The class was working peacefully. It was the first lesson of the morning and everyone was a little bleary-eyed.

Joe Smith, I notice was doodling on a text book. ‘Come on Joe. That’s enough of that. Get on with your work please.’

I was new to teaching and trying to be firm but fair. The next minute, Joe grabbed his neighbour’s pencil case and threw it across the floor. When I remonstrated him he told me to ‘f*** off’.

At the end of the lesson I asked him to stay behind. Demanding an apology, I told him I’d be phoning home as well as reporting his behaviour to the head.

Joe simply shrugged. ‘It’s not my fault. I’m ill. I’ve got ADHD. I can’t help it.’

This was the first time I’d heard of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and I actually laughed. Appalling behaviour an illness? I’d never heard anything so ludicrous.

Now, I can honestly say I don’t think there’s a single class I teach without at least one and often two or three children being medicated with this very powerful class B drug.

Ritalin has unpleasant side effects - including sleeplessness and nausea - and the penalty for selling it illegally is a maximum of 14 years’ imprisonment.

If the answer to these questions is yes, then according to the ‘experts’, the child might well have ADHD. Alternatively, they may simply be a typical boy.

Added to the list of symptoms are, in my experience, extreme rudeness and a dislike of being asked to wear school uniform.

If asked several times to stop talking over me, children with the ‘illness’ generally swear at me.

When I phone their home, their parents react with the uniform comment: ‘He can’t help it. He’s got ADHD.’

Unsurprisingly, an increasing number of doctors and psychiatrists are expressing the fear that children are being labelled with a mental illness and given drugs for behaviour that in the past would simply have been labelled ‘very naughty.’

And anecdotally, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that schools are pressurising parents to put children who cause mayhem on Ritalin.

As a teacher, I’m secretly relieved when I hear that a particularly difficult child, one who won’t do any work, who chats and texts through the lesson, who sneers and swears at staff without a second thought, has been prescribed Ritalin.

The drug isn’t known as the ‘chemical cosh’ for nothing. If I’m honest, though, I don’t believe that these children are ill. I think they come from insecure, unstable backgrounds where the concept of a bedtime is as fanciful as the fairy tales they’ve never been read.

Of course, having an active, boisterous seven-year-old child is hard work. But it seems to me that far too many mums and dads are happy to have their children labelled with a psychiatric condition and drugged - even if the existence of the disorder is hotly disputed by the experts.

Youngsters might be turned into wide-eyed, slow-witted zombies, but at least they’re not running amok in the playground and inconveniencing their parents by getting suspended.

Ritalin, like Valium, has become mother’s little helper. It relieves parents of the responsibility of actually having to discipline their children. But as a society, we may pay a very high price indeed for drugging a generation of our children.

* Frances Childs is a teacher in a comprehensive school in the South of England.

Source: Daily Mail
http://tinyurl.com/4aqr7v

Youngsters in the United States are three times likelier to be prescribed antidepressants and stimulants and twice as likely to be given antipsychotic drugs than counterparts in Germany and the Netherlands, according to a new study.

The use of antidepressants and stimulants such as Prozac and Ritalin to treat hyperactivity, attention deficit and bipolar disorders in teenagers and young children has become a subject of sharp controversy.

Proponents say these powerful drugs, known as psychotropics, target newly identified conditions that were undertreated or misdiagnosed in the past.

Critics say the medications are being used too broadly, addressing behavioural problems that should be tackled by softer therapies.

Drawing from data on nearly 600,000 youngsters 19 years old and younger, the study is one of the first rigorous comparisons across several countries of how these medications are dispensed among the young.

In 2000, nearly seven percent of children in the US took psychotropics of some kind, while 2.9 and 2.0 percent, respectively, did so in the Netherlands and Germany, according to the study.

One in 12 of American children aged five to nine were taking these medications, four times the European levels.

Lead researcher Julie Zito, a University of Maryland pharmacologist, said psychotropic use in the United States may have increased since the data was collected.

