New research bolsters evidence that stimulants like Ritalin used for attention deficit problems may stunt children’s growth, but it does not address whether the effect is permanent.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4668038/
It’s a tragedy that so many of our young children are being drugged with powerful stimulants without first trying healthier alternatives. For example, exercise. One 12-year-old client is in “health” right now and gets no exercise during the school day. The sedentary style of virtually all classrooms today is enough to leave any person feeling fidgety. How many parents would find it difficult to sit in a desk all day long, often listening to unenergizing lectures? ADD and ADHD are now being diagnosed for kids that are simply frustrated and angry that they are wasting their lives. Worse, in my opinion, is that schools who keep the kids for most of the day now expect even elementary-age kids to do significant homework, further reducing the time they spend in free, creative expression in playtime.
I know ADD and ADHD are complicated issues. The drugs do help many children to be successful in school. Yet, we ignore both the exercise aspect as well as the need to train each of our nervous systems to focus in a relaxed manner through age-old practices such as meditation, mindfulness, yoga, tai chi, the martial arts, and massage. Instead we work, work, work the cognitive brain. We cram it chock full of facts without providing a balance. No wonder so many kids need Ritalin, a stimulant!, to burn off the excess energy they have so they can sit passively and Be a Good Boy.
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TV Kills
April 6, 2004
in Kids-Parenting,News-Commentary,Relationships,TV-Media
From Adam Curry [ http://www.blognewsnetwork.com/members/0000001/2004/04/06.html#a5496 ]:
Don’t forget going blind from sitting too close to the TV…. Indeed, any activity we engage in heavily affects the mind. Meditate for 20 minutes twice a day and your mind will be different even a year later, regardless of age. Those who garden and fish will have different neurological tendencies than those who passively watch TV. With TV we are watching events unfold. There is a stimulation that is inherently non-creative. The creation was done for us. We “entrain” with the creativity of others in order to be entertained. This is done in a way that stimulates attention, yet it also gets us used to the idea that dramatic events and “scene changes” will occur regularly. Contrast that with life in general and the classroom in particular. It just isn’t stiumlating in the same way!
An interesting question for me is the issue of retention for things learned on TV. Our kids do a lot of learning through the computer, participating in classes through Stanford’s EPGY and http://www.k12.com. Retention there seems to be strong. However, for “educational” shows on TV, and certainly for retention of what happened in shows and movies, the level of retention is not there. The lack of interactivity and engagement reduces the effectiveness of television as a learning tool. One thing that may help is if we have specific goals around a show or TV seminar. For example, I am taking DVD learning on EFT. There is an open-book test that goes along with it for certification. The combination of TV-based learning with a specific outcome of knowledge does help make it more effective and retained (for me).