It seems that today if you have a hyper young kids they need ritalin to calm them down. In fact it seems like half my school has adhd and takes ritalin and the other half takes ritalin for the high.
In a recent study it was observed that preschoolers grew about half an inch less and gained about 2 pounds less than expected during a 70-week study while on ritalin.
I personally think that only bad things can happen from parents readily giving children psychiatric drugs. CHildrens brains are growing very quickly at young ages and we know next to nothing about this process so is it really worth the risk to cause your child brain damage just to calm them down a little bit.
Kids are hyper when they are young even if they don't have adhd some I would guess that a lot of kids get the drug without even having the problem just because parents seem to want to use all the new innovations out there that could possibly make it easier to raise their kid.
As for growth stunting being a deterrant for ritalin, caffeine has also been known to cause such affects. So to give your children caffeine is also not a good idea if you want to have tall children.
I agree with you, but in a world in which a parent's right to punish their kids is restricted, I would also look for something else to help the situation. I am not for beating kids, but I do think that some children do need a good whippen' now and then to show them that without self-control there are sometimes harsh punishments.
Ritalin has been used since before the 1970s, which is much longer than many drugs on the market. I'm not saying that it doesn't cause side effects, but there's a greater chance that other drugs that were more recently approved do.
The testing required to get the meds for ADHD is really, really rigorous, however, there is no absolute way to test for it. There's also more to ADHD than hyperactivity. The difference between a hyper kid and one with ADHD is that the hyper kid can focus when he or she wants to, the ADD counterpart can not always do this.
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