parents ages 35 - 55 (warning: controversial)

[MartyNeilan]

My mother would never let me have ceral with much sugar in it; most days it was plain Cheerio's with skim milk. I was unbelievably hyper in my middle school-high school years and am still considered high strung in my mid-thirties. I avoid caffeine like the plague except for the occasional chocolate and limit my sugar intake.

The same thing you are postulating for breakfast has also been suggested for pregnancy; leading to hyper children. From my own anecdotal evidence this is also not the case. My wife has some sugar and caffeine with her first pregnancy, and my oldest is a little more hyper than average but not too much. She then abstained from all caffeine and was very careful about her diet for her second one. My youngest makes the Tasmanian Devil look lethargic. She has the destructive power of a Daisy Cutter and the scream to match. (I figure she will be a Charismatic preacher someday )

My take on this is that the overuse of Ritalin is just a copout for parents who don't want to discipline and teachers who don't want to teach. My wife is a mental health professional and she will not allow our children to be on it unless they have been thoroughly tested and proven to have an actual need for it, unlike the majority of kids on it.

Marty "who is pursuing a profession where hyper can be an asset" Neilan


P.S. I don't turn 35 for a few more months, was I still allowed to answer??

[windshieldbug]

when my kids were here, I fixed a hot breakfast every day, while their useless mother slept in

Well, she was obviously good for something...

[Dan Schultz]

When my oldest daughter (now 30) was very young she was very 'active'. this was before the days of the 'ADD' catch-all diagnosis. My 'useless 1st wife' (sorry, Doc) and I worked very hard to make certain our daughter ate only natural foods. ... No white flour, no processed foods, no tomatoes (yes, they contain aspiates), no refined sugars (raw honey was fine), no artificial colors, etc. etc. We even churned our own butter! Yes... it was a great big pain in the ***. But... we NEVER considered putting her on drugs to control her activity. This girl eventually 'grew out of it' when she was around ten years old. If I remember correctly, the diet guru was Dr. Feingold.

[MartyNeilan]

After extensive research I have come up with the ultimate breakfast food:

[Captain Sousie]

After extensive research I have come up with the ultimate breakfast food:

010100110110111101110101011011100110010001110011 01101100011010010110101101100101 0111011101100101 01101000011000010111011001100101 01100001 011101000110000101100100 011101000110111101101111 01101101011101010110001101101000 01100110011100100110010101100101 01110100011010010110110101101101

Sou

[Rick Denney]

I ate all that stuff when I was a kid, and it didn't affect me adversely. I'm as calm now as I ever was. I SAID, I'M AS CALM NOW AS I EVER WAS. ARE YOU LISTENING? YOU WANNA STEP OUTSIDE, BUCKO?!

Rick "perfectly normal" Denney

[MaryAnn]

Well, I have to stay completely away from both sugar and caffeine, and I'm over 55.

For those of you without a vegetarian bent (which no doubt is the VAST majority of you) I find that the Maker's Diet (re Jordan Rubin) is extremely good for being calming. Good for kids, too. I'm convinced that the epidemic of hyperactivity is due to a number of causes, one being over-diagnosis, another being lax parenting, but the majority being due to two things: chemicals in the food and environment, and lack of nutrients in the food we purchase.

Commonly one will see that a certain food has X % of this mineral and Y % of that vitamin, but when one checks, one finds out that these percentages are quoted from tests done on foods in the 1920's. They are both completely untrue and completely irrelevant for food grown by agri-business on depleted soils with chemcial fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. The entire human race is poisoning itself.

MA

[Rick Denney]

Hmmm.... interesting question: when does sugar stop "making you hyper" and start "making you fat"?

It makes you hyper for about two hours, then your blood sugar crashes as a result of the big slug of insulin your body released to control the sugar. The overdose of insulin triggers the body to store fat, and the crash makes you hungry for more sugar. You end up eating more, and that's the real reason for getting fat.

