.
The Covid 19 injection was added for children from 0-6 months! We still don’t know what this are doing to adults long term but of course it’s now “immunized” from liability because it’s on the child schedule now.
The article you referenced is sadly not debunking the vaccines at all. There’s no mention if the children were unvaccinated and still got severely autistic, and secondly her reference to debunking was a statement from Dr. Paul Offitt who basically says that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism, so we are just supposed to take his white-coat word for it.
I believe other environmental factors also contribute to autism and ADHD but our public private partnership with pharma and that includes the cash cow VACCINES will never conduct meaningful studies (double blind placebo controlled) on childhood vaccines. There is data that shows long term vaccinated vs truly unvaccinated children over a 10 year period and they get buried because as RFK Jr points out, pharma will not allow such damning studies to reach mainstream.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/study-unvaccinated-healthier-vaccinated-kids/
My husband, youngest son and I went to see Oppenheimer last week. The first half hour I thought I was going to have to go sit in the parking lot or wander the shops in the mall where the theater is located. The silly deification of Einstein and the glamorizing of physicists made me cringe. I am a physicist, and we run the spectrum of character like any other trade, so the hype was painful.
But I started to understand the dialog and have to say, enough came through to paint the characters and give them complexity. Oppenheimer was a womanizer, pretty impressed with himself, and at one point the flick shows him striding a dusty street at Los Alamos looking a lot like Clint Eastwood or Gary Cooper in High Noon.
The participants of the Manhattan project have been criticized for overlooking the death and destruction their project could produce. I saw parallels with the "mission driven science" that the media were gushing over when the "moonshot" gave us the mRNA shots.
I thought the bomb sequence was masterful movie-making. And I did sympathize with Oppenheimer as he had visions of charred bodies that were a product of his project.
But the key, for me, was Truman taking the blame for dropping the bombs on Japan. We don't get to see what Truman's conscience did to him. But I think he did the right thing. My dad fought in the Central Pacific, on Iwo Jima and other islands leading up to it. The Japanese were not going to surrender, the Pacific had been a costly bloodbath, and we would have lost at least as many men invading Japan as in all the rest of the Pacific campaign. And the bombings were Truman's call, not Oppenheimer's.
Nolan is a bombastic headache but this one I thought was interesting.
Thank you for the great review! You know me, I’m a big McCullough fan, so I have to recommend his biography of Truman if you’re interested in the topic. I will see Oppenheimer for sure someday, Nolan or not : )
The screen time and the ADHD stuff are really both manifestations of the same thing, which is my love for what childhood used to be like and my horror at how adults are destroying it (as they also did with covid lockdowns).
I don’t rant at my patients because I save that for substack : )