Fact: The US is subjecting several million of its children to psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. And things are getting worse.

Clearly, we need to move beyond medication, labels, and controls. The ADD label encompasses a widely-divergent group of children, requiring a wide range of strategies--nurturing, stimulating, and encouraging interventions that are good for all kids. To support children in using their energies in creative and constructive ways—to give them what they want and need—we must change our attitudes and priorities.

The most despairing and violent of our children reflect the underlying disorder of the society: the alienation and abandonment of our children. We must utterly reject the idea that the problem lies in our children's brains or bodies, or that we need to focus on diagnosing individual children. Instead, we need to identify the breakdown of relationship with our children in our homes, schools and community, and then come together as adults dedicated to making ourselves and our institutions more able to serve the needs of our children. —Peter R. Breggin, MD

Are we ready to acknowledge how often our choices reflect our own materialistic compulsions, social pressures, and personal needs rather than the relationship needs of our children? Are we willing to rethink--as parents and policymakers, as caregivers and communities—how we can live with relationship at the center of our values, and with relationship to our children as our highest priority, reallocating time and energy towards identifying and meeting their needs?

Instead of focusing on how to fix our children, we will have to transform ourselves. —Peter R. Breggin, MD

Sources:

Thomas Armstrong, The Myth of the A.D.D. Child
Peter R. Breggin, Reclaiming Our Children

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