When I eat sugary stuff for breakfast, I'm hungry again by 10AM, and usually feel the need for a strong dose of caffeine about the same time. When I eat a breakfast that has a balance of protein and carbohydrates, I feel more satisfied for longer. But once on the sugar train, it's MIGHTY HARD to get off.

Rick "somewhat simplistic, but that's the basic outline" Denney

[Brassdad]

I try and keep the sugar in check and only drink one cup of coffee a day.................



if I never actually "drain" the cup, but refill it, that still only counts as one cup right!!

[tubatooter1940]

I am trying to eat Special K with strawberries two meals a day and most anything for the third meal. I figure that if this diet fails at least it won't poison me. I am tempted to pour beer onto my Special K instead of milk.

[Pippen]

I ate all that stuff when I was a kid, and it didn't affect me adversely. I'm as calm now as I ever was. I SAID, I'M AS CALM NOW AS I EVER WAS. ARE YOU LISTENING? YOU WANNA STEP OUTSIDE, BUCKO?!

Rick "perfectly normal" Denney

And it appears as if he has still retained a taste for dousing the cereal with red Kool-Aid every morning.

The cereal aisle gives me sugar shock every time I walk down it but that's nothing compared to a stroll into the school lunchroom. I'm not against letting my kids have some sugar in their diet and in fact I make hot breakfasts (from scratch) on most school mornings and I was surprised to discover that unsweeted/ultrahealthy hot breakfasts aren't too easy to whip up.

I'm a former teacher, a mom of a special needs child, and a moderator on a forum parents turn to when they are looking for help with children who have behavioral issues. One big shock for me has been how quickly the medical/mental health professionals are to jump to suggest medication for behavioral issues. My son's issue wasn't hyperactivity (He was Hyperlexic and has some traits of Asperger's Syndrome) but at the very first assessement appointment we had the doctor suggested Prozac. I was stunned--we weren't even through the evaluation process with him much less the other specialists, we didn't know for sure what we were dealing with although it was narrowed down, and I hadn't had an opportunity to research non-med interventions now that I knew a general direction of diagnosis. I was highly reluctant to go with medications, but a year later when my son's anxiety became so debilitating that it seriously threatened functioning in everyday life we opted to trial a med and the doctor sent me out the door with a script for a year's worth of refills on an adult dose of an anti-depressant. My pediatrician won't even give me a year's worth of refills on a decongestant for the kid! Thankfully the med gave my son relief but in time it did seem to induce hyperactivity and anger control problems and when I mentioned that to the doctor his solution was to up the dose to control anger and add an ADHD med! Right then I ditched the doctor *and* the meds and redoubled behavioral strategies.

There are times when meds for ADHD and other issues are a true necessity--I've seen children who were totally unable to function without them despite other interventions. One of my son's classmates was the most hyper kid I've ever known even on high doses of Ritalin. I thought I'd seen it all but when he would come over after school and my kids would chase after him it was literally like watching those cartoons where characters zoom back and forth across the screen. It was unbelievable.

But I've also seen many parents who were reluctant to turn to meds whose doctors were pushing it. It's much easier to prescribe a med than to suggest life-style changes or point parents towards researching effective behavioral strategies and expect them to follow through. And once parents find medications effective, many are reluctant to go back because they are so quick and easy. Non-medication interventions generally take FAR more time and energy and a lot of people aren't willing/able to do that in this fast paced society we live in.

Sigh...I know that there are parents out there just like the scenario you described but I think there's a lot going on out there that's fueling it. It's the easy way out for medical professionals and let's not forget that the pharmaceutical companies are making their buck.

Pippen,
Awake at 2 am after discovering that green tea does have caffeine in it after all

[MartyNeilan]

... as you were eluding to, particularly in the school lunch setting. There has been a bigger move in the USDA to provide schools with more and more 'prepackaged' items, so instead of actually "cooking" the school cooks simply yank the USDA box out of the freezer and heat it up.

