Friday, March 29, 2024

Kids shouldnt be drugged for acting their age

My name is Dylan, and I’m 8 1/2 years old. I don’t like going to the doctor. But my mommy said I had to go today. She said the doctor would make me better. That’s good, I guess. But I don’t feel sick at all.

But it wasn’t so bad this time. Normally I go and see Dr. Chung when I’m sick and he uses a tongue depressor and gives me pink stuff and I don’t like the tongue depressor ’cause it makes me gag, but I really like the pink stuff. It’s really good.

Anyways, this time I went to see Dr. Ciba. Dr. Ciba was really nice and he didn’t use any tongue depressors at all. He just wanted me to play with things and answer questions. After I’d say something he’d make a mark on his paper but he didn’t write as much as Dr. Chung does when I’m sick.

Sometimes when the teacher’s talking about something I really want to go outside and I really like recess ’cause we get to go outside and play games. Sometimes I want to go outside so bad I can’t sit down and I want to start playing a game right in class. Mommy says that’s why I’m sick and that I have to take a pill every day that will make me better.

She says lots of other kids have to take the pill, just like me.

Mommy is right. A lot of other kids in America have the same problem as Dylan, and they have to take the pill too.

One of the cutest things I notice about little kids, little boys in particular, is their eagerness to play. Give them someone who wants to play wrestle, and instinct completely takes over as they crawl and grab every body part they can climb. At restaurant meals, it is absolutely impossible to maintain more than one 5-year-old. They are just too energetic.

They’re born that way. Little kids’ motors run faster than ours by design. At this stage of their development, they want all the movement and play they can get.

It doesn’t help that the modern, fast-paced way of life that runs us so dogged also affects them. If there’s ever a dull moment, kids have access to chat rooms where they can talk with 20 people at the same time, or a CD-ROM where they can command an army of spaceships against some aliens.

And if none of these are accessible, there’s always “Lucifer’s Box,” a strobe light that pacifies kids into zombies with rapid, three-second scene depictions of the most exciting parts of adult life. At my parents’ house, my sister has a menu of around 300 channels to choose from. Children grow up used to a constant stream of entertainment.

In today’s society, their minds are flying just as fast as their bodies. And the pharmaceutical industries’ solution to our childrens’ difficulty concentrating is to give them an amphetamine we know nothing about.

Hailed as a wonder drug, Ritalin makes kids more docile and easier for teachers and parents to control by removing their creative impulses to use their imaginations and let their minds wander. It also makes them less prone to want to play.

It wouldn’t be quite so outrageous if doctors had any idea what they were doing. But Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) don’t manifest themselves physically. These things kids are taking pills for are not diseases. There’s no physical examination a doctor can do to determine if a child has ADD or ADHD. And there’s no evidence whatsoever to indicate that it results from a malfunction in the brain or body.

We’re expected to believe all those kids in American classrooms forced by their parents to take amphetamines just have “bad” chemicals in their brain. Right. And I suppose because boys are diagnosed five times more than girls, boys are five times more likely to have these “bad” chemicals.

“But, Andrew,” you say, “my doctor wouldn’t give anything to my sibling/child that they didn’t understand.” Think so? Well, let’s look at the manufacturer’s definition of how Ritalin works. It works like this: “There is neither specific evidence which clearly establishes the mechanisms whereby Ritalin produces its mental and behavioral effects in children, nor conclusive evidence regarding how these effects relate to the central nervous system.”

Uhh OK. Thanks. Well, what do we know about it? It’s classified by the government as a Schedule II drug - the same category as cocaine and heroin - with a high potential for abuse. It’s highly addictive, and it certainly stunts growth in children. That’s about it.

It’s an amphetamine. That’s all. That’s what millions of kids all over America are being prescribed for their “disorder” every year. That it works is completely irrelevant. It’s dangerous, it’s synthetic and, most of all, it’s unfair.

Kids need to learn how to deal with all their mental and physical energy. And I think the first step, as simplistic as it sounds, is to unplug that ever-present television. No human can possibly concentrate on a teacher for eight hours straight. How can we expect our children, with all their energy, to do it when they don’t even know how to be alone with their thoughts?

Chemical stimulants are nothing new to our culture, and it is with a sense of irony that I finish my second cup of coffee as I write this conclusion. But to force an amphetamine we know nothing about upon an entire generation of youth to make them more pliable is horrifying. In my eyes, it’s like me showing up at your house every morning and forcing you to snort a line of cocaine.

These drugs are a simple and lazy solution to a very complex problem that needs more than prescription. It needs attention.

Andrew Banyai, a political science and pre-law junior, can be reached at banyaian@msu.edu.

Discussion

Share and discuss “Kids shouldnt be drugged for acting their age” on social media.