Leslie Kelly: Why Giving Adderall to Toddlers Is So Completely, Utterly Wrong

Hello, good day everyone, I'm going to talk to you about meds. They can be pretty awesome and they can be pretty horrible. I've only been taking mine for a couple of months, but the effect they have on me already is pretty astounding. While I'm taking them, they help me calm down enough to get through my daily life without (generally) being crippled by panic attacks. So can anyone guess what happens when I run out of the magic pills? Lots of panic attacks, good job! Now imagine what this kind of stuff does to toddlers. But one might argue, "Leslie, you're on antidepressants, not anti-ADHD meds. It's diffffffferent." And to combat this, I have another story. In elementary school, one of my best friends was a little boy with severe ADHD. So his mother gave him meds. This boy was incredibly sweet, but his meds seemed to turn him into an entirely different person. Cold, grouchy, impatient instead of happy-go-lucky and carefree. The minimum age for kids taking medication is supposed to be four, and yet doctors are prescribing thousands of toddlers with pills. I understand that small children are hell to take care of--I babysit little kids all the time and they drive me absolutely crazy after just an hour. But pills are just not always the answer. It's not fair to the children taking them, who could very well be perfectly "normal" and who are missing out on important cognitive development that traditional parenting would provide. We have to stop prescribing meds where meds are not due. They're more serious than people seem to realize.
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