I tell patients that the most common reason that children are referred in my practice is ADHD and that I have several patients who are teachers and refer children in the practice all of the time. I definitely have several teachers that are patients and several of them send children to the practice. I bet we get at least one a month sometimes more. The truth is that most of the children that become patients in our practice become patients because their parents bring them into the office as part of a family that has decided to get adjusted.

The struggle to discover new ways to raise our students’ test scores has become a primary focus in schools all across the land. All manner of innovation is being tried to see what works. Special teaching programs with special books, elaborate computer and video instruction, even weekend retreats – we keep scrambling to kick the numbers up just one more notch!

Stalwart American corporations have been hard at work ever since, pursuing new ways to penetrate the chain link fence that surrounds the schoolyards of America, attempting to exploit that juicy, enticing market. Think of it, millions of children held captive inside, all of them just dying to buy something five days a week, nine months of the year!

Have you ever wondered who originally came up with the cruel idea of placing thirty children in a single school classroom day after day, week after week, with only one adult in charge? If you have observed a classroom in session, you know for certain that the majority of the children, particularly the boys, are just barely able to keep a lid on their natural instincts to leap out of their chairs and yell crazy stuff at the top of their lungs while hurling erasers, tennis shoes and apple cores at the girls.

It’s the same news we reported on in January of 2003 and August of 2002. “According to new research, the number of American children being treated with psychiatric drugs (such as Ritalin) has tripled from 1987 to 1996 and is showing no sign of slowing.” That was from 2003.