But he promised that, for Peter, he would try to include some of my ideas about the family the next time he saw the child and his mother. Parents and schools complete the chain that squeezes the system toward a rapid medication intervention. I've never met a parent who, at least initially, wasn't ambivalent about giving their kid a medication. However, parents today, when pondering their children's problem behavior, begin to consider medication much sooner than parents did just 10 years ago. Imperceptibly at first, people go from believing that a child or parent has influence over a behavior problem to believing that the behavior is involuntary and that something biological is the cause.
Medication becomes the reluctantly arrived-at solution.
This kind of thinking is powerfully reinforced by much of American psychiatry and the media. Teachers and schools are the final pressure point. Teachers are faced with a broad curriculum that today includes much more than the three Rs. Poorly educated students and social passing have led to increasing use of standardized tests. Not only are students more scrutinized, but so are their teachers.