This is going to be a rant….
For the first time ever I have reached a major disagreement with my wifey. We fall on different sides of an issue with our eldest child. According to the Doc, the boy is borderline for Attention Disorder and does not have hyperactivity disorder. Nonetheless she wants to try him out on medication to see if it helps his condition. What condition? I mean, ADHD is pretty well known and common and if the boy is negative for one half and positive for the other half, he might be suffering from something else–like dyslexia, which is known to mimic the symptoms of ADHD.
Our doc told my wife the nursing student that meds are what is best for our boy. She didn’t offer any other suggestions but for a sample regimen of meds which would allow us to see how the meds affected his behaviors. Yet this offers no real solution to the learning problem, which is what got us to the doc in the first place. The fact is the boy cannot read. When asked about his troubles reading he expresses symptoms identical to that of dyslexia. But the doc says it will take the school up to six months to test him (note, she doesn’t even know what school the kid goes to. She isn’t familiar with Maricopa schools) and in the meanwhile we should do the drug option.
No. That is where we disagree. My wife buys the tale that we would be doing him a favor by, well, sedating him with this medication. She spends a lot of time in hospitals and even children’s units, so she knows what a benefit it is to everyone around them and even the child if they could just fit in. However, my kid DOES fit in. He is an Honor Roll student and has been since he came to school in Maricopa. His behavior, while loud and boisterous at times, is manageable and does not severely effect his grades or schoolwork. In fact, his academic effort is near the top of the class.
So, why drug him? Why indeed. I am standing on the tracks in front of the drug train, and I wont get off. I let it go when they put him on allergy medication for life, but I am really tired of drugs being a doctor’s answer to everything under the sun. I am interested in a second opinion, but it is the opinion of most doctors I encounter that drugs are the answer to everything. At what point did they stop being healers and start being licensed pushers?
So the wifey is angrily dealing with my unwillingness to give him drugs except for as a last resort. She says we cannot wait, but I say that there is no ticking bomb. There is nothing so wrong with his behavior now that he is unmanageable. If anything, he has gotten better at being attentive and being settled. He just hasn’t gotten any better at reading.