Medicating Your Kids Is Not a 'Dirty Little Secret'

I remember how daunting it was when my then 6-year old son was diagnosed with ADHD six years ago.

Scene opens:

My husband and I sitting on a leather couch in a high-rise building awaiting test results. Me wringing my hands. Enter the doctor.

“He has ADHD,” the “renowned” psychiatrist said flippantly, tossing my son’s chart on the coffee table.

“So what do we do now?” I asked, tears choking my throat.

“Come back and see me when he needs medication,” he said dismissively.

Cut to: Me scream-crying in the elevator.

I must have done something wrong. I felt so much shame, like it was such a failure. Everything I had ever heard about ADD and medication was rooted in evil.

If I had gone to see Dr. Edward Hallowell, one of the leading expert’s on ADD first, this is what he tells Yahoo Parenting he would have told me: “It’s important to remember that ADHD is not your fault or the effect of bad parenting.  ADHD is a neuropsychiatric condition. Parents should also note that ADHD can enable many positive traits in their child, including creativity, intuitive, originality and positivity.”

That certainly would have made me feel better. But in those early dark days, I sadly didn’t know about him. I didn’t know anything about anything related to mental health issues, except what I heard from friends or what seeped in from the media. I remembered that two years prior when I was looking at kindergartens for my son a friend bristled at the mention of one particular school: “You don’t want to your son to go to that school because so many of the boys have ADD. They’re all like, medicated, and have disorders. The parents clearly did a bad job. Disaster.”

“Yes, disaster,” I echoed, nodding my head in agreement. That school was the devil! It was a whole bunch of red flags: Medication, psychiatrists, extra help. How awful!

And just the year before that one of the Gods of Hollywood had weighed in about that stuff, and everyone stopped to listen because, you know, celebrities are so knowledgeable and educated.

“When you talk about emotional, chemical imbalances in people, there is no science behind that,” Tom Cruise sternly told Billy Bush on “Access Hollywood” with the vociferousness of one running for office. He had momentarily stopped jumping on couches professing his love for Katie Holmes and was criticizing Brooke Shields for taking medication for her post-partum depression. “These drugs are dangerous…[Brooke] is an incredibly talented woman. You look at, where has her career gone?”

This was the meretricious chatter floating through my head when first my older son, then my second son, was diagnosed with ADHD and ADD respectively. It seems stupid because who would care about all the disparaging comments people — let alone celebrities — think at a time like this? Do I care that I may be sending my son to Scientology hell if I gave him Ritalin? (Interestingly Ritalin was first approved by the FDA in 1955 and has been around longer than Ibuprofen, which wasn’t on the market until 1974. Does Tom Cruise take Advil for headaches?)

But the fact is: Negative commentary and salacious suppositions garner press. It can feel like week after week headlines scream about over-diagnosis; the fake epidemics of ADD and ADHD; the morality of medicating children. There is a tone of admonishment and skepticism. If your children have mental health issues, the way you treat them becomes almost a dirty little secret.

“A lot of the parents who come in to meet with me the first time have a lot of anxiety about the process because a lot of what they hear is very negative,” explains Dr. Mark Krushelnycky, a New York-based psychiatrist. “There are a lots and lots of negatively slanted articles about kids and medicine that are scary for parents to hear, and rarely do you see a counter-balance with articles that highlight when things do go well. And a lot of parents fear that if their child is diagnosed with ADHD that the only option they have is to put him on medicine and there are no other effective strategies out there. In most cases medicine may be helpful, but there are a lot of other things like a validated behavior treatment and organizational plans and approaches.”

I think after years of dealing with this, and a little perspective, the best advice I would give—and do give—to parents of kids with ADHD and ADD is to “own it.” This is who my children are, and it can be challenging but there can also be benefits. (I like how Dr. Hallowell told me that “people with ADHD are often natural entrepreneurs—in fact, some of the most successful entrepreneurs credit their ADHD for their accomplishments.”) Once I got over myself and chose not to buy into the stigma, I was able to work out the best plan for my children. Ignoring the commentary of people who know little about it is crucial.

"People often think that we should be able to control ADHD or other mental health issues as they originate in our minds and involve our thoughts. However, the brain is our most complex organ, so how could we possibly expect ourselves to have total control over it?" says Dr. Kathleen Rein. "And as for medication, if your child had asthma or diabetes, you wouldn’t think twice about giving them medication for it."

Dr. Hallowell adds, “My best advice for parents is to take action now. Don’t fight it. Persist in finding new and different ways to support your child. If you address your child’s needs head on and get the proper guidance, you’ll teach your children to manage their ADHD effectively by making plans that include healthy decisions. Parents need to look at treatment as the unwrapping of gifts, not as the rectification of a disorder or the filling in of a deficit.”

Yes, it is a challenge. The impulsivity, the lack of organization, the unpredictable behavior can all weigh on you. But don’t let it undermine your relationship with your child. Don’t let the criticism that you receive outweigh the fact that your child also has special qualities that need to be highlighted. Find a great doctor or psychologist to help you. Understood.org is also an excellent resource founded by fifteen nonprofit organizations to support parents of children with attention or learning issues. And see the light at the end of the tunnel.

One of the best things that my son’s preschool teacher told me after his diagnosis was “Don’t forget, he wants to do what is right. He just needs more help that others.”