Why Drug Free?

by Rita Edwards

Here are ten reasons why I wouldn’t use drugs with my kids:

1. ADD / ADHD is not a medical problem!

It is the result of a developmental delay that is creating stress. Stress creates a chemical imbalance which is then treated by the drug. Would you give your twelve month old a drug if he wasn’t walking yet? I don’t think so!

If you explored your child’s behaviour not as a medical problem, but rather as a developmental delay, what would you find?

You would probably find a frustrated, anxious, stressed out ten year old behaving like a two year old, temper tantrum and all!

2. Ritalin doesn’t take away the sense of not feeling safe!

It just creates a more compliant, still scared person, who may or may not concentrate a little better at school. Is he learning more?

It would be better to create a more motivating learning environment by providing your child with projects that he is interested in. When children are interested and motivated in their work, they create a strong link between the attention centre in the brainstem and the limbic system in the midbrain, where we process emotion, memory and motivation.

If that learning can be experiential and involve all the senses, then the child will be even more involved and able to pay more attention to the task.

3. Kids and drugs are a huge problem in schools.

I know that ‘research’ has shown that kids taking Ritalin don’t become drug addicts. There is just as much ‘research’ that shows that Ritalin has become a favourite drug to sniff in schools, and that kids on Ritalin will often keep their drug to sell at school to the druggies.

Do you want to tell me that a child who pops a pill every morning before school so that he can feel better and do better is not going to get into the habit of popping a pill every time things don’t go right for him?

As an adult, whenever he is not coping, won’t he first reach for a pill? After all that’s all he had to do as a child.

What happened to “Just Say NO! to drugs”?

4. Now the big guys can talk!

There was so much concern about the 8 million children on Ritalin and other drugs in the USA, that hundreds of doctors, experts and educators got together already in November 1998 to discuss the epidemic. The increase of children in USA taking prescribed drugs was from 5% in 1992 to 15% in 1998. This figure has almost doubled since then. The consensus was that Ritalin was simply masking the problem, and controlling the resultant behaviour. They needed to find out what was the cause of the vast increase of children taking Ritalin. Read more...

5. The side effects scare me!

My daughters have healthy appetites, yet they are slim and well toned. I would hate to see them getting depressed, have poor appetites, and insomnia. The tics and depression scare me the most! I have worked with many depressed adults, and I would never knowingly take my children there. I just love them too much to even consider possibly creating depression in them. It’s just too painful.

Dr. Hannaford quotes two research projects which identified that 43% of kids under the age of 10, and 50% of kids older than ten using Ritalin are depressed.

6. Ritalin and other psycho-stimulants can actually decrease our sensory seeking behaviour.

Hannaford reports that these drugs can decrease our natural curiosity to explore our world. Combine that with a sense of not feeling safe in our world, together with a poorly developed sense of touch, balance and movement, and you can understand why your little Johnny prefers to be a couch potato, watching violent movies and playing combat games on the internet. As long as he is not physically involved in the action, he is safe.

7. I found this reason really scary!

Did you know that just a few days of use of Ritalin begins to damage two parts of the brain called the caudate and habenula? In Smart Moves1, Dr. Hannaford explains how the cells in the caudate that get damaged contain dopamine. Dopamine is the motivational chemical in the brain. It gets us going, exploring our environment and learning from it.

Dopamine assists nerve health and growth as well as learning and memory. Dopamine stamps in the feelings of pleasure that go with discovery and success, the stimulus reward associations that are essential for controlled behaviour. Dr. Carla Hannaford

The habenula has connections with those cells that produce serotonin and helps to regulate dopamine transmission to the brain by slowing its release elsewhere. Using Ritalin slows the release of serotonin and sends the dopamine away from this area. The dopamine, responsible for our motivation and drive, is not available. We then lose our sense of curiosity, our creativity and our sense of awe at learning new things.

This is made even worse by too much time spent in front of the TV and computers. We have ‘second hand experiences’, without the sensory activation that we would have had, had we experienced the movements for ourselves. Too much time spent in front of electronic screens lowers our drive for stimulation through movement and exploration.

8. This is interesting!

80% of children on Ritalin are boys. Brain scans show that they have a smaller brain volume in the area where movement and integration of ideas are processed. Two areas concerned with suppressing the impulse to fidget were also found to be smaller.

Is it possible that these kids just didn’t do enough movement and sensory integration to fully develop these areas? Is it possible that they spent so much time in front of the TV and computer that they didn’t get this part of the brain stimulated enough? There are many more kids now with AD(H)D than when I was at school – ages ago!

9. Kids need to learn naturally.

I wonder how many of the AD(H)D kids out there are bored with school? How many would rather be creating their own versions of monster animals, fiery dragons and vicious dinosaurs. How many of these kids find it really difficult to learn in a competitive, test-result driven school? How many of them have never been on a real outing where they are introduced to animals like elephants, snakes and crocodiles. How many of them have been on a hiking trail, playing in mud and rolling in hay?

Ritalin is designed to make your child more compliant to fit into the box that his school has created. What if your child is just in the wrong learning box for him? If he lived in Borneo where his skills as an alert and active person are applauded, would he have a problem then?

Is it possible to find a school that honours your child’s learning needs, instead of forcing him to fit into the box of needs of his current school? Home schooling where you can create the natural learning environment may meet his needs better.

10. Dr. Hannaford provides the cue to how we should be addressing the AD(H)D child’s dilemma.

Dopamine provides the spark to explore new things in our lives, and is very important in ‘stamping in’ memory that attaches motivational importance to otherwise neutral environmental stimuli such as school lessons. Dopamine is the chemical that motivates us to be focussed, creative, learning, growing individuals – Smart Moves

When the research so clearly shows that integrated movements, supportive touch, music and play grow brain areas necessary for increasing focus, why do we use drugs to control our kids? – Smart Moves and Awaken the Child Heart.

Thank you, Carla! Here is my contribution on how to use movement, touch, play and music for kids to become exuberant, joyful, focussed and spirited learners for life!

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