“The US trends appear to be continuing,” she told AFP in an email.

Seeking explanations for the disparity on either side of the Atlantic, the study noted that direct-to-consumer drug advertising was allowed in the United States, but banned in Europe.

“The increased use of medication in the US reflects the individualist and activist therapeutic mentality of US medical culture,” Zito said.

There are also differences in the way behavioural disorders are defined and classified.

The diagnosis of “hyperkinetic disorder” in the European medical system, for example, is more stringent than that of the “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” (ADHD), the equivalent syndrome in the US classification.

Another difference is who is handing out the medication: there are more psychiatrists per capita in the United States, which could influence prescription patterns, the study says.

Reimbursement policies and government regulatory constraints may also be factors.

Amphetamines and other stimulants are rarely prescribed for children in Western Europe. In France, their use was banned during the period covered by the study, 1999 and 2000.

Government health plans in Europe have also cut down on the use of expensive, patent-protected drugs, especially antipsychotics and antidepressants.

The study was published online, on Thursday, in the British-based open access journal BioMed Central.

Source: AFP
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ilBNpu4oa62i2RHvWrWC362LFLaA

Parents need lessons in how to cope with their children’s unruly behaviour, new guidelines on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) say.

Teachers would also benefit from training to recognise and help children with this condition, it adds.

Any primary school class is likely to have a child with ADHD, experts say.

Most of the estimated 365,000 children in Britain with ADHD receive no treatment at all.

But of those who do, most - about 37,000 - are prescribed stimulants like Ritalin (methylphenidate).

Children with ADHD have extreme difficulty sitting still, learning or concentrating.

At school they may find it hard to keep friends and suffer from bullying because of their behaviour. Looking after affected children can be exhausting for parents.

Parenting classes

The guidelines, which cover England, Wales and Northern Ireland, say parent training and education programmes should be offered as a first-line treatment for ADHD, both for pre-school and school age children.

Drugs remain a first option for children over five and young people with severe ADHD, say the guidelines, but only as part of a comprehensive treatment plan that includes psychological and behavioural interventions.

Dr Tim Kendall, a consultant psychiatrist from Sheffield who is joint director of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health and helped draw up the guidelines, said: “There is an over-reliance on medicines.

“Quite commonly, people tend to revert to offering methylphenidate or atomoxetene. When they do that it’s not always because there’s a good balance of risk and benefits. It’s because the child has got what appears to be ADHD and that’s what’s available.

“Its easier to prescribe a drug when other options like parent training programmes are not available.”

Dr Kendall said it was important to diagnose ADHD correctly, rather than label all bad behaviour as ADHD. The symptoms of ADHD persist in all settings - both at school and at home - and cause real impairment.

Andrea Bilbow, chief executive of the ADHD charity ADDISS, welcomed the NICE recommendations but questioned how helpful the parent training programmes would be to parents.

“Parenting programmes are extremely important, but they need to be specific for ADHD.

“The ones that NICE are recommending were designed for the parents of children with conduct disorder, which is completely different from ADHD,” she said.

The Scottish InterCollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) is rewriting its guidelines on ADHD diagnosis and treatment and will take the NICE guidelines into consideration.

Their new guidance will come out in the first half of 2009.

Source: BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7630926.stm

Up to one in 11 children in Britain may suffer from an attention deficit disorder, government advisers will say this week.

Recommendations on the treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) say families in which pre-school children have behavioural problems should be given parenting classes, reigniting a debate about whether the condition is a medical diagnosis or the result of poor upbringing.

The guidance by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) is expected to say that up to 9 per cent of children and 2 per cent of adults fall within broad definitions of ADHD. It will recommend that the stimulant Ritalin be prescribed to all children and adults with a severe form of the condition and to all moderate cases which do not respond to talking therapies or parenting classes.

Prof Philip Asherson, one of the experts who produced the guidance, due out on Wednesday, said they tried to avoid following the model of ADHD care in the United States, where medication is the norm and routinely used to tackle minor behavioural and educational problems.

