INFORMED CHOICE
If School Were Causing Your Child’s ADD/ADHD,
During a recent conversation with friends and family, the topic of ADHD/ADD came up. I shared my belief that it is not a disease that
should result in people being drugged, but instead a
personality type (like mine!) that should be honored.
My friends and family looked at me, stunned. They
wondered how an educator like me didn’t know better,
as this epidemic was clearly documented as a disease.
I then found out that a few of those among us had been
drugged or had been responsible for drugging their
children. They were offended by my words! Fortunately,
I’m used to this.
For victims of the immoral pharmaceutical marketing
campaigns, the school- and doctor-approved drugs were
the treatment of choice. Since my partner is a pharma
rep, I know the “doctor-approved” scam. These docs
get paid a bundle by the pharmaceutical companies to
promote their drugs to schools. I also know the schools’
view. When kids are drugged, their job is easier. Of
course they want that. I asked my family if they had tried
any of the 20 things I shared in my 2011 Fix the Schools,
Not the Child guide (published through the Innovative
Educator blog) before resorting to drugs. Nope! Why
bother? Drugging the kid was working.
When I dug a little deeper into my family member’s
story, I learned some interesting things. For instance,
he didn’t like how the drugs made him feel at all. He said
that if he hadn’t been forced to sit and listen all day, he
likely wouldn’t have needed drugs. Once he graduated
and had ownership of his days, and could think and create
as he pleased, he was able to master his attention. The
drugs were important in the unnatural world of school,
he explained, because he had to fill out worksheets and
read boring things for hours to prepare for tests—all
purportedly to prepare him for a world that, ironically,
never actually requires you to sit and cram for tests.
I asked my family, “What if you knew that removing
yourself or your child from the traditional school setting
would eliminate their need to be on drugs? Would you
consider that?” They shook their heads, looking at me as
though I had lost my mind and was proposing something
ridiculous. I shared that I had actually written a guide
for teens to opt out of school and find success, which
could have been a better alternative for my drugged
family members. This didn’t seem to be something they
could get their heads around, so I let the conversation
drop; their opinion of me as the black sheep who always
promoted alternative life options remained. Some might
