As a Child and Family Psychotherapist, I too see children who are all too frequently medicated to manage them to the desires of others.

I am fortunate to work with Child Psychiatrists who are very structured in their approach to medication. Ritalin is one of the drugs we work with.

Several issues were left out of that article. They are very important, and I feel strongly that people should consider them.

First, who wants the child on Ritalin? Why?

Many of the people I meet who are referring their child for "medication" eventually advise me that it is at the urging of teaches and principals.

Mother after mother tells me "Oh, the teacher recommended he (or she) be on Ritalin." Often the parents have gone from doctor to doctor to get their child "put on Ritalin". General practitioners and pediatricians are not generally nearly as structured about prescribing Ritalin.

Given the outrageous excesses wrought by the school systems "Zero Tolerance Policy," Dr. Breggins hits the nail on the head with the comment that all this "reflects an extreme of enforced conformity."

There are a variety of things that bother adults in the school system about children. So often it would seem they expect kids to be like statues in the park, gathering birds and spiders. In just the last few months I have heard such complaints as "she talks too much", "she plays with her friends" or "she sings to herself".

Sometimes the requests are far more inappropriate: One child was actually suffering with mild psychosis, (hearing voices, paranoia.) Another never developed speech, but understands things perfectly well.

I have also worked with kids who genuinely benefit from medication (Ritalin or otherwise) who want to stop taking it "to be drug-free." And some parents "hear bad things" about the particular medication their child is prescribed and won't give it as prescribed out of fear.

The point I would like to make here is that no matter how loudly I protest about it, or attempt to educate teachers, DFACS workers, Principals, or control-seeking parents that Ritalin is a limited medication with a rather specific use, that it not even remotely a "cure-all", I might as well be speechless myself. It truly goes in one ear and out the other. There is usually a lot of extra work to do with the child who is truly in need of medication - any medication, but truly attention-deficit and hyperactive kids need a lot of extra structure, reminders and rewards. You can't just medicate them.

We have a "Drug-Medication" schism in this country and it is perpetuated by ignorance: the appalling lack of basic and simple knowledge (in this case simple info about Ritalin), or imperviousness to that knowledge.