The "good ol' days" were not necessarily better. My junior high school was in an urban Northern neighborhood and almost everything we ate came out of their deep fryer. One half of the lunch was fries EVERY day without exception. Although it was rather funny when we would read the dietary menus that were posted in our classroom. When I now take my son to speech therapy at a public school, we have to walk through the lunch room and I am amazed at how nutritous their lunches look compared to what I had growing up. Of course, at his private school (the one that fired me that I still pay for him to go to) lunch every day would put most smaller restaurants to shame.

[Philip Jensen]

People, It's not the sugar that makes kids hyper! There is no scientific evidence to support this. Do a quick Google search and you will find lots of mythbusting links. Any hyperness observed has been linked to the kids being already excited (say at a party with 20 other excited kids) or to caffeine in chocolate or many soft drinks.

The problem with sugar consumption is that often the high sugar content food is not very nutritious - the infamous empty calories. Any "crash" after eating a bunch of sugar laden food is because you didn't get the other nutrients your body needs. Or your eating schedule is way out of whack

Sugar will not make your any fatter than any other food, the problem is overconsumption.

The REAL problem with sugar (assuming reasonable consumption) is that it does help to rot teeth!

Table Sugar versus honey, unrefined, etc. Phooey, you body converts it all to glucose anyway (surcrose - a disacharride consisting of one glucose and one fructose bound together). Honey is just a mix of different sugars (mono- and disaccharides) collected from various flowers and concentrated as bee spit. I might cut unrefined sugar a tiny bit of slack as there might be LOW levels of other nutrients there. All are converted to glucose by the body. If you like the taste of honey, go for it, but, sugar is sugar. Don't fool yourself

"Natural" fruit juices versus other sugary fruit drinks. Phooey again. They are both loaded with sugar. It doesn't matter if one is "natural" or not. Any quality differences here would be from other nutrients in the drinks. I'm sick and tired of companies that say their product is "natural" and therefore healthier, when it has just as much sugar, fats, etc as the processed version.

I'll back off if purchase decisions are made to buy local products versus national chain products. Support local Agriculture!!

Now my big pet peeve. Improper terminology usage - sometimes unintentional, often times not. We can all agree that sugar is a carbohydrate. This is technically correct. A carbohydrate can be anything from a single sugar (glucose, fructose, ribose, etc) up to a chain with thousands of sugars (complex carbohydrate) linked together (starch, pectin, glycogen - actually all very similar except for the type of linkage between the sugars). What really irks me is when people complain that we eat to many carbohydrates when what they mean is too much sugar. Technically the statement is correct. The problem is that when some people hear this and they think, Oh, starch is bad for me. If you mean sugar, say sugar, otherwise clarify and say simple carbohydrate, or complex carbohydrate

Refined white flour versus whole wheat flour. Semi-phooey. Again, starch is starch, it all gets converted to glucose, it all comes from the same wheat seed. NOW, that being said whole wheat flour has beneficial fiber (bran) which is removed from white flour. Also removed is the germ which is packed with nutrients for the baby plant (the starch provides the bulk of the energy for the baby plant, while the germ (scutellum) provides other required nutrients). In white flour these are artificailly replaced (enriched flour), but these might not be absorbed as well by the body. Also in the germ is a little bit of oil. The big push many years ago to white flour was to increase the shelf-life of flour. The oil in whole wheat flour will go rancid! So, whole wheat IS better, but refined, enriched white flour is far from being toxic, won't make you fatter than whole wheat, etc. (maybe less regular though). I like to try new wholesome type or alternative foods. Unfortunately I've had a number of these that touted their virtues of being less processed, more Earth friendly, but ended up tasting of rancid oil.

It doesn't matter how "natural", organic, fill in the blank next fad, etc. something is. Eat too much of anything and you will gain weight.