He said: “We worked very hard to avoid the approach in the US, where one in 10 children are being treated with stimulants. The guidance makes it clear that medication is the right approach in some cases but that it should not be used for everyone and certainly not to tackle minor educational problems.”

The psychologist Oliver James accused psychiatrists of medicalising a problem that was caused by upbringing. He said: “Psychiatrists invented this category to medicalise when in fact it is a social problem linked to low incomes and parenting difficulties.” He said the best approach to children with ADHD-like symptoms was to give them more attention and affection.

Andrea Bilbow, chief executive of the National Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service, also attacked the guidance. She said the parenting programmes it recommended were not specific to ADHD and would offer little help to families.

Dr Sami Timimi, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Lincolnshire, who does not believe ADHD is a valid diagnosis, said Nice had produced no evidence that the condition existed, or that medication worked, despite coming to conclusions supporting its use.

Dr Timimi, author of Naughty Boys: Anti-social Behaviour, ADHD and the Role of Culture, said draft guidance produced by Nice cited a study that showed Ritalin improved the performance of patients after 14 months but did not consider the longer-term results of the same study, which showed that after three years it made no difference.

Stoke uses drug 23 times less than the Wirral

Doctors are 23 times more likely to prescribe drugs such as Ritalin for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in some areas of the country than in others.

In the Wirral, one prescription of the drug class methylphenidate, which includes Ritalin, was dispensed for every seven children last year, according to the Health Service Journal. Other areas with high rates included the Isle of Wight, Great Yarmouth and Medway in Kent.

Doctors in Stoke on Trent handed out the drugs least frequently, with one prescription per 159 children.

Latest figures show almost 500,000 prescriptions for stimulants for under-16s last year, more than double the 200,000 issued in 2003. The Department of Health said the figures reflected the number of prescriptions, which could include repeat orders for the same child.

Solurce: Telegraph.co.uk
http://tinyurl.com/53uulo

Is your child already struggling to pay attention in school? Don’t jump to Ritalin for the answer. Check out his eyes, ears and teeth for possible trouble spots.

One Davidson, N.C., mother of a first-grader says she has been pleased that several months of eye exercises with a vision therapist have helped her son focus better in school this year.

“Parenting is very educational,” the mother says, as there’s always something new to learn to care for your child. “Who even knew there was such a thing as vision therapy?”

Young kids generally don’t complain about their eyes, but parents need to be aware of symptoms that may indicate a vision problem. The American Optometric Association says that even though a child may have 20/20 vision, these habits can signal less obvious vision problems:

l Loses his or her place while reading.

l Avoids close work.

l Has headaches.

l Holds reading material closer than normal.

l Tends to rub his eyes.

l Turns or tilts head to use one eye only.

l Makes frequent reversals when reading or writing.

l Uses his finger to maintain place when reading.

l Omits or confuses small words when reading.

l Consistently performs below potential.

l Has difficulty with hand-eye-body coordination when throwing a ball or riding a bike.

l Avoids detailed work such as coloring or puzzles.

The eye association recommends that children receive comprehensive eye exams — beyond a brief screening — beginning at 6 months, 3 years and again when a child enters school.

A simple vision screening in school could miss what some parents have realized: Their underachieving children cannot keep written text in focus. Their eyes tire easily, so they look up often from what they’re reading. They appear bored and distracted, when actually their eyes are not working together.

Similarly, some kids may pass an initial hearing screening, but still be at risk for hearing loss that fluctuates, gets worse or is acquired later in development, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

The goal of screening for hearing loss in preschoolers age 3 to 5 is to identify children most likely to have hearing loss that may interfere with how they speak, understand language and perform later in school.

Attentive preschool teachers have a special vantage point: To flag vision and speech difficulties if a child is behind his peers in development.

