! Ritalin - The Feminists’ Answer To Active Little Boys
Pithy
elephant frustrations that I caused for my teachers!!!
ADHD - Is Ritalin Kiddie Cocaine?
Ritalin - The Feminists’ Answer to Active Little Boys
By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Source (www.originalsources.com)
September 2, 1999
A study published recently by the American Journal of Public Health
which involved 30,000 children in two school districts in Virginia
strongly suggestes that ADHD, the attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, "may be overdiagnosed, and the drug used to treat the
condition may be overprescribed."
Really now? Having raised a very active boy who quite definitely would
be on Ritalin today if his teachers had their way, I still doubt the
existence of the "disorder." Today, nearly 6 percent of the school-age
population in the United States has been diagnosed with ADHD, a condition
"characterised by impulsive behaviour and difficulties in paying
attention and keeping still." Approximately 90 percent of patients with
ADHD take the drug Ritalin.
Ritalin, or methylphenidate, is a mild central nervous system stimulant.
It boosts the brain's ability to control impulsive behaviour and helps
children concentrate. Dr. Mary Ann Block the author of "No More Ritalin"
refers to Ritalin as "kiddie cocaine" and contends it can cause
dangerous behaviour. (see: http://www.blockcenter.com/main.htm) Among my
grandchildren’s generation, Ritalin use, in my opinion, quite definitely
IS being used as "kiddie cocaine" to "control" normal boy behavior.
Today, when a child is totally bored in school, or jumps from one subject
to another, you can bet someone at that school is going to pressure the
parents to put the kid on Ritalin. In fact, one of my grandaughters,
far less active and less rambunctious than her uncle at the same age
was teacher-diagnosed as needing Ritalin. Her mother’s answer was a
firm "No!"
LeFever found the number of children medicated in school for ADHD was
17 percent for white boys, 9 percent for African-American boys, 7 percent
for white girls and 3 percent for African-American girls.
Seventeen percent of Virginia’s white boys are abnormal and require what
Dr. Block calls "... mind-altering drugs"? Block points out that Ritalin,
is "almost identical to cocaine -- goes to the same receptor site in the
brain, causes the same high when taken in the same manner," Block said.
Of course, the doctors who prescribe Ritalin claim it is "safe when taken
under close supervision and does not have long-term effects even if started
at a very young age."
Others see a totally different picture with the same "results." What many
teachers want to see in their students, and what Ritalin does may be the
same thing. However, is what teachers want in the way of behaviour in their
class necessarily a good thing for a bright, healthy, child with an
inquiring mind? Is the problem in the classroom with the child not paying
attention or the problem in the classroom a boring teacher?
For example, if your 10 year old son is considered ADHD in the classroom
because he won’t or "can’t" concentrate, but comes home and plays for hours
with his game-boy or Nintendo, the kid obviously CAN concentrate. In fact,
most 10 year olds today can beat the socks off their grandparents at
Nintendo because they are so GOOD at concentrating on the game.
Invariably when I get into a discussion with ADHD parents they tell me that
their child usually "performs better in school" and "relates better with
family and friends." When I ask for specifics I find that the child is
"better able" to do boring school work. This is a plus? Parents, some of
the homework I’ve seen in recent years makes no sense. A child who can plow
through it and end up believing it makes sense is the one with the problem,
not the child who is bored with it.
In November 1998, Dr. Peter R. Breggin presented a scientific paper at the
Plenary Session of the National Institute of Health Consensus Conference on
ADHD and its Treatment. (see: http://www.breggin.com/ritalin.html) He dealt
with the common dosage of Ritalin for young children saying, in part: "There
is little doubt that stimulants can, for a time at least, subdue a child's
behaviour, making the child easier to manage and especially more willing to
perform rote, boring tasks. But we need to look beneath the surface at the
underlying effects and mechanisms of action."
Dr. Breggin’s warnings need to be known to every parent who gives their
child Ritalin:
1. Psychostimulants (such as Ritalin) can cause irreversible brain damage
and dysfunction. This is known with high degree of scientific probability in
regard to amphetamine and methamphetamine, and with a high suspicion in
regard to methylphenidate.
