Extended Toddlerhood

From another letter to a frum publication, written by an 11 year old:

My younger brother has ADHD too.  Even though he is already nine, he still bothers and pinches us all the time.  He doesn't listen to anything we say and including him in our games always ends in fights.  We have to hide our nosh and prizes because he takes them.  He used to smack me a lot, until I learned how to be smarter.  Now he mostly hits and bosses my younger brother; that hurts me even more.

Sometimes it gets so bad that I wish he was not my brother.  We can never do anything fun as a family because he always takes charge and ruins it for everyone.  It takes my mother so long to get him homework done that she almost never gets to help me with mine.  My mother has explained ADHD to me but I still get angry that he can't just control himself already.

My friend's brother has special needs and their family gets to do lots of fun things with Chai Lifeline.  It is not fair that no one knows what we are going through.  People can't see ADHD so easily and we are not sure that we want others to know.  I am glad he takes medicine now because it helps a lot.

***
Tell me, when a child hurts other people, ruins games, and takes what doesn't belong to him, does that sound like a disease? A mental illness? Or like a toddler?

As Dr. John Rosemond puts it:

"There is no such thing as having ADHD. It is not a biological condition. It is not a disease. It is a lifestyle condition. It is a developmental condition. And I absolutely know from much personal and professional experience that the behaviors we call ADHD can be corrected, cured, by parents without the assistance of psychologists (or drugs) in a matter of 3-6 months. It is not rocket science. If you understood that this is just extended toddlerhood - that's the first step to dealing with it."

ADD/ADHD Revisited

I haven't written about ADD/ADHD in too long, considering how often it comes up in frum publications and talks.  Previous posts on the subject include:
Refreshing! and
Diagnosis: Toddleritis and
This is ADHD? and
ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder - When Parents' Attention is Deficient .

This is from a letter written by a mother to a frum women's publication:

I have two children with ADHD (and five without) ...  I try with every fiber of my being to be supportive and nurturing towards my sons.  I understand their therapists' pleas for me to be patient and not to let everything get to me, and I can look away, but my other children can't.  When my 14 year old daughter completed a book report that she worked on for two weeks and then her brother came in and ripped it to shreds in a fit, it was difficult for me to comfort my daughter.  When she begs me, "Why do you let him? He never learns!" something inside me wants to snap.  She's right.  He's right.

And into all this walks the therapist and says, "Keep your cool - he'll come around one day, and we're giving him tools."  When he comes around, I might have five other bitter and angry and misunderstood kids.  They know their brother has his issues and they are kind and gracious, but sometimes they feel he ruins their lives.  My older son is medicated and in therapy and he has come a long way, but he has kicked more holes in the wall than we can ever fill.

First, I will say that my heart does go out to her.  She is a mother who cares.  Deeply.  And it sounds like she is trying to be a superlative parent.  My protest is not about her, but about a medical world that is destroying kids and their families as this mother describes. 

Although the mother does not say how old her boys are, they are obviously not two or she wouldn't be medicating and therapizing them.  How can our hearts not go out to parents who are told to be "supportive and nurturing" while not being told to discipline their children and how to do so to achieve results?

A child is destructive and all the therapist has to offer is a request for patience and reassurance about the distant future? The mother is realizing that this approach is undermining the entire household and is doing nothing to improve the situation. 

more on this soon

Diagnosis: Toddleritis

Over Pesach I read a horror story in one of the frum publications about a family whose Yom Tov was ruined by the behavior of their 14 year old son. The article was presented "so that others can glimpse the challenges of raising a mentally ill child" and the "diagnosis" is stated as "ADHD and ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder)." I was annoyed to see yet another article promoting non-illnesses as illnesses in the frum media.

Dr. John Rosemond is a psychologist who directed mental health programs for children, had a full-time practice as a family psychologist for a decade, has written numerous popular parenting books, and is a busy popular speaker and writer.  I don't agree with everything he writes but overall, he is quite sensible and calls for a return to the normal parenting of several decades ago in which parents were firm and expected obedience and decent behavior and there were negative consequences with those who did not toe the line.

His perspective on ADHD is, "The diagnostic behaviors quite simply describe a toddler. The reason that we are dealing with so many children school-age who are exhibiting these behaviors is because we are no longer in America curing toddlerhood. So we have children who are not maturing emotionally and intellectually because we are not disciplining their feelings state. Toddlers have bi-polar disorder. Toddlers have oppositional defiance disorder. Toddlers have attention-deficit disorder. Those three, I quote, 'disorders,' are normal to toddlers. My first grade class had 50 kids and was taught by one teacher. None of those 50 kids came to school with ADD, ODD or bipolar disorder. Because back then, toddlerhood was cured by the time a child was three."

I'd like to see less discussion of "medicalizing" and "diagnosing" of pseudo illnesses in our frum publications. I don't think this approach is helping anyone; on the contary, I think that it's very harmful. At the very least, we should be given different points of view with at least some articles opposing the medical-disease model!

Would you believe, in this sad article, the out-of-control 14 year old behaved beautifully, when he chose to, in front of others, so that friends enjoyed him as their guest while he created chaos at home! Does that sound like a real illness to you? Real illnesses are not put on and taken off at will! Come on, frum parents! Stop buying into this nonsense!

This is ADHD?!

 

A woman in an article on aish.com describes her 5 year old as violent and aggressive.  He bites, throws things, chokes her, and he does this with a smile or a kiss.  Not surprisingly in today's world of psychiatry, the child is medicated for ADHD.  Mind you, these are NOT symptoms of ADHD but who cares? If you can control him with mind-altering drugs, why not? After all, the alternative would be to actually see what on earth is motivating a 5 year old to act like a vilde chaya.  Was he abandoned in childcare since babyhood? Is there no discipline at home? There is not a single mention of how the parents respond to his terrible behavior! Only how she tried dietary methods and then moved on to drugs.  She says she is waiting for him "to grow up, and to grow into an understanding of greater self-regulation." Heaven help us ...

Dr. John Rosemond the parenting expert would laugh at her description and her medical solution.  He would say make a list of the objectionable behaviors: throwing things, biting, deliberately breaking anything, hurting anyone, and tell her son that the doctor said that this behavior indicates he is not getting enough sleep and that he should be put to bed right after supper, but no later than 6:30 p.m., until these behaviors cease completely for three weeks. If, during the three weeks, the child did a single one of these behaviors, the three weeks have to start over the next day.  In one case, said Rosemond, it took six weeks, during which time the three-week cure started over seven times, mostly in weeks one and two.  Rosemond is a no-nonsense kind of guy, as you can see. He believes in setting down the rules and enforcing them like parents used to do once upon a time.

I would add to Rosemond's "prescription" because his approach only addresses the behaviors with the goal of eliminating them. I would recommend that the parents figure out (perhaps with the help of an outsider) why their child is acting in this way. What message is he trying to convey? How can his needs be satisfied without his having to resort to ugly behavior?

But medicating him? Seems reprehensible to me.