Parenting With Chemicals

Okay, first, the disclaimer. I am in no way stating that every parent who has a child diagnosed with a mental/social/personality/behavior disorder is a bad parent. Truly. This rant is targeted at the diagnoses of infants and toddlers with things like bi-polar disorder, ADHD when it’s simply because the parent complains that the kid is “hyper” and the diagnoses of children with no psychological evals done to come to these diagnoses. Okay? Okay.

Now, on with the rant.

I was pointed to an article which went into how American prescribes more anti psychotic medication than any other country and how these meds are being prescribed for children, many of them under the age of 1 year. 40% or more of these prescriptions were given with no psychotherapy visits, no mental health evaluations, nothing. In other words, a parent walked in to the doctor’s office with their child and said “Something’s wrong, he’s hyper, help me.”

I can just envision this doctor saying “Okey dokey.”, whipping out the prescription pad and prescribing a medication that should not only not be given to a child but probably not be given to most adults as well. The doctor will likely not ask questions like “What exactly is the child doing? Why isn’t he sleeping? What are you feeding her? How many hours per day do you spend with the child doing activities like walking, drawing, reading, coloring, playing? How much TV is the child exposed to? Video games? Which ones and how often and for how long?” No, that would mean he might have to not provide a drug that the insurance will cover and help the parent, well, not parent.

News flash, kids are supposed to be hyper. They’re supposed to have mood swings. Especially the younger ones. Yes, there is a reprieve from the major mood swings from awhile. That is, of course, until they reach puberty. But that’s another story, another battle and another rant. Young children are developing their personalities. They’re also learning. Their brains are sponges and the world puts them in somewhat of a sensory overload sometimes. Imagine yourself, even as an adult, arriving on some strange, new planet. Things are totally foreign to you. You see everything around you, bright, colorful, noisy, moving, floating, being still. You can manipulate things, some things you can’t. Wouldn’t you likely dash from thing to thing, checking it out? Touching, smelling, moving and studying everything?

Prescribing mind-altering medications to a child will not only have potential side affects that can do harm to the normal development of the brain but it also severely limits the child’s ability to learn how to function medication-free. If our reality is altered then how will we ever function without the medication? We must learn the skills. We must learn self-control without medication. We must learn manners, proper behavior and we must realize that sometimes, a pill is not the answer. It might improve the symptoms of something but it doesn’t do anything to address the cause.

Of course, I know a lot of adults who have no self-control, no manners, are unable to behave well in society and really don’t care. That too is another rant for another time.

We are so easy to look for a pill, a quick fix. We not only don’t want to put forth the effort to work with our children, to actually parent them but we don’t want to think that perhaps our lack of interaction with our children is making them a bit, well, out of control.

I know there are sometimes benefits to medicating children. However, I do NOT think that a first recourse should ever be medication nor do I think that it should happen to very young children. Am I a doctor? Nope. I’m a parent. I’ve been a foster parent and/or parent for longer than I’ll admit. I’ve had foster children who were so “medicated” they were zombies. These zombie kids were considered “better off” by the physicians prescribing the meds and by the social workers on their case, the previous foster homes and those involved in their care. No one ever asked, not once, “Is there a better way?” It was drug them and send them to a foster home.

I get it that there are some issues that can only be addressed with medications. I understand that. However, even then, should we not look for the medication(s) that are effective yet allow the child to be a child and not a zombie.

I had one foster child who had moderate mental retardation and cerebral palsy. Because his mother “had her hands full” she never spent time with him. Ever. He learned to get her attention by breaking things, hitting his siblings or other family members, running away and spitting. This happened for the first 13 years of his life. This was who he had become because it was the only way he could get the human interaction he so badly needed. He came to me so heavily medicated that he was unable to close his mouth. He drooled constantly and at 15 years old and fully able-bodied, had to be almost carried from room to room. With the help of a decent doctor, I was able to get his medications adjusted so he could function and have a life. When he was no longer chemically restrained, he was a good kid with a good heart. We had to wean him off the medication he was on and we allowed him to be medication-free for a couple of months. During this time he had behavioral outbursts that were anything but pleasant. Over the course of a few weeks, by working with him and getting him the resources to help him learn appropriate behaviors, he improved. He was never at “100%” but his outbursts went from daily to him having spans of a month or more without a violent outburst. The only medication he ended up truly needing was something to help him sleep. His brain just really never shut off. He could go a week or more without sleep.

I know there are different stories out there. I know there are exceptions to every rule. I also know that many, many people, too many, are looking for any way they can get to just fix something with the least amount of effort. If it has long-term affects on their child, so be it. There’s something more important they need to do right now than to worry about the development of their child.

These medications WILL affect the normal development of a young child. But hey, that’s okay because when there is a new issue, they’ll just go to the doctor and get another pill.

I’m not sure which is worse. The fact that they’re parenting through chemicals or the fact that they’ll never really know the true person that their child is.