When my 8-year-old son went to second grade last year, his teachers and school counselors were very quick to inform me of his "attention problem-. It wasn't even the second week of school when they advised me to take my son to his pediatrician to see if he might possibly have Attention Deficit Disorder. Believing that they had my child's best interest in mind, I immediately made an appointment. My son's doctor told me that he would need to see a pediatric neurologist to get a firm diagnosis of ADD, but that their waiting lists were at least 3 months long. In the meantime however, he told me, I could start giving my son stimulant medications like Ritalin or Adderall, and maybe that would help boost his attention span. Naively, I filled the prescription for Adderall XR, not questioning why there could be no over-the-phone refills or why my son would have to have his blood pressure checked every single month while on these drugs. (The reasons are the DEA's tight restrictions on Adderall, and the stimulant properties of the drug, respectively). .
Thus began my son and I's daily medicine wars. He is unable to swallow a pill, so we tried crushing it, chewing it, embedding it in Jell-O and practicing with tic tacs "but nothing worked. My son gagged and choked every morning, sometimes to the point of vomiting, just to get this pill down. He hated taking medication. He would always say "I'm not sick, there's nothing wrong with me, why do I need medicine?- I insisted that it would help him at school. He said it made him feel like a "freak-. What I didn't know then, was that he was not really a "freak- among his peers. I've read articles that claim that as many as 20% of grade school boys take medication for ADD. .
Not surprisingly, when I finally decided that enough was enough and took my son off this drug, his teachers noticed no difference in his behavior or ability to concentrate at school.