Gee, ya think I might have just recently lectured on this material?

[Rick Denney]

And it appears as if he has still retained a taste for dousing the cereal with red Kool-Aid every morning.

The only thing I can think of that improves processed sugar is a boatload of #3 Red dye.

(Actually, I have found that orange juice is quite as tasty as milk as a lubricant for dry cereal.)

The whole notion of cereal has strange roots. Kellogg was a bit of a nut with some really out-there nutritional ideas that fit in with some even more out-there social ideas. The development of boxed cereal fit with his belief in that sort of food. The added sugar came later, of course. But that overdose of nothing but processed carbohydrate (whether sugar or ground-up corn--it doesn't matter much after about five minutes in the stomach) gives people a little boost at the start of the day. Plus, it's easy.

I would rather feed kids an Egg McMuffin than any pure cereal breakfast. Yes, it has margarine, which is bad. Yes, the meat is fatty. Yes, the muffins have processed flour. But at least the meat and eggs are real and it's not made with sausage like so many fast-food breakfasts. And it won't give you a sugar high/crash, because the protein consumes the carbohydrate and the fat buffers the absorption.

The nuts and whole grains that are a big part of more traditional muesli-style breakfast cereals have protein and fat in much more healthful ways than milk.

Many people are just plain allergic to too much carbohydrate. And many are also somewhat allergic to cow's milk. I'm a bit of both, though I have trouble sticking with a diet that moderates both.

Rick "who finds eating while on travel to be the most difficult, and who travels all the time" Denney

[Chuck(G)]

Plain old oatmeal with a bit of fruit is good for fiber content, low cholesterol and digests slowly enough that you won't be hungry before lunchtime. Easy to make--I put a handful of quick oats in a rice bowl, cover with water and microwave on the popcorn setting.

I've an Asian friend who starts the morning with fish soup. Probably not a bad idea, but I'm too used to westen eating habits to stomach something like that early in the morning.

One of the local middle schools that I visit offers a "lunch" selection of nachos, chocolate chip cookies and ramen noodles. The kids may also be able to buy an apple, but I've never seen a kid eating one.

Seems that if we're determined to teach our kids about sex, teaching them how to eat well would be just as important...

[windshieldbug]

Seems that if we're determined to teach our kids about sex, teaching them how to eat well would be just as important...

Why- do school lunches make a person horny? No wonder I had such little luck in school...

[MartyNeilan]

Seems that if we're determined to teach our kids about sex, teaching them how to eat well would be just as important...

Yeah, but you can go for days without food!

[MaryAnn]

People, It's not the sugar that makes kids hyper! There is no scientific evidence to support this. Do a quick Google search and you will find lots of mythbusting links. Any hyperness observed has been linked to the kids being already excited (say at a party with 20 other excited kids) or to caffeine in chocolate or many soft drinks.

The problem with sugar consumption is that often the high sugar content food is not very nutritious - the infamous empty calories. Any "crash" after eating a bunch of sugar laden food is because you didn't get the other nutrients your body needs. Or your eating schedule is way out of whack

Sugar will not make your any fatter than any other food, the problem is overconsumption.

The REAL problem with sugar (assuming reasonable consumption) is that it does help to rot teeth!

Table Sugar versus honey, unrefined, etc. Phooey, you body converts it all to glucose anyway (surcrose - a disacharride consisting of one glucose and one fructose bound together). Honey is just a mix of different sugars (mono- and disaccharides) collected from various flowers and concentrated as bee spit. I might cut unrefined sugar a tiny bit of slack as there might be LOW levels of other nutrients there. All are converted to glucose by the body. If you like the taste of honey, go for it, but, sugar is sugar. Don't fool yourself

"Natural" fruit juices versus other sugary fruit drinks. Phooey again. They are both loaded with sugar. It doesn't matter if one is "natural" or not. Any quality differences here would be from other nutrients in the drinks. I'm sick and tired of companies that say their product is "natural" and therefore healthier, when it has just as much sugar, fats, etc as the processed version.

