Did you know it's against the law for schools to want kids medicated??

Question

Did you know it's against the law for schools to want kids medicated??

Most parents don't know this. Schools are not suppose to mention meds to parents. They want kids medicated who have ADHD. THis is a federal law and it's here

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:4:./temp/~c108S1e3IH::

Most parents don't know this law exists and schools continue to do this because they know there is no enforcement to make them do right and follow this law.

If there was, they wouldnt' keep wanting parents to medicate their children.

My question is, did you know about this law? And do you have any experiences with schools doing this?

Answer 1

Agreeing with busymom and Karen.  What is happening to these children at the hands of teachers and other "professionals" is nothing short of abuse, in my opinion.

What search terms did you use to find the law?  I can't get either of the links to work and I would like to find the law so I can post it on my blog.

Answer 2

This is a very interesting topic.  The tricky part comes in when you add the ADA to the equation. I don't live on the east coast, but I have heard it is common there for parents to be turned into social services for medical neglect if they refuse to medicate their kids to please the schools.  So many parents get sucked into that vortex of IEPs that they find out the consequences after it is too late.  Once they allow a child to be "tested" by the school and have ADHD written into an IEP, they are manipulated by the school to force drugs on kids.

I'm curious if any parents here have experienced that.

Answer 3

Your link doesn't work anymore--something about a timed search. What did you search specifically?

I'm in Canada, so that particular law wouldn't apply; I don't know if we have something similar here or not. I do know one family here whose 7yo son ended up on Ritalin and Celexa (anti-anxiety--yes, at 7). When the teacher told the parents that she thought they should have his Ritalin dose increased, they really started questioning this whole "school thing". They pulled him out after the end of gr. 3. He was off all meds and much happier within 6 months. And making far better academic progress than he was in his LD program.

Somebody in one of the other questions shared about how her district could get nasty legally if you didn't send your child for an evaluation. I hope she'll respond. I wonder if the district either ignored the law you know about or if this happened before the law came into effect.

ADDED: Thanks, pinkpiglet. I don't think that document was around, unfortunately, when the teacher I mentioned did that. (This would have been, oh, 5-6 years ago.) It's handy information to know!

Answer 4

There are other laws that affect this issue, too. For instance, only a licensed doctor or therapist can make a medical diagnosis. Teachers are NOT licensed to diagnose or to tell patients what medicines they should be taking.

Answer 5

It is illegal in numerous places and ethically speaking, just not right at all since teachers are not doctors.

Glurpy, in our area I don't know if it is illegal but I do know that teachers are NOT supposed to mention it at all.   I know that some schools tell families that if they don't medicate then the kids can't come to school - that is illegal but families don't know it.  

http://education.alberta.ca/media/511987...    On page 19 they talk about how teachers are not to mention medication.  

They also say that teachers need to respect a families decision not to medicate since it is a medical decision and not an educational one.   I think a few more teachers need to read their own materials.

Answer 6

I didn't know about this, but I'm tempted to go staple it to telephone poles where I live.  Ritalin flows pretty freely around here - you'd think ADHD was contagious, or maybe waterborne!

I may have been the one to originally write about legal action with it; this was the case when I pulled my son in '03.  Either the law hadn't been passed yet, or it wasn't common knowledge.  (Apparently it's still not, around here, lol!)  

It turned out that it wouldn't have happened in our district, but there were other districts nearby and in neighboring states where it was happening.  I had recently moved from Southern Cal, where it was known to happen, and there was no way that I was going to let my son go through that.  I knew that if we stuck around the system long enough to find out, we could be in for a serious battle.

Interesting - thanks for the link!

Answer 7

I definitely have experience with schools wanting to medicate kids. That was an issue we faced when our son was in third grade. The teacher very carefully mentioned that we might want to have our pediatrician prescribe something for our son, whom she suspected of having ADHD.

Much to her surprise, and dismay, our pediatrician instead referred our family to a team of professionals (included a psychologist., psychiatrist and licensed counselor) who all specialized in ADHD. After THREE months of testing, it was determined that our son was ADHD,  dealing with some sensory issues and that he was also highly intelligent. Their recommendation was to tailor his education to his abilities, including adding more physical movement and some occupational therapy.

This did NOT go over well with the teacher and the administration of the school. The teacher told me she felt he would benefit from medication. When I asked where she had gotten her medical degree, she become very upset.

The upshot of it is that the schools would rather medicate these kinds of kids because it makes it easier to deal with them in a traditional classroom. Some kids DO benefit from medication but others do improve and are successful by a change in how they are educated.

We opted to homeschool because we had more faith in the recommendations of our pediatrician of ten years and the group who assessed our son than we did in this teacher who knew him for only three months.

Too often parents are told by school officials to get their pediatrician to write that script. Too often parents blindly trust these experts and some pediatricians are not inclined to help families seek out the proper assessment for their children.

I am certainly NOT against medication, where warranted. Optimally, if a child is taking meds for ADHD he should also be in therapy to learn strategies to cope with his differences. Too often, kids are put on meds without being properly tested and without that added therapy.

For many kids, a change in educational method is the thing that works. The one-on-one teacher to student ratio helps with the distraction issues and the freedoms that allow for more physical activity in a homeschool setting certainly benefit the hyperactive component of ADHD.

Now, nearly 10 years later, our son graduated high school a year early. He has had a successful computer repair business for the past three years. He just finished his sophomore year of college and will be moving on to a 4 year university. He is also a substitute teacher for networking courses at the college, where he works part time in the computer security department. Not too shabby for a kid that a teacher tried to convince us to medicate!

In the last 10 years, I have been an advocate for other parents in our district who face this same struggle. It's a shame that even though all of this time has past, some schools and teachers still want to play doctor.

Answer 8

I did not know about the law but I did know that the schools and the doctors are very diplomatic about getting kids on  medication.   They turn things around so that it is the parent's decision and not theirs.   The doctor said to us "Only you can put your child on the medication, not me (the doctor).

So, though I did not know it, I suspected it.

Answer 9

Yes, I was aware of it, but many are not.

Children who are labeled with this are often times highly intelligent, and are bored stiff with regular classroom work; they need to be challenged, and learn much better while in motion, and while doing hands on projects.

They do not do well sitting still for long periods of time.

I would sum up the symptoms high energy kids exhibit like this; it's s set of behaviors that annoy adults who do not have enough creativity, or energy to keep up with these children.

They do not fit in the regular classroom mold, and therefore are looked at as unfocused, or easily distracted.

Well do we not get distracted when we have to sit through a boring meeting, or class we are absolutely not interested in?

Would we not be climbing the walls if we had to stay inside for several hours when we would rather be outside running, and doing something that interests us?

Give these children longer breaks with lots of physical activity, and much of this would not be an issue in the classrooms.

There is another school of thought on this issue;

http://www.adhdfraud.org/