ADD And ADHD- Is Medication The Only Solution?

Have you noticed the increase in the number of children supposedly having ADD or ADHD? The trend seems to be more and more students are being referred to their doctors by teachers because it appears they are concentrating or listening to instructions. While there are some students who legitimately have ADD or ADHD how many are just given medication because they tend to be more active than the average student and not as easy to listen to instructions?

Concerned parents bring their children to their doctors based on the observations of the teacher. If the doctor feels the child has ADD then the next step is often to prescribe medication. Parents are then faced with the dilemma of putting heir child on medication or continuing to get bad reports from the child teacher. These medications are reported to enhance the focus of the student and tend to achieve better grades while on medication. But, at what cost

For many this medication is being dispensed very early on and most people feel that in the early stages of childhood that what the teachers may be seeing is problems within the home or very simply immaturity in the child who is unwilling to conform. However, it is the teachers that seem to be diagnosing these children very early on and sending them and their parents to the doctor's office to fix this problem.

Since there is very little done in a doctor's office to confirm this diagnosis essentially if a teacher says the child needs it then it is assumed that they do sometimes with confirmation by the parents and sometimes solely based on the school reports of this child's behavior in a classroom setting. And while this may make a child seem "better" ultimately these drugs turn some children into expressionless dummies and others lose all of their creative abilities to taking these medications.

While children with ADD are not considered normal many of them have extremely high IQ's and are very creative. As an adult, these attributes can be looked upon favorably and often times are extremely successful. Albert Einstein was considered to have ADD. Parents have to way the pros and cons of taking the medications that are being offered as a way to focus their children and look into the other alternatives than medication.