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little girl ignored the boy. She acted as if she had not
heard him, smiling as she walked off to be drugged. |
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When I was thirteen, I stood up to my parents and
refused to ever take Ritalin again. I swore I did not have
a problem. I eventually buried my inner Ritalin child,
but I do remember hearing comments as I heard in that classroom.
They are difficult to forget. They embellish the mental
image, the history in my mind of how a hyperactive child
is perceived. A stigmatized child. He or she is labeled
as sick, slightly nuts. Everyday the child must be aware
that people on Ritalin have something wrong with their brain.
Other people do not accept the way they act. Their brain's
deficiency must be supplemented with a little yellow pill.
A drop of pharmaceutical sunshine. |
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Why does the ADHD child seem so unfocussed? There
is no definitive research indicating what causes a child
to be so active. The reason that Ritalin calms ADHD patients
while making normal people highly stimulated is not known
either. So, what causes certain people to see a blurring
of the child while many others only see a healthy, albeit
active child? Why is Ritalin the coping
method of choice for highly active children in American
society? I would not want to teach my child to solve problems
with little yellow pills. I want children to grow up in
a thoughtful manner. I want them to be critical of their
interactions with society. My expectations for the mental
processing of a child are high. |
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When a human being is a growing child, it is constantly
learning. Think of this learning period in the terms of
a building a personal computer, putting it together. In
the womb, the computer is assembled. The pre-teen years
are the time when the operating system and all of the other
software are written and installed. Later in adolescence,
we interact with the human software going through a period
of debugging. Then things are set and ready to go. We have
a powerful and complex unit, prepared to deal with many
tasks in an intelligent and efficient way. Of course, problems
arise at times, a security leak here, a coping problem there.
Windows 98 crashes all of the time. It needs a restart (rest
period) and a scan disk (self analysis and reflection) and
things run great again. If the problem persists, we can
write and install new software, we do not just unplug the
bad part or increase an electrical flow. The way ADHD kids
are programmed, when they have a minor crash, what will
help? Is it time to go get a chemical supplement to make
them right again? We cannot simply hand a child a pill to
temporarily modify their neurochemical makeup. We must teach
them how to perform well in their environment, help create
efficient tools for task management. |
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