I received an email from a friend of mine today with a link for a segment done on PBS on Medicating our children. As I sit here replaying some of what I heard I feel tears welling up and I have to stop and remember to breath. One parent said, “he takes this drug to help him sleep, he takes this drug so he doesn’t have tantrums – I don’t know how we’d function as a family if he wasn’t drugged.”
As I listened to all of the diagnoses being presented I fill sick and feel the urge to cry. And yes, I’m being emotional so I should take something for that right? Wrong.
Children at the age of 2 are now being diagnosed as bi-polar. Can you believe it? They even said that there really isn’t a ‘true’ testing for bipolar but they take a guess and choose what they think is their best drug. And these are not my words, there theirs. Hmmm, I feel saddened that society has come to a point where we look at our children and because we’re tired at the end of the day and would like nothing more than to go home, have a nap and relax that we find an alternative. Drug the children. Am I being harsh? Honestly hearing statistics of over a million children now being labeled as bipolar, I don’t think so.
One thing seemed quite common amongst these families with ‘disfunctional’ children. All these children were all born healthy and then something changed from the age of two onwards but no one has stopped yet to reflect on the child’s environment, home life. We think that our children don’t know what’s going on but they do and they’re reacting to it. As we go through our lives believing (because it’s easier) that our children don’t have a clue cause…they’re only children, be choose to believe that there’s something wrong with them and lord knows it has nothing to do with us. Why should we claim responsibility for our children? One couple said that by the time their son was ten years of age that he had already been on 8 different medications and he hadn’t started taking anything until he was two. Interestingly enough, they gave him medication for one thing and then something else came up, so they gave him a new medication and then something came up after that and they kept repeating this cycle until one day they woke up and said, “What are all of these drugs doing to his body?” I listened and thought, “Finally.” And then the conversation continued. They pulled the child off of all the medications and then declared that he is ‘only’ bipolar so now he only has to take lithium. So now at the age of thirteen, this child doesn’t have a lot of control over holding his head because the muscles in his neck are screwed up from all of the meds.
This has been quite an enlightening show that I’ve witnessed. They also said that some of these children gain a lot of weight and end up having diabetes. However the fact that they show the child eating Pogo’s and drinking Gatorade couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the weight gain or behavior. I don’t know about you but giving a child at the age of 3 or 4 Gatorade doesn’t rank high on my list.
I think of one of the parents stating that when the child’s’ medication wears off that his old behaviours return. I’m curious. How can a child’s’ old behaviours return when at the age of four they’ve been drugged for over two years already and haven’t even developed their own behaviours?
One doctor (a psychiatrist) says that he chooses a medication before he’s seen the child and has diagnosed them. He chooses it based on tests that have been done (on the drug) and which drug is most commonly being used for a child of that age.
Wow, can you believe any of this? Mood stabilizers for children. The doctor also raves about that fact that there are so many new drugs to choose from now that they can try different ones until they get the one that works best. If you ask me it sounds like rats that are being used in a lab. Is that what we’ve reduced our children down to? Rats?
Welcome to the Land of Drugs and the Home of the Free. I know that our everyday lives may be less than perfect. And I question the fact that so many children are now being drugged. Since my start of my coaching business, I now know that the myth of the intact family is exactly that. A myth. And it doesn’t mean by any means that by drugging our children that the ‘myth’ will change. Fortunately 30-40 years ago drugs weren’t as prevalent as they are now otherwise I’m sure that all of my family would have been on some form of medication. Of course it would be for depression and it would have had nothing to do with a father that hit us with a belt. And it would have nothing to do with the fact that he yelled at the top of his lungs and we were scared. No clearly our society has decided that parents have absolutely nothing to do with their child’s up bringing. Well doesn’t that make me feel a whole lot better. So I guess the minute that my daughter starts talking back to me (and really I doubt that she will) but at that point it should be time to take her to a doctor and have them medicate her right? Not in this life.
I am saddened and furious by all of this. One day these children will grow up (if they don’t end up committing suicide because they’re overwhelmed by all the drugs), and they’ll seek help to reclaim the life that they missed out on called childhood.
In a conversation with a client today I talked about how as parents we claim that our children are the future. Great, and what are we teaching them? That they’re less than perfect and can’t possibly function without drugs? That if they don’t like how they feel that the answer is only a prescription away?
I say that if you’re children are ‘acting’ in a certain way and you don’t like it or find that it’s inappropriate – then maybe it’s time that you take a look at the environment that they live in. Yes…the home. If your children are always sick, pay attention. If your children are always sleeping, pay attention. If things simply don’t feel right, pay attention.
We’ve brought these incredible human beings into this world. What are we doing to educate them and what are we doing so that they know they’re safe at home, in their environment all of the time?
Letting Go of The Past AND…GROWING FORWARD
Amy
Amy, as I read your words I can feel the heat rising in my body. Intensely! I can think of no better reason than this one – the one that touches the insanity that is quite literally killing our children – to let myself feel it all!
I remember the days when I had to stand long and strong between my children and the school system; between them and teachers who ‘knew best’ what was good for them. They were wrong.
Any adult who has the desire to medicate a child should first examine their own lives. Perhaps, were we to become more introspective about ourselves, we wouldn’t be so quick with the pill bottle.
Thank you, Amy…. for raising your voice and standing tall.
Louise
Thank-you for your comment Louise. It wasnt all that long ago that I was in a conversation with the school principal who was suggesting that I take my daughter to the doctor to get a prescription. This was the first time in 6 years at that school that she clearly did everything she could to not be in the class that day, so she decided to ‘make up’ a illness.
The comments were strong and hard comming from the principal and I wonder about those children who don’t have parents that question ‘authority’ (teachers/principals), the professionals who ‘know best,’ and go a head and choose to drug their children.
My belief is that we’re the voice of our children in these situations and are we listening to others or the people that would so quickly drug them? For myself, talking to my daughter will always come first even before what a so called professional has to say.
Amy
I am thoroughly pissed off that, as a culture, we think that we can do this to our kids. Medicating our kids is ABUSE, plain and simple. It shares the same jurisdiction as physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, mental abuse and spiritual abuse. In this case, it is chemical abuse. Like the others, it tears down lives. It causes alienation of the self and alienation of and by others. By our parental actions, we are actually telling our kids that we can only tolerate them if we force, on them, the means by which to keep them in a coma, so that we can sustain our own coma, too. Kids forced to pay the price of parents who cannot or will not cope with the sheer desperation of their own lives. Kids blamed and faulted for what the parents, themselves, cannot endure. And it is not just the parents, it’s the teachers and the professionals, as well, who engage kids – or not – and make decisions for them based on dumbing beliefs and inaccurate information proliferated by profligate greed.
The word, ‘belief’, means ‘be the lie’… so we’ll just be the lie and live the lie, such that our kids suffer for us. Some kind of warped ’saviourism’, I think, whereby our kids become our redemption for the incorrigible and corrupt fictions that we continue to live – by our choice, remember, by our choice. Only we fool ourselves into believing (you know, ‘be the lie’) that we have no choice.
Did I not read somewhere, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto us’? God help them and God help us. Until we remember whom we really are and whom our children really are (GodForce), we’ll keep projecting our own denied misery on to our offspring, so that they can become the right-to-the- ready lie for their own kids to come.
Enough already. Stop it!