Our Children Deserve Better

There are some things you just know are wrong. The mass drugging of children is one of those things, at least for me.

Three million American school children take Ritalin or similar drugs to help control focus/behavior problems in the classroom. That’s 20 times as many drugged children in America as 30 years ago.

This past Sunday the New York Times ran an opinion piece called Ritalin Gone Wrong by L. Alan Sroufe, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development.

Dr. Sroufe’s 40-year professional study of this phenomenon, and his well reasoned and calmly presented results, are already drawing angry fire from proponents of the drugs.

Here are some of his findings about these drugs and their sad failure:


• When given to children over long periods of time, they neither improve school achievement nor reduce behavior problems. The drugs can also have serious side effects, including stunting growth.

• To date, no study has found any long-term benefit of attention-deficit medication on academic performance, peer relationships or behavior problems, the very things we would most want to improve.

• The large-scale medication of children feeds into a societal view that all of life’s problems can be solved with a pill and gives millions of children the impression that there is something inherently defective in them.

• The illusion that children’s behavior problems can be cured with drugs prevents us as a society from seeking the more complex solutions that will be necessary. Drugs get everyone — politicians, scientists, teachers and parents — off the hook. Everyone except the children, that is.

During my own 25+ years as a teacher and school administrator I saw more than my share of behavior problems among children of all ages, many of them related to focus problems.

I remember one exasperated fourth grade teacher bringing me an even more exasperated 9 year old. For most kids it’s at least a little sobering to find yourself in the principal’s office. As he began to settle down and verbalize what was really bothering him, I remember thinking that if I had to face the problems he faced every day, I wouldn’t be able to focus either. There was nothing inherently wrong with him; he was, like many of us, facing very vexing circumstances and in need of some help sorting it out. He was only nine and assigning a drug-based solution would have been nothing short of cruel.

His parents didn’t want to use drugs, so we forged a plan that would provide a greater sense of peace for him at home and at school. This wasn’t easy and there were further bumps in the road, but things improved over the long haul. The focus and control issues were gradually eased by an effective school/home partnership… And finally resolved. It took a long time and a lot of hard work.

Pills can’t do that. It seems easier to apply a short-term chemical solution than to find and solve the real problem. But in the long run, as Dr. Sroufe has confirmed, drugs are not a solution, and their unchecked use can create a huge local and national burden for us all.

Many parents are finding solutions to children’s attention/behavior problems through focused Christian prayer. This prayer has a Bible-based focus, but it can be employed by people with no prior Biblical knowledge and no current religious orientation.

Here’s an example from spirituality.com. It’s an article with a great title: “Help! My child is out of control!”