Toothaches can also keep kids from paying attention in school or cause difficulty learning. Progressive dental decay is one of the most common childhood diseases, and mouth pain and tooth complaints are a common reason kids miss school, according to the University of Southern California School of Dentistry Pediatric Dental Clinic.

“When you’re in pain, you can’t concentrate and you can’t learn,” says Gardner Beale of USC.

Keeping an eye on your child’s oral health and instilling good habits is one more important job on a long list for parents. A new toothbrush and dental floss belong on the back-to-school shopping list, but what your child eats is just as important in preventing cavities as oral hygiene.

Snacks such as chips, cookies and dried fruit have cavity-inducing sugars that can stick on teeth for long periods, Beale warns. Fresh fruits, veggies and string cheese make the healthiest snacks, she says.

Beale reminds parents that sodas, with both their sugar and acid content harmful to teeth, should be consumed sparingly.

Addressing oral-health concerns before they turn into painful, expensive problems is crucial, Beale says.

And it is one more thing for parents to keep track of to give kids the best chance in school.

Source: Connecticut Post
http://www.connpost.com/women/ci_10510035

If your baby could talk, she wouldn’t need to cry. But until she can start forming words, she’ll likely stick to the whimpers and tears she’s using now to let you know what she wants.

What makes baby cry?

– Different types of crying mean different things. There’s the “I’m tired” or “I’m hungry” as well as the “I’m frustrated … need a diaper change … want to be held…” cries. The best way you can determine what each cries means is to listen intently each time your infant cries. You’ll soon get to know what baby is trying to say with each pitch and wail.

– As baby grows. Experts agree that babies will often cry right before they experience a growth period. They have an amazing ability to sense a change about to occur - physically and developmentally.

– Bath time. Infants do not like the feeling that comes with being totally undressed during bath time. To avoid this situation, keep baby’s diaper on if you can, or wash quickly taking turns covering baby’s top half while washing the bottom - then reverse it.

– Bedtime. Nighttime is the time to release pent up frustration and energy baby has built up during the day. P.S.: Fussy babies usually sleep soundly and for longer periods of time.

– Crib time. Babies need some time to adjust to a sterile crib after nine months inhabiting a warm, comfy womb. Bright lights, sharp sounds, lots of action - it’s a different life than your infant was used to.

– Are you stressed? Infants are like little sponges and can pick up on the stress you may be feeling, putting a tearful spin on it on your behalf.

– Does baby not feel well? Colic, which can last for a long time, may make baby cry. The American Academy of Pediatrics says colic causes severe abdominal discomfort. If crying is intense, starts around the same time each day, causes baby to pull her legs up to her chest or get a bloated tummy, colic can be the cause.

– Other medical conditions can also cause crying: fever, diarrhea, vomiting. With each of these conditions, a call to the pediatrician is in order.

– Is this cry different? Is baby sounding more screechy? Is he louder than usual or whining as well? Again, it’s time to call the pediatrician.

Ways to soothe baby

– Hold baby to your shoulder to comfort her.

– Turn on the music. The rhythm found in music mimics the mother’s heartbeat as heard in the womb. Put your MP3 player on the speakers and turn up the music (classical is great for this purpose). Listening to classical music at a young age also helps increase math skills later on.

– Babies may also be soothed by familiar, rhythmic sounds such as the vacuum cleaner, hair dryer, air conditioner or the sound of trickling water.

– Comfort object. A blankie, favorite toy or perhaps an old T-shirt with your smell on it may help baby calm down.

– Help baby zone out by watching repetitive activity, such as fish going round a fish tank, a mobile turning gently or a lamp that projects figures on the wall as it swirls.

Parenting tip from the trenches

If baby’s crying is constant and lasts more than three months, it’s time for a pediatrician to run some tests.

Doreen Nagle is author of But I Don’t Feel Too Old To Be A Mommy (…)

Source: Hattiesburg American
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080918/MOMS03/80917016

A new study has shown that early parenting, as early as 6 months, plays a crucial role in changing the impact of genes that may put infants at risk for responding poorly to stress.

