Basic Advice to Parents

We have found "active parenting" behavioral management techniques such as "Abuse It/Lose It" and "Nip It in the Bud" as well as homeschooling to be especially effective ways of teaching our son self-control and nurturing his often hidden talents. See ADD Positives and How to Control Behavioral Garbage for more details. We also encourage all parents to read Raising Your Spirited Child, Mary Sheedy Kurchinka, 1991 (ISBN: 0-06-016361-5) and The Edison Trait: Saving the Spirit of Your Nonconforming Child, Lucy Jo Palladino, 1997 (ISBN: 0-8129-2737-0) as well as to check out the Explorer Webstar.

We understand, however, that at times using medications may be necessary, especially if your child is in a public school environment. But, keep in mind, that there are currently no data available on the long-term side effects of Ritalin and other medications typically used for ADD nor do these medications have any long-term positive impact on behavior. In addition, note that all such studies are done on children who are already using medications, usually the most severe cases. As far as I know, there has been no research on children, like Dillon, who have never taken medications and who are homeschooled. Why—because there is certainly no benefit to the drug companies (that are making millions on Ritalin and related drugs) to study such children.

The main reasons that we made the choice not to medicate is that we could not justify medicating a problem that overall constituted about 10-20% of our son’s behavior. At least 80 percent of the time he functions as well or better than most people. Moreover, these medications have potentially harmful effects, especially on children’s growth, eating, and sleeping. Our son has grown dramatically during this period (he is tall for his age) and he has always eaten/slept well. We certainly did not want to risk interfering with things that were definitely working.