Time Out
Time Out
What are the symptoms of being a preschooler? Parents need to be on the alert for these six warning signs that their child is being childlike:
- A tendency to color outside the lines
- A desire to sing favorite songs over and over and over again
- Refusal to mask grumpiness after naps
- Sometimes “unable” to hear parents speaking
- Organizationally challenged
- No hesitation to pout, cry, or scream in public places
If you notice any of these symptoms (sometimes all within the same hour) then you have a typical preschooler. But don’t worry. All these symptoms can be easily smoothed over, creating a sort of permanent “time out”as long as you’re okay with giving your three-year-old a powerful prescription drug.
Don’t make me stop this car
I don’t know what’s more disturbing; the fact that Columbia University recently conducted a Ritalin study on 300 children aged three to five, or the fact that so many parents were willing to allow their preschoolers to be medicated.
Ritalin, of course, is the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drug that’s been approved by the FDA for use in children age six and above.
But why wait until a child is six? Ask any parent: Ages three through five are often just as challenging as the terrible twos. So, gee, wouldn’t it be nice to just pop a pill in your little tyke and undo all the tantrums, crying jags, and incessant demands?
Half of the kids in the Columbia study were given low doses of Ritalin and half received a placebo. In the November 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the authors write that Ritalin “produced significant reductions on ADHD symptom scales in preschoolers compared to placebo.”
Such as it is, that’s the good news.
Safety net
Now for the bad news, which is all about adverse events (AE). The study authors note: “Thirty percent of parents spontaneously reported moderate to severe AEs in all study phases after baseline. These included emotional outbursts, difficulty falling asleep, repetitive behaviors/thoughts, appetite decrease, and irritability.”
Arguably, the most unsettling item on this list is “difficulty falling asleep.” Have you ever known a three-year-old with insomnia?
But here’s the kicker. Some media outlets actually portrayed the results as safe! Here are headlines from two different sources:
“Ritalin Safe for Hyperactive Preschoolers”
“Popular ADHD drug Ritalin safe and effective for pre-schoolers”
What are they thinking? Nearly ONE THIRD of the medicated kids had adverse events. How can anyone interpret that as safe?
Eleven percent of the children in the medication group were pulled out of the study because of unfavorable side effects. I wonder if we checked with the parents of those kids, do you suppose they would describe this drug as safe for a three-year-old?