For the study, the researchers from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania State University, the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and North Carolina State University looked at 142 infants 3, 6, and 12 months old and were placed in a stressful situation like being separated from their mother.

They measured infants” heart rates while they were exposed to the stressor, isolating a cardiac response called vagal tone.

Vagal tone acts like a brake on the heart when the body is in a calm state, but during a challenging situation, this brake is withdrawn, allowing heart rate to increase so the body can actively deal with the challenge.

They also collected DNA to determine which form of a dopamine receptor gene the infants carried as specific forms of this gene are related to problems in adolescence and adulthood including aggression, substance abuse, and other risky behaviours.

To assess the mothers” behaviour as high or low in sensitivity, they also videotaped the mothers and their infants playing together for 10 minutes when the babies were 6 months old.

The study showed that both genes and parenting were important to the infants” development of the way in which the brain helps regulate cardiac responses to stress.

Initially, 3 and 6 months old infants with the form of the dopamine gene associated with later risky behaviours, did not display an effective cardiac response to the stressor, while those infants with the non-risk version of the gene did.

However, by the time the infants were 12 months old those with the risk form of the gene who also had mothers who were highly sensitive now showed the expected cardiac response while they were exposed to the stressful situation.

Those infants with the risk form of the gene who had insensitive mothers continued to show the ineffective cardiac response to the stressor.

The study suggest that although genes play a role in the development of physiological responses to stress, environmental experience such as mothers” sensitive care-giving behaviour can have a strong influence, enough to change the effect that genes have on physiology very early in life.

It appears in the September/October 2008 issue of the journal Child Development. (ANI)

Source: Thaindian.com
http://tinyurl.com/6gvf76

Is school breaking our boys? Accumulating evidence says yes:

* Boys are kicked out of preschool at 4.5 times the rate of girls.
* Boys lag behind girls in reading and writing in elementary school, a lag that gets bigger in middle school and high school.
* Teenage boys are four times as likely to commit suicide as girls.
* Girls are doing so much better than boys at academics that by 2016 only 40 percent of college undergraduates are expected to be men.

I saw the roots of this miserable trend up close and personal last week when I visited my daughter’s elementary school lunchroom. The girls sat quietly talking and eating. The boys were jumping up, poking each other, spilling juice, running around the table, smooshing their pb&js into a ball. The lunchroom ladies’ response: Sit down and zip your lip. Yikes! These are 5-year-olds we’re talking about here, and this was their first break after a morning of literacy and math lessons. In kindergarten. Is it any wonder boys might conclude that school is not for them?

So I feel lucky to have come across The Trouble With Boys, a new book by Peg Tyre. Peg’s my kinda gal, a former investigative reporter for Newsweek who doesn’t take anyone’s word for it. She’s also the mother of two sons. When she heard that even at fancy New York private schools the struggling students were almost all male, she decided to investigate, looking for solid data as to why. What she found isn’t pretty. Among her findings:

• Teachers and principals know that boys are struggling but feel it’s politically incorrect to suggest that the curriculum needs to be changed to help boys.

• Schools have cut recess and gym and increased classroom time to boost test scores, but the lack of exercise is actually making it harder for boys (and girls) to learn.

• Most reading curricula are based on narrative fiction that turns off boys. How many boys want to read Little House on the Prairie?

There’s a lot of misinformation out there on how boys learn, Tyre found. She cites the example of Michael Gurian, who tells teachers at his popular workshops that neuroscientists have identified a “boy brain” that is less adept at staying focused than is a “girl brain.” At first, Tyre thought this made sense. But then she took the next step and asked the neuroscientists who did the research Gurian cites if this is true. They all said, no way do we know enough about the brain to say there’s a “boy brain.” “When we talk about gender, we’re talking about something that’s pretty complicated,” Tyre told me. “It’s not just nature. It’s not just nurture.” And there will be no simple solutions. But there are smart parents, smart teachers, and smart principals out there who are trying their own experiments to help boys, and getting good results. Tyre’s reporting provides solid information that parents can act on now:

• Boys do much better at reading and writing when the subject matter matches their interests. Savvy parents offer nonfiction books and stories with action and don’t cringe when their darling wants to write about Pokémon or Star Wars. Who cares if the kid’s reading Captain Underpants or The Day My Butt Went Psycho, as long as he loves to read?

