Reclaiming Our Children: A Healing Plan For A Nation In Crisis [Hardcover]

M.D. Peter Breggin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2000

Children have been sliding down our priority list for too long. Busy parents give children leftover time—those few remaining minutes after work and recreation. Stressed teachers have put conformity and good grades ahead of stimulating children to love learning. The many adults who are motivated to do their best often find themselves at a loss over what to do. Our children, desperately missing us in their lives, look in the wrong places for solace and support. While only a few become openly violent, many more feel humiliated, frustrated, lonely, and angry.From recasting our attitudes as parents and getting more involved in schools as volunteers, to restructuring class sizes, limiting homework, and fostering honest dialog about the pressures in our society, Reclaiming Our Children shows us the way to lasting peace with and among our children. Beginning with a dramatic shift in adult priorities that places children at the center of our lives, Peter Breggin demonstrates how we can create loving, disciplined, and inspiring relationships with all of our children.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Parents and other adults are the source of the problem with troubled children--not the "child monsters" whose mug shots we see on the evening news for school shootings, murders, and other tales of modern-day juvenile delinquency. That's the case made by Peter R. Breggin, a Maryland-based psychiatrist who has written widely on the overuse of psychoactive drug; in Reclaiming Our Children he takes aim at what he considers the root of all the trouble: today's families. Overly permissive parents, absentee fathers, working mothers, disconnected families--they all take the blame in Breggin's well-reasoned argument for renewing the importance of children in our lives.

The 1999 Columbine High School shootings figure prominently in Breggin's dissection of how society has abandoned its kids. He calls a White House conference held after the massacre a "missed opportunity" because politicians and health advisers were quick to blame the student shooters' actions on genetic and biochemical conditions beyond our control. As Breggin has written in many of his other books, he believes parents are too eager to turn to Prozac, Ritalin, and other chemical solutions for problems that should be sorted out with old-fashioned therapy. His accounts of treating young patients and their parents are delightful passages, though his diagnoses at times seem a bit simplistic. He offers self-help solutions near the end of the book, with suggestions on how parents can avoid serious conflicts with their kids. His views on child-rearing tactics sometimes go against the grain: he's not an advocate of time-outs as a means of discipline, for example. And his child-centered ideas may frustrate some parents in the throes of dealing with a 2-year-old's tantrums or a disrespectful teen's defiance. But his plea for making children a priority is a much-needed, logical voice that should cause some parents to pause and rethink their hectic lives. --Jodi Mailander Farrell

From Publishers Weekly

Attributing the fundamental disorder of American society to the alienation and neglect of our children, this ambitious manifesto calls for a multipronged attack on the forces that distort children's healthy development: abuse, dysfunctional parents, poverty, assembly-line schools, racism, sexism and "pedism" (prejudice against children). Breggin, a psychiatrist and the foremost critic of biological psychiatry (Toxic Psychiatry, etc.), opens his report by lambasting the first-ever White House Conference on Mental Health (held weeks after the Columbine High School shooting), at which President Clinton advocated a congressionally funded program to identify children in need of psychiatric help. This plan, charges Breggin, is a thinly disguised windfall for biopsychiatry, health professionals and the pharmaceutical industry, who aim to put children on drugs like Prozac and Ritalin. He cites studies indicating that antidepressants frequently induce a manic reaction or severe emotional disturbance in young people, and that Prozac, in particular, can make children violent, depressed, psychotic or suicidal. Drawing on his own therapy practice, Breggin presents numerous case studies illustrating how troubled youth can be helped without recourse to psychotropic drugs. He also tours model programs around the country for treating disturbed or violent children--a Quaker high school, a yeshiva, an alternative public school offering a 12 Step approach to drug and alcohol abuse--where adults form meaningful relationships with young people. This wise and humane book brims with practical suggestions for parents, teachers and mental health professionals. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1 edition (January 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738202525
• ISBN-13: 978-0738202525
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,675,933 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you have problem kids, read Breggin's book., March 2, 2000

By 

Dr. Tim O'Shea (San Jose, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reclaiming Our Children: A Healing Plan For A Nation In Crisis (Hardcover)

For one thing, Dr. Breggin has done a great job researching the common characteristics of the childhood shootings in schools in the past several years, which surprisingly are much more frequent than what appear in the popular press. He points out how the proposed solution by Clinton and associates is misguided, and bound for failure. Setting up school programs of increased psychiatric care (read drugs) is not the answer. Dr. Breggin shows that the vast majority of the child shooters were already under care (read drugs). This is where politics comes in. Any issue seems only to have value to the extent to which it can be manipulated - in this case child vilolence is certainly a huge problem. The angle is the billions of dollars of taxpayer money which will change hands providing psychoactive drugs of questionable value, to millions of genuinely troubled kids. If drugs were the answer, this problem would already be solved. Breggin asks some uncomfortable questions about the true nature of the situation, and proposes some reasonable solutions which involve more than masking the problem in a fog of experimental antidepressants. Before you submit your kid to any behavioral treatment program, you might consider informing yourself on the issues by perusing this thoughtful and scary book.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Valuable Message, April 11, 2000

By 

Peter Horsley, L.P.C. (Overland Park, Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reclaiming Our Children: A Healing Plan For A Nation In Crisis (Hardcover)

Dr. Peter Breggin continues to express his belief in the innate ability of children to heal and move their lives in a positive direction. A key ingredient is for adults to recognize the need for children to have a lifestyle that allows them to be children. I don't believe Dr. Breggin blames parents for their children's problems. I think he sees them as responsible for creating a productive lifestyle for the child. In this day and age it is common for very young children(kindergarten and younger) to spend an eight to ten hour day away from parents and in school or childcare. While this allows parents to increase their income it may produce anxiety and distractiblity in the child. Dr. Breggin does an outstanding job of sorting out how the child is the victim of biopsychiatry while the culture continues to place materialism and income as a top priority. I was impressed by his case studies and his courage in speaking out against the label and medicate phenomena that places children at risk.

I have worked as an elementary counselor for the past twenty-three years. Currently I am in private practice as a Licensed Professional Counselor. In my twenty plus years of working with children and families I have found that strong parents who create a realistic structure for their children overcome most childhood problems. At the same time I have seen many families turn to psychiatric labels and medication only to discover their child was caught in a downward spiral of behavior and emotional problems.

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Our childrens' safety is at stake!, June 4, 2000

By 

M. T. Guzman "squeakychu" (Rockville, MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reclaiming Our Children: A Healing Plan For A Nation In Crisis (Hardcover)

Dr. Breggin presents a discussion of how American society does a disservice to our troubled school children by labelling them with psychiatric diagnoses and medicating them rather than critically examining the alienation and abandonment caused by family, schools, and communities. For parents, counselors, and educators, a most important chapter is one which offers suggestions for improving our schools. The book stresses that the most important factor in assisting the positive growth of our children is an individual child's relationship with a loving, mature adult. Even in impoverished communities, children can succeeed if a nuturing adult is there to counter negative effects of such adverse events as drugs, violence, and racism. The book is an alert for parents, counselors, and educators. If this information is acted upon by increasing numbers of caring adults, the quality of the lives of our precious youth should significantly improve. Breggin is but one man, but he

has high hopes for a whole nation.