2. Psychostimulants cause multiple adverse effects, including a variety of
cardiac and central nervous system effects, such as COD, depression, and even
mania. The CNS effects often confuse doctors, leading inappropriately to
further psychiatric diagnosis and medication rather than to drug withdrawal.
3. Psychostimulants impair growth--including the brain.
4. Psychostimulants work by suppressing spontaneity and sociability, by
enforcing obsessive-compulsive preservative behaviour, and by isolating the
child from normal outside influences.
A chart that accompanied Breggin’s paper listed adverse drug reactions, some
of which were considered "improvements in behaviour" by parents and teachers!
He listed the following adverse drug reactions (ADRs): Social withdrawal and
isolation; General dampening of social behaviour; Reduced social interactions,
talking, or sociability; Decreased responsiveness to parents and other
children; Increased solitary play; Diminished play.
Other adverse affects of Ritalin included: Obsessive-compulsive behaviour,
Preservative behaviour; Cognitive preservation; Inflexibility of thinking;
Over-focusing or excessive focusing; Compliance, especially in structured
environments; Reduced curiosity; Somber; Subdued Apathetic; lethargic: "tired,
withdrawn, listless, depressed, dopey, dazed, subdued and inactive"--passive
and submissive behaviours.
Why are these adverse affects considered "improvements" in the child’s
(usually a boy’s) behaviour? Why do we want the men of America to be less
curious, lethargic, subdued, inactive, passive and submissive? Because we
are living in a militantly feminist culture which condemns anything
masculine - but especially active, curious, hard to brainwash or manage
males, that’s why. Any bright, energetic, boy who challenges today’s
politically correct feminist notions is very apt to find himself drugged
into submission, especially if he’s living with a feminist single mother.
Often when there’s a father in the house, he will squash the drug approach
to behavior which he probably well remembers doing himself at the same age.
Someone should study the ritalin use of boys being raised by a single mother.
I suspect they’d find a far higher use of mind altering drugs on boys being
raised without their fathers.
The very characteristics that working parents and controlling teachers see as
"problems" in growing boys are often the same as the characteristics of
success - the ability to move quickly from one idea or problem to another,
sociability, curiosity, friendliness - once the boy is grown. It sometimes
takes patience and humour to see a sociable, curious, friendly, boy with
many different interests and ideas through to adulthood, but the rewards are
great.
Without those characteristics I don’t see how my son Guy, who today is an
orthopedic surgeon, could ever have had the determination to get through 2
years as a full-time missionary, 4 years of college, 4 years of medical
school, three years as a Navy doctor, (who served in Desert Storm) and four
years as an orthopedic surgery resident. If I’d given him Ritalin, he would
have simply remained a framing carpenter. Now, there’s nothing wrong with
framing carpenters. He worked his way through college as a carpenter. But,
there were other things he was curious about and wanted to learn and some
teachers really got upset with that. They could not comprehend why Guy was
reading in the encyclopedia about elephants when they had explicitly ordered
him to look up owls. They never understood that he looked up owls, and found
they ate mice and that got him curious about mice and what they eat so he
looked up mice and then remembered that elephants were supposed to be afraid
of mice so he was looking up elephants to see if that was really true. Some
teachers just wanted him OUT of their class.
Today his "lack of concentration" on owls would be treated with a
mind-altering drug. In fact, in the 1960s the common response was
tranquilizers. I had a lot of people suggest I put him on tranquilizers. I
have seen Ritalin control those impulses to jump from one subject to another
in young boys I taught in Church and it’s so sad. The LaFever study will
"prompt other communities to study their rates of Ritalin use in school-aged
children" Xavier Castellanos of the National Institute of Mental Health
observed. "Were the previous estimates of ADHD too low? Is ADHD being
overdiagnosed or are doctors now doing a better job of diagnosing
it? Certainly no one has found the prevalence of Ritalin use to be this high
up until now."
