ARTelevision

kfor.com, Oklahoma City:

-- An 8-year-old boy overdosed at school, reportedly on 25 Ritalin pills. --

Dakota Loflin was transported to a local hospital. His doctor said it could take three days for the medication to wear off. The boy's mother said on the last day of school, which was Tuesday, the school secretary sent Dakota home with the bottle of Ritalin and he ate all of them.

Doctors are waiting to see if there is permanent damage.

"You need to be careful and make sure that if your kid has had medicine at school, make sure that you have picked it up or that you have gotten it from your kids," Dakota's mother said.

Del City school officials couldn't say how many prescriptions were sent home with children. They are now investigating.
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Doling it out like candy, it seems, these days.

Too bad and probably rare that it would be this unprofessionally supervised but the laxity with which mind alteration is condoned is continually boggling...

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Cynthetiq

*sigh* just no regard for the safety of the child.

there's no reason the child should need more than the ONE possibly TWO doses to get through the school day.

IMHO it's parents like this that make it hard for the responsible students to be able to bring things like their ASTHMA inhalers to school.

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maleficent

Agreed, however, what goes thru a person's head when they give a child a bottle of narcotics to take home (Oh, wait, it had a childproof lid, right?)
Why the entire bottle was there, boggles my mind, but jeez flush the medication before putting it in thehands of a child.

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lurkette

I have a lot of questions about this. Why was the school nurse dispensing Ritalin? Did his parents know about it? Ok, so only two questions. But still...

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maleficent

Most schools now, if the kid is on any kind of medication, including an asthma inhaler, the medicine must stay with the school nurse (one of those zero tolerance things-- high school kids can't even have a bottle of advil)

THe medicine was probably prescription, which is why it was being returned.

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Peryn

My brother used to have to take his ADD meds at school. He wasn't allowed to take them himself. He had to go into teh school nurse and have her watch him take them. They wont let the kids hold them during school, but they will let them have them all at the end of the year? Seems to me, the nurse should have made teh kids parent come and pick them up.

Course the mother also ought to investigate the time release pill options. They work great, and would eliminate the need for the child to be medicated at school.

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billege

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I have seen a lot a strange parenting in my, admittedly young, 25 years. The idea that somehow we made it from cavemen without behavior pills for kids just boggles the mind.

I see kids in public, all the time, doing things I've been clobbered for. Not to have you belive I was a perfect little angel, but there were some things I did not do in public. If I tried, it wasn't going to happen long, because we'd leave; I'd get punished.

I hesitate to judge parents, because I'm not one yet. However, I still think about what I see, and I see a lot of indulgence, and I see a lot of kids who run thier parents.

I can only hope that when it's my turn to make parenting calls, I make good ones.

I'd prefer not to alter my kids brain activity because they won't listen to me. My assumption will be that I need to change my type of communication to achieve the behavior I'm looking for. I will not to assume the kid's brain needs meddling with.

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"My Invisible Friend is better than your Invisible Friend."

World's King

I was on Ritalin till I was 11. I had to go through kiddie rehab to get off of it.

It's a fucked up drug.

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OFKU0

Wow. Boggles the mind. Are these kids being tracked in any way to see their temperament and development years down the road? There has to be someone studying this over a long period. I'd love to see results of that.

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ARTelevision

A Google search for "Ritalin long-term effects" turns up quite a bit of information.

Here's one:

http://www.add-adhd-help-center.com/...de_effects.htm

Seems like the nickname: "Kiddie Cocaine" isn't far off the mark...

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uncle phil

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- Robert S. McNamara
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"We will take our napalm and flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches...
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles."
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maleficent

age 8 was a long long time ago for me, but I know we had some high spirited kids in school, the nuns managed to keep them in line, I don't believe with the use of drugs.

What's changed over the last 30 years that parents feel the need to medicate their children? All the fluoride in the water? I honestly don't understand.

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WarWagon

Because its easy, and it lets doctors and parents be lazy. Pure and simple. I could have an itchy ass, a cold, and athlete's foot and they would diagnose it as ADD.

greytone

Ritalin (a class II narcotic-that is the highest level of government control and still be legal to use) is a great substitute for parenting and teaching. We certainly don't want children who need actual intelectual stimulation in order to grow and be happy.

I am not saying that no children should take this medication. I am just saying that 95% or more of those taking it should not be doing so.

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H12

And that, my friend, is a damn shame that it's true.

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Esco

Indeed, indeed.

Kids today are way too over medicated. Back in my day if a kid was acting weird they would give us flintstone vitamins and a pat in the ass.

The pat in the ass helped alot.

OFKU0

Thanks Art,... well aside from the longterm effects of taking the drug, depending on the individual, there certainly is also the case that weening kids at a young age is manipulating them to believe that prescription drugs are acceptable.

Seems as though the pharmaceutical companies are getting the early start to guarantee a lifelong support system and, if all goes well, will have life long membership from early childhood to death.

Reminds me in general of tobacco companies way back touting the virtues of smoking. Of course different context totally, but the message of normalicy and social acceptance is starkingly similar.

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" In Canada, you can tell the most blatant lie in a calm voice, and people will believe you over someone who's a little passionate about the truth." David Warren, Western Standard.

analog

No, the school nurse should not be sending prescription meds home with 8-year-olds- we would not have this problem, however, if we did not also have

STUPID INEFFECTUAL PARENTS. STUPID PARENTS. How many times will I rant about parents that aren't worth shit? Can we sue parents for being retards?

