A young boy is riding his bike and loses his balance. He falls to the pavement and scrapes his knee. His mom hurries inside to retrieve a Band-Aid and some Neosporin. Within minutes his tears are wiped. Within a week a healthy scab emerges.
The next day at school, the same boy is called on in class and he incorrectly answers a question. His third grade teacher mentions this to his parents and claims that he missed the question because he wasn’t paying attention to the lesson.
Within a couple of days the boy will be sitting with a psychiatrist. Within a week a dose of Ritalin will be added to his Lucky Charms and chocolate milk and become his daily routine.
In nine years this boy will be a junior in high school. He will be taking his SATs along with all of his peers. He will want money to buy a new iPod, but will be $100 short.
He will have a good idea – make a profit by selling Ritalin. He will ensure his customers that they will get a higher score because they will be able to concentrate better. His easy access to the drug guarantees quick sales.
A client’s mom will be pleased at her daughter’s success on the rigorous exam and will ask her why she thinks that she did a bit better on the real test than on the practice one that she’d done in her room last weekend. Her daughter will answer bluntly, “I borrowed my friend’s Ritalin.” The mother will be surprised, maybe a bit confused, but will decide to acknowledge this, and suggest that she “borrow” it again for the one that she takes in the fall.
Welcome to our world today. America’s suburbs are filled with loving, over-nurturing parents who only want the best for their children. But what if the mentality used in giving your child a Band-Aid for a cut becomes the same one that is used to mix pills into their yogurt? Is this going too far? And, is this really benefiting the child? Since when is it okay to rely so heavily on a drug, and to create a chance for its abuse?
Ritalin, anti-depressants, Adderall, and others of this high-inducing nature, are being prescribed far too leniently to teenagers and children across our country. Studies show that psychiatrists are diagnosing and prescribing Ritalin to patients after interviews as short as 15 minutes. According to USA Today, between seven to eight percent of boys nationwide are on some sort of ADHD medicine. As a result, our country is being filled with softened, indulged citizens and these habitually abused drugs.
Someone can’t fall asleep one night, and the next day they are immediately prescribed anti-depressants. We pay for drugs just because it’s frustrating to lie in bed for fifteen minutes before getting to sleep. This illustrates how over indulgent our society has become.
The use of such medicines is definitely helpful to many in need of them, but we need to re-evaluate what “need” means. Often we are quick to say, “I need this and I need that,” just to avoid a rough patch in our stressful lives and to make things more comfortable.
However, before tossing drugs to a person like they’re candy, parents should think about whether or not their kids can survive the hectic-ness that is life, and all of its expectations, without medicine. This drug over-dose makes us sometimes unaware that there are those out there enduring greater hardships than our own. This in turn raises children that will grow up to go through life always needing aid and being overly sensitive to the hard parts in life from which their medicine may blind.
I understand that some children need ADHD medicines to succeed throughout the long school day or to hold a conversation (in an even more severe case). And it is parents’ duties to get their kids the appropriate medicine. However, it would be healthy for parents to stop monitoring their children’s brains with drugs for at least a Sunday afternoon once a month. They shouldn’t be so reliant on a pill to the point that if they were taken off of it for this short period of time, they couldn’t function properly.
I believe that it is even healthier for children to be allowed to act how they would naturally, off of the drug; even if this means that for that couple of hours they might start three different art projects without finishing a single one. It is morally incorrect to control your child’s mind every minute of every day. It is only natural and fair that they should be given a break to roam about and maybe cause that little bit of destruction that’s really bottled up inside of them without their knowing it.
As children grow up and realize that their medicine is capable of changing their mental state, they take advantage of its easy accessibility. Kids often lend or sell their drugs to friends who don’t need them. Some want to lose weight; others justify taking the drugs just before a presentation or test in order to help them succeed.
Even worse, many parents know that their child took a friend’s medicine, but will not protest. They won’t interject, as long as their child doesn’t overdose. What these parents need to realize is that using a drug that isn’t prescribed for you is equivalent to the abuse of any other illegal drug.
Think back to that hypothetical young, innocent boy on the bicycle again. His parents’ impulsive decision to put him on a pill wasn’t necessarily in his ultimate best interest. Though some kids definitely need the drugs, others do not. Maybe he would’ve grown up just fine, even if he had never been spurred by his parents in the first place to rely on a source outside of his own natural brain. These drugs are fencing in creativity and producing oversensitive and under-intuitive Americans.
