Should children be medicated for ADHD?

Post Reply New Topic

Hi again Folks. My son is now 7 years old, pretty much in the middle of the spectrum. Bright kid but with significant communication/attention deficits, among other things. To me, it is becoming that his biggest deficit is around attention. He gets sidetracked extremely easily, even with one-step requests. For example, tell him to get something from his room, there's almost zero chance he goes and gets it and can make it back without forgetting what he's doing and being distracted by other things. He also loses focus while tying shoes, and in particular, when watching an educational video or listening to a teacher.

So, the question naturally comes up, should we medicate him for this? There appear to be pretty obvious benefits. I even asked him if he would like some medicine to help him focus better, and he said yes. However, there is a bit of genius and creativity to a lot of the things that he does, and I fear that manipulating his mind might have some negative effects to this end. Like, what if Einstein was medicated?

Does anyone have any thoughts around this? Were any of you medicated, and if so, do you think it was a good decision?

Thanks as always!

I was never medicated as a kid, and I don't know why, because I was a very hyperactive child that needed calming down. Maybe my parents refused to put me on meds for my hyperactivity and inattentiveness.

The only thing about brain meds is they often come with side effects which can be quite distressing for young children. That's probably why a lot of parents refuse to put their child on medication.

I was never medicated for ADHD. And I am glad I wasn't. When I was growing up, ADHD didn't even exist as a diagnosis.

Anita Leska wrote:
It saddens me to see the great number of therapists who prescribe medications to end the meltdowns – they also end a clearly thinking mind. I think of all the genius minds of our times that are now believed to have had Asperger’s: Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Edison. If they had been placed on mind-altering drugs, I truly believe they would not have created what they did.

I personally feel that the introduction of prescription drugs would have desensitized me to the pain when I really needed to feel the pain in order to develop many of my personality traits such as stubbornness, tenacity and steady resolve. From the brutality, I evolved my sense of compassion towards others in pain. I also visualized imaginary worlds, better worlds much better than the real world.

Another author wrote:
It is sad that the practice of giving amphetamines to children grew to such widespread proportions bolstered by the apparent “success” of behavior that was made more compliant. Rather than assuming that this drug “fixed” some as yet indiscernible medical condition, a more likely thesis might be that the drug accelerated physiological function that resulted is less dissonance with neurological function. However, no one was really interested in the real explanation as long as there was a mechanism for making children more compliant. This “cure” seemed to substantiate the view that an unknown physical defect was fixed with medication.

In a way, a big enough hammer can force a square peg into a round hole, but only at the expense of breaking off the corners.


So perhaps the practice of labeling kids with the trait ADD or ADHD and then prescribing a treatment of amphetamines to make them compliant may in fact be a very harmful approach. If you deaden the Aspies ability to disassociate (daydream) under stress, then you may have succeeded in making the child into only the empty shell of what they could become.

After years of abuse by my peer group, I retreated into the imaginary world of my daydreams. Daydreaming is just a short trip to Never-Never–Never Land. When I finally broke the bonds of fear and return to the real world, I was changed. I brought part of the imaginary world back with me. I lived great adventures. I was fearless and I was not shackled by the norms of society.

I was medicated for ADHD for about half a year at the age of 12. I had a pretty bad experience, for several specific reasons I'll outline here. I can't tell you with any confidence whether medicating your child is the way to go. Rather, I hope that by explaining the way things didn't work out for me, you might have a better chance of avoiding falling into these particular pitfalls.

1. My parents did not effectively communicate with me why I was being put on the medication (I only caught them whispering behind closed doors about it). They also didn't ask for my input when making the decision to medicate me in the first place. This left me feeling a tremendous amount of shame about my differences and a lack of agency over my own body, since I was ultimately forced to medicate against my will.

2. Although my parents didn't know it at the time, I have a congenital kidney disease, so the Ritalin wreaked havoc on my system. Just google "rhabdomyolysis". You'll see what I'm talking about. I was severely thin, with a large amount of blood and protein in my urine by the time they decided to take me off of it. I spent more time on medication recovering from that than I spent taking the actual Ritalin itself. So, even though the probability of your kid having the same misfortune is low, I recommend doing a diagnostic blood panel before starting ADHD meds.

3. In my case, my attention issues were more due to anxiety than a true inability to focus. I didn't feel safe because of bullying and abuse I experienced, leading me to enter fight or flight mode easily. I got labeled as a problem kid at school, so I was never offered therapy, only "tough love" and pills to deal with my outward behaviors that were "unacceptable" in the eyes of the adults around me. I think my parents didn't understand all I had been through back then. Now as a 30-something I am finally learning how to come to terms with these experiences and how to like myself the way I am. I can't help but imagine how much easier this would have been if only counseling had been offered to me back then.

Anyway, these are just my particular experiences. I have plenty of friends who found good success with ADHD medication (although I know some others who didn't). It just wasn't right for me. Since age 12 I have never once missed taking it myself. I often wished people listened to me better when I was a kid though.

My attention span has been radically reduced by the constant variety on-line. Children also suffer from unhealthy diets, and lack of exercise and sunshine. I'd fix those rather than add another drug. You might try introducing activities that demand concentration, such as balancing a broomstick, or even meditation.