Reaction to the "Cutting Edge" Programme
Children with hyperactivity ‘can be helped with more precise parenting’
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story
Social Affairs Correspondent
The Independent
“Parenting is not a democracy. You need to give your child what they want - love and attention - but on your terms, not theirs.”
A British behavioral expert Warwick Dyer has developed a program that guides parents (over the telephone) how to take control. This is a time honored, approach to child rearing— it rests on parents setting standards of behavior through rewards and punishment.
“I am open-minded about whether ADD exists or not, but what is certainly clear is that a lot of symptoms ascribed to such disorders are in fact easily confused with basic behavioural problems that don’t need to be treated with a drug.”
This is the message that doctors such as psychiatrist Peter Breggin, neurologist Fred Baughman, pediatricians William Carey, Lawrence Diller, (among others) have been saying. The problem is not the children the problem is doctors— whose income is enriched by drug manufacturers— who prescribe mind altering drugs to children as though they were jelly beans.
Another Source: Misdirected Attention?
Maybe "Attention Deficit" Isn't the Real Problem
by Nicholas Regush
(when he was producer of medical features for ABC News)
“ What we essentially have here is an epidemic of dumb doctoring and child abuse bordering on the criminal, sitting on a limited view of human behavioral variability. Granted, there are children at the extreme end of the continuum who need a variety of assistance ˜ not necessarily drug-focused help. Meanwhile, there are probably millions of kids unnecessarily on drugs, obtained not from pushers in schoolyards but from pushers with medical degrees.” http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/secondopinion/secondopinion_68.html
ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
(AHRP) http://www.ahrp.org
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
Tel: 212-595-8974 e-mail: veracare@ahrp.org
By Maxine Frith,
The Independent
Warwick Dyer, a behavioural expert, has developed a programme that focuses on the way parents behave towards their children - and claims a 100 per cent success rate over the past five years. Remarkably, he never sees the child involved, and has just one face-to-face consultation with the parents. The rest of his work is limited to a daily telephone training with the parents on how to treat their child.
Mr Dyer’s theory is based on simple ideas such as a system of rewards and sanctions for good and bad behaviour, with an insistence on politeness towards parents - and a demand that mothers and fathers control their tempers as well.
Mr Dyer said:
“Parenting is not a democracy. You need to give your child what they want - love and attention - but on your terms, not theirs.”
Mr Dyer’s work is now the subject of a Channel 4 Cutting Edge documentary, to be broadcast tomorrow.
One in 10 children is now diagnosed with ADD or the related attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Ritalin is an amphetamine with a similar potency to cocaine, and prescribing in Britain has soared one hundredfold in the past 10 years. In 1990, just 3,000 children were on the drug; today, there are 345,000 taking it, costing the NHS more than £3m a year. The drug is being given to children as young as 18 months old.
Now a growing lobby of parents, doctors and other experts is questioning whether ADD or ADHD exist.
Mr Dyer was amember of the "School Support Team" in the East End of London until he retired and set up the Behaviour Change Consultancy. He now sees about 30 families a year, and claims his techniques work with everyone, from the youngest children to teenagers.
He said: “The problem is that a lot of parents have not learnt key strategies from their parents. In the last 40 years, parents have started talking to their children a lot more, but talk in response to repeated bad behaviour is clearly not effective.
“We tend to examine how we were brought up and reject what we thought was bad, but we tend not to notice all the areas that were good. Children are instinctively artful and will try to put themselves in control of the consequencies for their own behaviour. I train parents to tack back control.”
His “behaviourist” approach worked to stunning effect with Fred and Diane from Essex, and their seven-year-old daughter, Georgina, who are featured in the Cutting Edge documentary. Georgina had been prescribed Ritalin and been diagnosed with special needs because of her appalling temper tantrums and violent behaviour. She was expelled from her first playgroup at the age of two and a half, and her parents were so desperate that last year they had decided to put her into care.
But within weeks of adopting Mr Dyer’s techniques, Georgina’s behaviour had improved.
Fred, who runs a wedding video business, and Diane, a civil servant, had to spend seven months in daily phone calls to Mr Dyer, where they had to describe her behaviour in detail, and accept castigations from the expert when they deviated from the sanction system.
At one point he told the couple: “It’s not her fault that you can’t control her. She has wrapped you around her little finger. You aren’t accepting that there isn’t anything wrong with your daughter.”
By the end of the seven months, Georgina was having less than two tantrums a month and while her special needs diagnosis was being reviewed.
Diane said: “The change has been incredible. This has all been done without Ritalin. Before, I hated her. Now, she is a normal child. I feel guilty when I look back to how I treated her before.”
Janice Hill, of the Overload Network, a parent support organisation, said: “Warwick Dyer has shown that the idea of ADHD is a myth. Children are being given a drug that has the same pharmacology as cocaine when in fact all they and their parents need are help with their behaviour.
“Doctors should stop dishing out Ritalin and start using safe alternatives, which have been proven to work.”
Behaviour Change Consultancy 24 Rochdale, Harold Road, London, SE19 3TF |
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