I’m fully intending to be provocative in writing this blog. Full agreement will mean failure of my intent!
Every parent will face, at some time or other in their parenting journey, the question of whether or not to give their children medications – allopathic, homeopathic or some kind of combination.
The reasons may vary, from some type of minor irritation, through to major, serious and perhaps even life-threatening conditions.
For the purposes of this piece, I’m excluding medications for fevers, etc and choosing to focus only on those medications used for relatively recently created ‘behavioural’ conditions – ADD, ADHD, ADD, et al.
As most of us are aware, many of these conditions simply didn’t exist a generation ago and those more conspiratorial among us can imagine someone in BIG PHARMA creating a drug and then creating the condition to be treated!
I’m deliberately setting out to invoke a response, to get you to consider a possibility that you, or someone you know, may not have ever contemplated before now.
As a professional educator with over 30 years experience, having taught students from five-year-olds to young adults, I can count on one hand the number of students who’re ‘holographic’ school performance (mental, social, emotional, physical, spiritual) has demonstrably improved with strong medications. However, I’ve met many, many parents who have blindly followed the medico’s advise and proceeded down the yellow-brick road of medicating their child’s behaviour.
The question I ask is: ‘Who benefits the most as a result of the medication?’ The child or the time-poor, over-worked, stressed-out parent?
Now, I’m not for a minute suggesting that some children don’t benefit from medications, they do! I’ve even taught some of them!
I’m really talking about the amount of over-medicated children whose primary carers are often the real beneficiaries of the effects of the medication. Those significant adults, whose lives are made easier through sedating these often highly intelligent, creative and intellectually unchallenged students.
I think that part of the solution is to be found in honestly examining the content of a curriculum that is frequently outdated, uninteresting and often helps to create many of the behaviours to be medicated in the first place.
Who is medicating whom and why?