I'll back off if purchase decisions are made to buy local products versus national chain products. Support local Agriculture!!

Now my big pet peeve. Improper terminology usage - sometimes unintentional, often times not. We can all agree that sugar is a carbohydrate. This is technically correct. A carbohydrate can be anything from a single sugar (glucose, fructose, ribose, etc) up to a chain with thousands of sugars (complex carbohydrate) linked together (starch, pectin, glycogen - actually all very similar except for the type of linkage between the sugars). What really irks me is when people complain that we eat to many carbohydrates when what they mean is too much sugar. Technically the statement is correct. The problem is that when some people hear this and they think, Oh, starch is bad for me. If you mean sugar, say sugar, otherwise clarify and say simple carbohydrate, or complex carbohydrate

Refined white flour versus whole wheat flour. Semi-phooey. Again, starch is starch, it all gets converted to glucose, it all comes from the same wheat seed. NOW, that being said whole wheat flour has beneficial fiber (bran) which is removed from white flour. Also removed is the germ which is packed with nutrients for the baby plant (the starch provides the bulk of the energy for the baby plant, while the germ (scutellum) provides other required nutrients). In white flour these are artificailly replaced (enriched flour), but these might not be absorbed as well by the body. Also in the germ is a little bit of oil. The big push many years ago to white flour was to increase the shelf-life of flour. The oil in whole wheat flour will go rancid! So, whole wheat IS better, but refined, enriched white flour is far from being toxic, won't make you fatter than whole wheat, etc. (maybe less regular though). I like to try new wholesome type or alternative foods. Unfortunately I've had a number of these that touted their virtues of being less processed, more Earth friendly, but ended up tasting of rancid oil.

It doesn't matter how "natural", organic, fill in the blank next fad, etc. something is. Eat too much of anything and you will gain weight.

Gee, ya think I might have just recently lectured on this material?

Sugar, for someone who reacts badly to it, is a poison. Try taking a hyperactive kid and keeping them on a 100% certified organic diet that mimics what humans were able to eat pre-sugar, pre-fertilizer, pre-shelf-life-enhancements including irradiation, for a month.

I repeat, the human race is poisoning itself. Myth-busting? Maybe the studies were funded by the sugar industry? Huh? I know I am someone who reacts to sugar because I have done my own myth-busting experiments, in the form of complete abstinance for several weeks, followed by as many days as I can ingest it in small amounts (like a granola bar) before becoming the Harpy from Hell. Sugar ingestion, even in small amounts, over as few as three days, turns me into the personality type that is recommended both anti-depressants and Ritalin, while continuing with my regular highly nutritious diet. No, thanks. I'll take my mythical sugar problems and just stay away from sugar, and I recommend complete abstinance to anyone who has similar problems that doctors (pharmaceutical cartel) want to treat with drugs. That includes abstinance from ALL sweeteners, both real and artificial. Real includes honey, fructose, succanat, sugar, brown sugar, and all forms of alcohol, plus probably a few that I can't think of right now. Simply zero sweeteners, period.

And wheat; wheat is a very high pesticide-load product. The germ from certified-organic wheat provides many nutrients not present in the empty-calorie white flour from agri-business-grown wheat. Why do they remove the germ? Because it has nutrients and they feed it to animals, leaving the starchy nutrient-less white product to sell to people, who can be swayed to buy it with advertising dollars. Wheat is also a genetically-modified product, that many people cannot digest properly; when proteins are not completely digested they can cross the blood-brain barrier and produce....undesireable emotional states, which results in uncontrolled behaviors. Some people can digest wheat precursors such as kamut; some cannot. It is not a gluten problem, but a wheat problem.

I could go on and on; responsible consumers who want to enhance their health and not just submit to what agri-business and the pharmaceutical cartel sell them, do have a chance in hell but it's going to take a lot of personal research and experimentation.