As far as the drugs being doled out so much- hell YEAH they are. I worked in the pharmacy quite often at my previous job, and (separately) I've read a lot on the array of mood regulators given to children- and the numbers are both horrifying and disgusting.

Can't parents just.... PARENT anymore??

I whole-heartedly agree.

Hell yes, but the problem is that people think they'll "get reported" if they give their kid a swat on the behind. Not to threadjack, but it's the morons that HIT kids that cause problems for those who use a swat on the ass appropriately.

Please do judge them. Parents need to be judged more often. They get away with doing a shitty job of parenting because no one wants to ask questions when stupid shit like this goes down.

SIDE NOTE OF ABOVE: If you want to yell at me or whatever for condoning giving a kid a "swat on the ass", start a new thread and PM me the link or something, don't have it out in here.

qtpye4u84

I Have ADD and ADHD, my parents never put me on meds.
My school knew that I was, but they never handed out any meds.
If I ever have kids and they have what I have I am not going to put them on meds.

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The QTpie

MSD

I have ADHD. I took medicine for it, all of it made me sick, or aggravated nervous tics to the point that I appeared epileptic, or made me drink 6 gallons of water and lose 15 pounds in two days.
Dealing with it is tough, and medicine can help. Fortunately, I was under the supervision of responsible parents and a good doctor who saw that it was doing more harm than good.

As bad as it is to give medication to someone who doesn't need it (and this happens a lot,) it's equally harmful to just tell someone who genuinely does have ADD that he's just lazy and not trying hard enough.

tecoyah

Recent studies have shed some light on the way these druge actually work. And it is frightening. The class of mood enhancing, anti depressants, in which Ritalin is classified, have permanent effects on the brain. They literally re-wire the way your brain functions, and nobody knows how, or to what end.
So here we are as a society, re-wiring our children, using them in one of the largest, un-authorized scientific trials in history, with no true idea of the end result. I only hope "little Johnny Guinnypig" is still human when we finish this "test".

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water_boy1999

I swear that I will NEVER put my kids on and drugs like Ritalin. Like many have said, I think it is an excuse for bad parenting. Parents who don't spend the quality time with their kids and give them avenues for releasing their relentless energy are the ones to blame.

In addition, I think that parents need to limit other activities that are bombarding children these days. Kids are exposed to television, computers, cell phones and many other forms of technology that bombard their brains with useless junk. It is no wonder kids are over exciteable. They don't know how to focus because even adults don't know how to focus. I think there are easy solutions. Better parenting. Spending quality time with your children with sporting activities, music lessons, reading, camping and school activities will enable them to have more focus IMHO.

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Hwed

Wow, I remember when I was little, we thought those hyperactive kids who didn't pay attention were just smart... turns out it's a disorder.

::shakes his head::

gondath

The Ritalin issue is simply one more problem in the long pattern of doling out medication when people don't need it. A lot of people I've met have taken numberous kinds of psychiatric drugs for, depression, anxiety, etc, when psychological disorders are supposed to be rare or at least uncommon compared to the general population. Doctors are also prescribing antibiotics like candy when a patient makes a slight complaint or even has a sickness like a cold where the medicine won't even help. Medicating as a solution to every problem is a dangerous habit.

mystmarimatt

This retarded school counselor recommended that my parents put my older brother on Ritalin. My mother, a teacher at the school at the time, balked at her. Go Mommy.

In this age of designer diseases, the last thing we need is to pump our children full of Narcotics that have been deemed 'safe'.

While I'm sure just giving the kid the bottle of medicine back wasn't the best thing to do, I more blame the parents for substituting a pill for real parenting, and not teaching him basic safety when he was first put on the medicine.

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If you could really get to know someone and know that they weren't lying to you, then you would know the world was real. Because you could agree on things, you could compare notes. That must be why people get married or make Art. So they'll be able to really know something and not go insane.

ngdawg

I have seen the effects of Ritalin first hand with students I worked with. When not taking it, they were belligerent, ultra-hyper, loud, impossible to control, but those were a minority of kids.On it, they were sweet and sociable. Was NOT being on it just withdrawal? Maybe. Those same children I worked with also had homelives that would make many of you cringe.
When my son was diagnosed as ADD, Ritalin was constantly pushed, but I refused. One year of behavior therapy was all that was needed.
Getting a child off of Ritalin after taking it for a few years can make him/her become addicted to drugs, violent and psychopathic.
Parents MUST be held accountable for the actions of their children at such a young age and the children need to be made aware of the consequences should they be in the situation that poor kid was in. I would also hold the school nurse responsible for her total lack of judgement-medicines of any sort should never be in the hands of the child!!! (Did you know some kids SELL their Ritalin to others? It is classified as a stimulant that somehow represses the hyperactivities of ADHD kids, but 'pumps up' those whom they sell it to)

Mehoni

What did you get? Here in Sweden we have a lot of different brands.

I certainly agree. But I actually think it's worse with people who think ADHD/ADD is bullshit.

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brandon11983

I have ADHD. I was put on Ritalin in 6th grade and was on it until the end of my sophomore year in high school. I looked at the list of possible side effects that ART put up, I never had any of them. I found it to be a wonder drug after I was taken off it. My junior and senior years were satisfactory, but well below my capability and what I had shown before. Now that I'm in college now, (and spending an exorbitant amount of my own money to do so) I am seriously thinking of getting put back on it.

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