Before allowing your child to take a mind-altering drug, first ask yourself
how many hours a day of active play is he participating in. Does he have the
opportunity to run, jump, and play vigorously a couple of hours a day? Would
his energy level be a problem if you were living in a log cabin and he was
up milking a cow at 5 AM? If the you have to say "no" to these questions,
HE’S not the one with the problem. You and the teacher are the problem. He
needs to be given more challenges and more physical activity. It’s quite
possible he is a smart kid and is simply totally bored.
I bought a trampoline for Guy and when he couldn’t sit still or was driving
his sisters crazy I’d say, "Guy, go jump on the trampoline for 15 minutes."
He’d jump for longer than that and come in happy. Still, to the day of his
graduation he hated high school and would avoid going whenever possible. The
school kept trying to get Guy to act "normal." He never did. He couldn’t
slow down that much. After high school he worked for a year at a quarry
breaking up rocks with a jackhammer, saved his money and went to Japan on a
mission for his Church, came home and spent the next 15 years either in a
classroom or in the army.
Had I given him Ritalin in elementary school to "slow him down" or make him
more content with meaningless paperwork, he would never have made it as an
orthopedic surgeon. However, he’s the kind of doctor everyone wants in the
emergency room - alert, quick thinking, well prepared and energetic. Without
a doubt had he been on Ritalin then, or now, he wouldn’t have those
characteristics. Of course, all the ADHD symptoms didn’t go away. To this
day the government’s mountains of paperwork bores him just like the English
teacher’s boring lessons.
However, today if he wanted to he could hire one of his old English teachers
to do all that stuff at close to minimum wage while he saves the lives of
people broken and bleeding to death after a car accident.
Article URL: http://originalsources.com/OS9-99MQC/9-2-1999.1.shtml
-----Being bright and inquisitive is definitely something to be discouraged
in today's public schools!!!
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-----$37 million--that's 37 NPS four-holers!
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"I'm not going to raise taxes on the middle class."
candidate Bill Clinton, 7/13/92
"I had hoped to invest in your future without asking more of you.
And I've worked harder than I've ever worked in my life to meet
that goal. But I can't."
President Bill Clinton, Oval Office Address, 2/15/93,
announcing middle-class tax increase after being in office
less than one month
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c_thom...@my-deja.com
stimulant, can be helpful to them. Medicines which can help some (not
all) pay attention easier include: Adderall, Caffeine, Cylert,
Desoxyn, Dexedrine, and Ritalin. Conservatively speaking, only 2% or
less of the United States population has ADHD-ADD-Hyperactivity in my
view and perhaps only 2% benefit long term with the right medicine
(long term defined as a striking improvement decade after decade).
ADHD resource:
http://www.angelfire.com/biz/addsyndrome/index.html
In article <vKXz3.304$Vc1....@news1.epix.net>,
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Pet...@hotmail.com
c_thom...@my-deja.com wrote:
> For a small group of those with ADHD, the right medicine, often a CNS
> stimulant, can be helpful to them. Medicines which can help some (not
> all) pay attention easier include: Adderall, Caffeine, Cylert,
> Desoxyn, Dexedrine, and Ritalin. Conservatively speaking, only 2% or
> less of the United States population has ADHD-ADD-Hyperactivity in my
> view and perhaps only 2% benefit long term with the right medicine
> (long term defined as a striking improvement decade after decade).
> ADHD resource:
That's if you believe in these bullshit "diseases". We create these
damn illnesses by the week it seems. When I was a kid, if you were
hyper, you got disciplined, and you learned to sit still and
concentrate. Plus, I know adults who pop Ritalin to get high, tells
you something about it. Further, another problem with Ritalin et al is
that parents think it is some sort of panacea that absolves them of any
responsibility to put the kid on the right track. My girlfriend does
it with her kid and he still annoys the hell out of anyone with a pulse
and climbs up the wall like he's Spiderman.
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"Yeah, I look like Louie Anderson"- Chad Bryant, 7/27/99 in #RSPW
"Maybe I've said too much"- John Henry, 8/6/99