A READER SENDS CHARLES A COMMENT ABOUT ADD-ADHD!!!!

Ritalin-Dilemma, originally uploaded by Oldmaison.

there is no such thing as ADD or ADHD. there is no physiological test to prove or diagnose it.

it is true that there are children who demonstrate certain behaviors, such as not paying attention, constantly moving or fidgeting, and memory problems, but the cause can not simply be stated as, "oh, the kid has ADD or ADHD. drug him and give him all A's in class."

when this fake illness or "disorder" was first talked about, it was called attention deficit syndrome. a "syndrome" is a condition that many people show but no cause has been determined. the cause has been known for years, but our society won't say it.

kids who appear to have ADD or ADHD have one very wrong thing in common, and that is the style of parenting that they were given. these are kids who were not raised by parents who sat with them, read books with them, played with them, or talked to them very much. instead, these children were placed in a room with a bunch of toys on the floor and a tv constantly on in order to hopefully keep the kid quiet. these children were never shown how to stick to doing one thing for any length of time. they were just left to do whatever they wanted or whatever they could manage.

so now these kids are in school with no ability to stick to doing any one thing for any length of time. they were raised to do whatever they felt like whenever they felt like it. so it makes sense that they want to keep doing that.

during those early years, we need to sit with kids, talk to them, show them how things are done. when they play with ONE toy at a time, make sure we show them how to put those toys away before moving on to the next thing.

drugs do not solve the problem. they only slow the kid down so he can't jump to the next thing so quickly. kids don't learn how to behave better when on drugs. they are just unable to do what they have been programmed to do. as soon as the drugs wear off, they'll get right back to those other behaviors.

is there such a thing as a chemical imbalance? yes. but those chemicals are produced in those early years when we've been ignoring out children. can the imbalance be fixed? YES, even in teen years. how? by doing the same things with the children that we should have been doing when they were crawling. talk to them. show them how to do things the right way. don't let them get away with giving up. even in teen years, those missing chemicals will be produced. but WE have to take control of the issue in order for it to happen. DRUGS will not take control. even when kids are in their teens, we can still teach them the right behaviors and they can learn to overcome the problem. but nobody will learn anything unless they face the issue, the real issue, honestly and admit what's happening. you can't fix something unless you know what's broken. and you can't fix something if you pretend that something else is broken.