I rarely post anymore (and not just because it is so depressing), but also because I am working 40+ hours a week and have a family who demands 110% of my time, so no, the ability to sit and think for the time it takes to write a post is almost nonexistent.  I am up and at em this morning, ready to face the day, mostly because I have to go buy 2 dozen Easter eggs for the school egg hunt, filling little plastic eggs with treats that my kids are banned from eating and knowing full well that the hunt itself will increase stress levels and perpetuate the fight/flight mode my kids exist in.    On that note, I wanted to share a couple of books I have been reading of late, one is ADHD without Drugs, A Guide to the Natural Care of Children with ADHD by Sanford Nermark, MD.

Again, I am not advocating a drug free regime for anyone, choices we make are made with the information we have at the time, and I 100% agree that medication is a choice, one that while I have tried to stay away from it, has crept into our treatment in the past briefly and possibly will again in the future.  Never say never.  However, for now, we are still searching, hoping and praying that we can facilitate a change without medications, (even if this means that I get to sob for 30 minutes in my bedroom at night!!!).  Anyway, again I digress.

This book has so much information, gives an overview of the diagnostic approaches used, statistics, studies to  reference and great balance between traditional thinking and a more natural treatment approach.  Even the author concurs that for some, medication is sometimes the choice that has to be made and he even gives a brief outline of what and how it works.  However, reading through the pages it struck me that our negativity towards ADHD, PDD, ODD, etc., as a society is more crippling to our kids than the actual disorders they are being labeled with.  No one has the compassion or the time it seems to stop, take a deep breath, and see these kids for who they really are.  They are not an annoyance, not a ‘bad’ kid, but just a kid who maybe needs more help, more compassion and more direction than one who may be sitting besides them.  When did we become so intolerant of different?  When did a creative, inspirational, energetic person become so intolerable   As adults, the forward thinkers, the creative types, the out of the box thinkers move our world forwards, why would we try to cripple those thinkers at such a young age??

To gain a fresh or at least alternative perspective on how to understand these kids, this book should be handed to every single student teacher as soon as they enter college, and by the time they leave, this book and Heather Forbes’s new book (Help for Billy) should be dog eared and underlined by graduation (and you know I have a few more that given a chance I would add to the list, i.e, Bruce Perry etc. etc.).   There are just so many kids out there who need more, “… In 1970, about 150,000 American children were taking medication for ADHD.  This represented 0.2% of children (or 2 in 1,000).  By 2003, the last year for which we have reliable statistics, approximately 4.5 million children were diagnosed with the disorder, and 2.5 million, or 3.4% (34 in 1,000), were taking ADHD medication for it.  This represents a 16-fold increase in both the actual number of children taking medication and the percentage of medication use — a surge of 1,600%! …” page 6, Newmark, Sanford MD.  As you read further, we begin to understand that a simple 2 page questionnaire from a parent and a teacher in a PCP’s office can get your child diagnosed with ADHD in 2 x 15 minute conversations.

So something to chew on this morning while going about your daily tasks and dreading that phone call or that email, or your kid coming home again and kicking the walls, there is a positive way to look at this, eventually EVENTUALLY it will be our kids who conquer the world ~ if only they can remember just what it was they were doing!! 😀