He's hard to handle lets drug him.......

Months before and ever since the boys came home Charlie and I did a TON of research about medication, because unfortunately 42 percent of all the kids in care are on 3 or MORE mood altering drugs.

I take issue with this, and I have for a while, but then when it becomes your child that is being put on these drugs it becomes a far more personal conviction. You feel bad when you hear of a family in a car crash but when its your own its very different!

When we first got our full disclosure on the boys we read all of the meds that they were on I was so SICK when I read it. Seriously the selfishness and neglect that went into there diagnosis's is outrageous. For starters our 4yr old at the time was on a blood pressure medication............. It was being used as a trial for anxiety and also he was on an adhd medication the label on the bottle said not to use on children under 5 he had been on it for a year and a half. My 7yr old at the time was on ADHD medication and abilify first of all the adhd meds have been banned in canada because over 10 children have died suddenly on this drug. However the FDA has found no cause to discontinue the drug. The abilfy was prescribed because after raising the dose to 3 times the recommended dose of the adhd meds he was still "acting out" in school so clearly he needed an adult antiphychotic...........

Once the boys moved in we immediately went to work on getting Jason off of his meds and CJ off of the Abilfy, before you freak or criticize we were under the close supervision of a therapist and pediatrician, we had to slowly ween cj off because to just stop a drug like that can actuall cause a person to loose it!

Once off Jason thrived in every way emotionally, mentally, physically in fact he grew so fast we had to buy all new cloths, one side effect of these drugs is they severely stunt your growth. He had NO reason to be on adhd meds in fact over all he is pretty calm for a little boy and the anxiety was not bad enough for an adult blood pressure medication.

CJ poor baby, after taking him off of his adhd meds we saw him dramaticly calm down, not suppose to happen when being taken off an adhd med but it did and that happened because even though he was seeing a psychologist twice a week and being closely monitored the meds were acting as a stimulate so every time they increased it he got even worse and to counter act it he was given the abilify which the side effect of the drugs are anger, aggression, and possibly severe mood swings. Exactly what the foster parents complained about...more could be said however Im holding back......

Im writing this for a couple of reasons one is because Im passionate about getting our foster children off of these drugs, two I wanted to share our experience with this first hand, and three to share that there truly are other resources for our kids that truly do have ADHD. When we started to ween CJ off of his meds we got him a NATURAL supplement call kidalin. Its a life saver!! It has a variety of different herbs that work to together to help with the symptoms of adhd, but on top of that it works on rewiring the brain and fixing the reasons that children have adhd. That's whats so exciting . What people need to realize is that mood altering drugs are only treating symptoms not the problem. This treats the problem and I am telling you it works. We not only were able to get the kid to sit still but he is not as edgy with his attitude! And with Jason most of his anxiety has gone but when he is having some trouble some chamomile or catnip helps a lot too. And of course along with the herbs there is prayer, love guidance, structure, and discipline and all of that working together has made the difference.

I am in NO way saying just take your kids or loved ones off of any medication. Like I said before we were under close supervision of dr.s and we did it slowly. We absolutely know that in some cases medication is the best option for some individuals.

What I am saying is there is a serious problem with our foster care system, school system, and pediatric system when the first choice is to put a child on a sedative instead of first trying to use patience, prayer discipline and love!