MA, who is not and never has been fat.

[Lew]

People, It's not the sugar that makes kids hyper! There is no scientific evidence to support this. Do a quick Google search and you will find lots of mythbusting links. Any hyperness observed has been linked to the kids being already excited (say at a party with 20 other excited kids) or to caffeine in chocolate or many soft drinks.

The problem with sugar consumption is that often the high sugar content food is not very nutritious - the infamous empty calories. Any "crash" after eating a bunch of sugar laden food is because you didn't get the other nutrients your body needs. Or your eating schedule is way out of whack

Sugar will not make your any fatter than any other food, the problem is overconsumption.

The REAL problem with sugar (assuming reasonable consumption) is that it does help to rot teeth!

Table Sugar versus honey, unrefined, etc. Phooey, you body converts it all to glucose anyway (surcrose - a disacharride consisting of one glucose and one fructose bound together). Honey is just a mix of different sugars (mono- and disaccharides) collected from various flowers and concentrated as bee spit. I might cut unrefined sugar a tiny bit of slack as there might be LOW levels of other nutrients there. All are converted to glucose by the body. If you like the taste of honey, go for it, but, sugar is sugar. Don't fool yourself

"Natural" fruit juices versus other sugary fruit drinks. Phooey again. They are both loaded with sugar. It doesn't matter if one is "natural" or not. Any quality differences here would be from other nutrients in the drinks. I'm sick and tired of companies that say their product is "natural" and therefore healthier, when it has just as much sugar, fats, etc as the processed version.

I'll back off if purchase decisions are made to buy local products versus national chain products. Support local Agriculture!!

Now my big pet peeve. Improper terminology usage - sometimes unintentional, often times not. We can all agree that sugar is a carbohydrate. This is technically correct. A carbohydrate can be anything from a single sugar (glucose, fructose, ribose, etc) up to a chain with thousands of sugars (complex carbohydrate) linked together (starch, pectin, glycogen - actually all very similar except for the type of linkage between the sugars). What really irks me is when people complain that we eat to many carbohydrates when what they mean is too much sugar. Technically the statement is correct. The problem is that when some people hear this and they think, Oh, starch is bad for me. If you mean sugar, say sugar, otherwise clarify and say simple carbohydrate, or complex carbohydrate

Refined white flour versus whole wheat flour. Semi-phooey. Again, starch is starch, it all gets converted to glucose, it all comes from the same wheat seed. NOW, that being said whole wheat flour has beneficial fiber (bran) which is removed from white flour. Also removed is the germ which is packed with nutrients for the baby plant (the starch provides the bulk of the energy for the baby plant, while the germ (scutellum) provides other required nutrients). In white flour these are artificailly replaced (enriched flour), but these might not be absorbed as well by the body. Also in the germ is a little bit of oil. The big push many years ago to white flour was to increase the shelf-life of flour. The oil in whole wheat flour will go rancid! So, whole wheat IS better, but refined, enriched white flour is far from being toxic, won't make you fatter than whole wheat, etc. (maybe less regular though). I like to try new wholesome type or alternative foods. Unfortunately I've had a number of these that touted their virtues of being less processed, more Earth friendly, but ended up tasting of rancid oil.

It doesn't matter how "natural", organic, fill in the blank next fad, etc. something is. Eat too much of anything and you will gain weight.

Gee, ya think I might have just recently lectured on this material?

Thank you for a well thought out and articulate statement of facts. Of course whether these are facts or not has no relevance to people who believe differently. There was a great, well researched book by the late Dr. Ludmil Chotkowski titled "Chiropractic: Greatest Fraud of the Century?" He had tons of evidence demonstrating that chiropractic theory and practice have no scientific basis, yet there are plenty of people who swear by their chiropractors.