• Dads can encourage their sons to read by reading to them on topics they both love. One smart school invited uniformed police officers (macho male ones) to come read to the kids each day.

• Find out how much PE and movement time your child gets, and advocate for more. Research unequivocally shows that all kids do better in school when they get plenty of time to run, jump, and play, and boys need time for tag and other rambunctious games. When you have your kids at home on the weekend, Tyre notes, you don’t keep them locked inside from 8 to 3 because you know they’ll turn into screaming meemies if you do.

All parents want their children to grow up to be happy and successful. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if reading The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts helped boys get there?

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://tinyurl.com/6movp5

Almost one in four teenagers is raiding their parents’ medicine cabinets for prescription drugs in a new trend dubbed “pharming”.

Australian youths aged 12 to 17 are most likely to take medications recreationally because they are cheaper, easier to obtain and mistakenly believed to be “safe”, a new study has revealed.

In a risky bid to maximise a “hit”, youngsters are crushing cocktails of pills and snorting the powder, mixing them with alcohol or even injecting.

Pharmaceutical medicines have now overtaken marijuana as the traditional teen drug of choice, with more than twice as many regular users.

Commonly abused drugs include anti-depressants, painkillers and ADHD medications, such as Ritalin.

In a new study of 2813 young Australians, researchers said the “most concerning” finding was that 23.5 per cent of 12 to 25-year-olds took prescription drugs recreationally.

Paul Dillon of Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia said young people commonly believed if a drug came from a doctor it was safe.

“We live in a pharmaceutical world where there’s a drug for everything, so we are creating a generation of users,” he said.

Source: NEWS.com.au, Australia
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24340581-2,00.html

When Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears ran amok, the public blamed their mothers. Their fathers - Lohan’s had served time in jail and had addiction problems - escaped rebuke entirely.

Now an Australian study provides some evidence that bad mothering has a worse effect on children than bad fathering.

It shows that mothers who exhibit “toxic” behaviours - from being cold and indifferent to being abusive, manipulative or over-controlling - are far more likely to warp their children’s outlook on life than fathers with similar behaviour.

Wayne Warburton, a research fellow at Macquarie University’s Children and Families Research Centre, said: “Mothers have a really powerful effect on the way their kids view the world and themselves, probably because kids spend more time with their mothers, especially in the crucial early years.”

Dr Warburton asked 441 university students to fill out detailed questionnaires on the parenting styles of their mothers and fathers, and on their own patterns of thinking.

He asked them to recall 72 parenting behaviours, including “making a child feel ashamed”, being unloving or rejecting, and frequently telling the child they were stupid or would fail. He also asked questions designed to uncover destructive thinking patterns in the students, such as being “clingy” out of a fear of being abandoned.

He found young adults were two-thirds as likely to develop unhelpful patterns of thinking if the toxic parenting they had experienced came from their father rather than their mother.

If a range of poor parenting behaviours existed, they tended to be found in the same parent, the study found.

Just over 22 per cent of the mothers and 14 per cent of the fathers were classified as toxic.

Dr Warburton said he was surprised that toxic mothers outnumbered toxic fathers. “When I first saw the figure I thought many of the people came from single-parent families but that wasn’t true. I’m at a loss to explain it.”

He said while mothers had more influence on their children, it was surprising that fathers had two-thirds the effect of mothers, given their lower levels of contact. “Fathers still have a significant effect on the development of their kids’ patterns of thinking.”

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://www.smh.com.au/news/parenting/the-sins-of-the-mothers/2008/09/11/1220857740080.html