Don’t Let Them Label Your Children

The entirety of this website is dedicated to showing simple, easy things that one can do to be a more effective parent, and to help you raise happy, healthy, competent children.   In acting as editor for this site, I’m always trying to point at things you can do.  Well, as a quick counterpoint, let’s discuss what absolutely not to do.

Don’t let psychiatrists label your children.

What do I mean by label?  Here’s a quick video description:

“Labeling” means that you take the behavior of a child, whether desirable or undesirable, and label that as a “disorder” – one which can then allow your child to be given powerful psychotropic drugs as a “solution” for their behavior.

Labeling of children with mood disorders is, in my opinion, the most evil and insidiously destructive practice that has ever been introduced to the subject of parenting.

Why Psychiatric Labeling of Children = Bad Parenting

First off, let’s agree on one point:  no matter what your parenting style is (hands-off, hands-on, super-active, super religious, couldn’t-much-care, etc), the general idea always is to guide your child toward ways that allow them to survive better, and to steer them away from things that hinder survival, are painful, etc.   Right?

As such, your job is much like an investigator – you see indicators of something wrong, you investigate to find out what the problem is, and you go about fixing it.

Example:

  • Your 1-year-old is crying.  You look, and see a totally full diaper.  You change the diaper.  Baby stops crying, returns to play.
  • Your 7-year old yells at you saying, “I HATE MATH!” Throws homework on floor.  You investigate, find that he never found out what “multiply” means and is meant to do a page of multiplication homework.  You clear it up, and he happily goes about his homework.
  • Your 2-year old is cranky, throwing stuff on the floor.  You look, realize she just wants to go outside & play.  You go outside, play, the kid’s mood improves.

When kids are crying, cranky, etc, there’s always something wrong.  Kids don’t naturally “cry all the time”.  The job of parents is to simply figure out why they’re crying, and fix it.

image“Labeling” is an attempt to short-circuit the above job of a parent, and to do two things instead:

  1. Give them a label which somehow “explains” their behavior, and
  2. Allow them to be drugged, so as to make them “manageable”, provide an income source for big pharma, and to reduce the work involved in being a parent to simply making them take their medication.

The practice of labeling basically undermines the job of the parent, reducing it to what usually becomes a 5-minute psychiatric evaluation and subsequent labeling as “bi-polar” or “ADHD”.     Drugs like Intuiv or Concerta are marketed at young children.  These are kids who aren’t having girlfriend relationship problems or jobsite difficulties – these are kids with simple problems that parents have been solving for thousands of years.

And these drugs are solving a “chemical imbalance problem” that even the drug companies know doesn’t exist.  Heck, go check out Concerta’s website – they even say:

“…this medication has a calming effect. While the exact way the drug produces this effect is not known, it is known to affect certain chemicals in the brain…”

The moral of the story is:  if you are having a problem with your child, figure out why you’re having it.  Your investigation will lead you to any number of solutions – diet, rest, lack of exercise, misunderstandings at school, etc, etc.  I guarantee your search will not tell you that your child’s diet has an insufficient quantity of psychotropic drugs.

Need more info, try these videos:

13 thoughts on “Don’t Let Them Label Your Children

  1. Love this article! Straight and to the point! As parents, we need to stop looking for short cuts and actually parent!! Especially when the short cut involves a label and almost certain drugging, that will affect this child FOR THE REST OF OF THE CHILD’S LIFE.

    1. Thanks! I was somewhat incensed before writing this, seeing as the World Federation of Mental Health is about to have a big conference here in DC to strategize how to screen every child in the world onto psychotropic drugs. Such a chillingly evil marketing plot, gets one sort of cranky when you look at the fact that my little girl would probably be an excellent target for them.

  2. Fantastic article! As a parent, it may be tempting to listen to the “authorities” but it’s important to remember that no one knows your child as well as YOU do. It doesn’t matter who they are.

    Thank you for writing such a great article. Labeling can be very dangerous — for kids and parents alike.

  3. I have worked with a lot of children in the Public School System. The majority of cases that were referred to medication, I was able to help the parent correct with one or more of the following: getting more sleep, change of diet with better nutrition, finding the earlier thing not understood and clearing it up, finding the things the people around him/her are saying and clearing it up. Sometimes it was that they were running into a confusing situation that they had no answer for, we’d unravel the confusion and find a solution and the “disorder” went away.

    I am not saying it is always these things. Sometimes it was health issues such as: parasites, underlying and unfound infection in the body, congested liver, thyroid a little off, Vitamin B1 deficency, once it was an undetected heart murmer, little things like that.

    And the danger is not just lazy parenting, the danger then becomes the psychotrophic drug is now covering up a possible life threatening condition that might have been easily handled othewise.

    After 30 years I can honestly say that have found this to be more often the case than not. But the worst part is you are labling the child and telling them that they are not responsible for their condition and that nothing really can be done about it but to become “drugged”. To me that is the biggest danger of all!

    Just saying!

  4. I have a child labled as being ADHD and am having a battle with public school system not wanting to work with child. They are telling me I am refusing to seek medical attention for my sons impulsive behavior. I am in the middle of a fight. School says there is no more they can do at this standpoint but punish my child by means of isolation in classroom or in school detention or in school suspention next step is out of school suspention. i will be seeking legal advice soon. I am a parent who bleives in natural remendies. My son is 6yrs of age.

    1. Kristy — I absolutely want to help you. I just tried emailing you at the address you left, but that came back undeliverable. Please contact me via the contact form, and I can put you in touch with people who can help you with this.

  5. I overheard someone talking about her 12 year old son. He was productive and did his homework on time, and he was neat and orderly like an adult. The mother was going to “keep an eye on him” but “not put him on medication right now …”

    That’s how nuts it’s gotten and how effective their marketing (not science) has become.

    Parents: If your kid puts his things away and does his homework, that’s a good thing! Leave him alone!

    My 2c.

  6. Great article as usual Scientology Parent!

    Well done Kristy for not letting someone enforce drugs on your child! If there is not an actual body thing going on with him such as a deficiency of some sort, or food allergy, then he might not be understanding something in class. This can make a child frustrated as would with an adult not being able to understand something in class. Only an adult usually knows how to ask the teacher if they can explain what was not understood. Children are still learning even to ask about what they didn’t have understanding on, let alone younger ones don’t always know that they aren’t understanding something in the classroom and can be fidgety and sometimes disruptive because they’re then bored by the subject(s) being taught.

    I hope that you can connect with Tad so that you can get the exact help you need with your child.

  7. GREAT article! I’d only add that one of the major destructive factors of the drugs is that they actually cover up the child’s problem by numbing the child so the child doesn’t even know what’s wrong anymore. It’s not just making the parenting job a lazy one, it’s completely obliterating the child’s awareness of himself and is actually quite a betrayal.

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