We are fortunate to live in a country where people are free to believe in whatever they wish, whether falsifiable or not, and to act on those beliefs (with some notable exceptions).

[Pippen]

I don't disagree with the notion that there are parents out there that are making a mess of their kids and who are looking for these medications to control/fix their kids. But again, I think this is a much wider and more complex problem. The explosion of meds to control behaviors has come about due to drastic shifts in the philosophy of the medical community as well as changes in our culture in the last decades to a quick fix, never-at-home, often one parent family. And let's not forget an educational system that isn't exactly conducive to boys being boys.

When the typical parent approaches their pediatrician with concerns about a child's behavioral issues, it's not uncommon for them to be put off or to be referred to a therapist or child psychiatrist--both needed professions but also professions that don't have a good track record for getting to any underlying developmental/neurological issues. The result often is that a) the wrong methods are employed because the root issue is unknown and/or b) there's a quick jump to meds. This is a serious problem. By way of example, the average age that a parent of a child with Autism approaches their doctor with concerns is when the child is 2. The average age for a diagnosis of Autism is 6. In between those ages are some very difficult years of trying to parent a child without the benefit of understanding their unique needs, and often totally wrong or incomplete diagnoses (and often meds) handed out by some specialist(s) along the way.

I don't know the stats on this next problem but I suspect it's pretty prevalent that single parents are more apt to turn to meds to control behaviors. This is not because single parents are worse parents, but frequently they don't have the resources of time, energy, and money it often takes to address problems issues through other means or interventions.

When my one child hit his second year of school, he hit a wall of nearly debilitating anxiety. Despite the supports we quickly put into place he went down fast: school refusal, fear of leaving home/being away from me, going from "tinges" of Autism to looking more Autistic than he'd ever had in his life, and behaviors such that he needed constant supervision at home, especially when he was with siblings. It was heartbreaking to watch, not only to see his pain but to see years of work invested on our part and progress on his go down the drain. We did a short trial of meds which made things worst and then launched an all out campaign to bring him back through non-medication means. By the time we'd pulled him out of it it was untold hours of parent time in researching options, hauling around to various appointments, employing behavioral strategies, homeschooling part-time, not to mention just trying to survive as a family. It was 3 months until he started turning around and a full year before he was back up to baseline. It was a very anxious time: great upheaval to our lives and a considerable emotional toll, and that with us being steady types to begin with.

My point here in sharing what happens to a family in a situation when a parent might turn to the types of meds mentioned in the article is that my kid happened to be born into a stable, two parent family with an at-home mom and steady income, but many are not. I could pick up the homeschooling and extra appointments without causing major upheaval in our daily schedule. I didn't have to make the choice between missing work to tend to the needs of my child and losing a job I needed to put food on the table, put gas in the car, and pay the rent. We have fully paid family health insurance which covered non-medical therapies such as occupational therapy, which became critical as the his issues heated up. I had a support network of family and friends around me who offered practical help like delivering meals and running errands. We're definitely not rick but a middle class income did make it possible to fork out monies out of pockets for alternatives that others might have felt compelled to go medical because it's picked up by insurance. And we had two parents in the home for most of the non-school hours so we could usually manage the constant supervision requirement which we found critical to making it work. There's not a prayer of a chance a single parent could have done what we did-not due to lack of desire or skill, necessarily--but due to lack of available resources. They aren't going to come home after a long day at work and churn butter and grind wheat to make bread. Usually they're going to go the medication route when a reasonable amount of attention to the problem doesn't do the trick. Parents who hit on the right medication the first time around I am sure are more likely to continue on that path, also. Thankfully my son is doing beautifully now and has developed a lot of coping skills which I'm crossing my fingers will help him over the hurdles that likely lie ahead of him.

I'm concerned about the explosion of medication use in children because obviously we were able to find another way. I don't mean to dismiss the reality that there are parents who are expecting meds to do the job they should have, but I think this is far more complex than an issue of good vs. bad parenting.