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44 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
BEWARE! This book will OUTRAGE good parents., August 1, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Ritalin Is Not The Answer: A Drug-Free, Practical Program for Children Diagnosed with ADD or ADHD (Paperback)
If you have poor parenting skills, if your child displays only mild behavior problems, if you are seriously questioning your child's ADD/ADHD diagnosis, suspecting he/she has fallen victim to the trend of over-diagnosing this disorder, then this book may provide some direction in helping curb problem behaviors. For the rest of us who have children with serious ADD/ADHD problems, those who have been searching for and trying numerous behavioral approaches for years to no avail, and those who have already forged excellent parenting skills, do not buy this book! In Dr. Stein's book, "Ritalin is Not the Answer", he purports that there is no such thing as ADD/ADHD and he has chosen to rename it "IA/HM" (inattentive/highly misbehaving). He maintains that there is no biological or neurological basis for ADD/ADHD, but rather the symptoms are the by-products of our modern culture -- TV, video games, a stressful lifestyle, traffic jams, and specifically and particularly -- ineffective and neglectful parenting! He believes that parents are guilty of actually creating the syndrome in their child. He makes absurd, sweeping generalizations such as, "children who come from homes where education is valued do not end up diagnosed as ADD/ADHD", and "I doubt very much that children who's parents spend sufficient quiet time each evening talking with them will ever show IA/HM symptoms". If you can control your outrage at these inflammatory and damaging statements and proceed to finish the book, you will find it to read like a simplistic "Parenting 101" manual. Dr. Stein talks about how through his book you will "begin to learn how to parent your child". His assumption is that if you have a child with problems of this nature, you lack even the most basic parenting skills. His belives that ADD/ADHD can be erased through judicious use of both positive and negative reinforcements. He employs immediate time-outs at even the smallest hint of misbehavior, believing this will force the child to remember how to behave on his own rather than making them reliant on caregivers for prompts or reminders. While his behavioral approaches are reasonably sound, employing firm limits, consistent and predictable consequences, and generous use of positive social reinforcement for correct behavior, there is nothing new in this book that has not been presented by other authors in one form or another. I suspect that most parents looking for a book on this subject have already mastered these techniques and more, but still have not been able to make a significant impact in correcting their child's problems. While every child -- ADD/ADHD or otherwise -- needs a solid parenting and discipline plan, this book is likely to only work for children who are either not truly ADD/ADHD, those who's problems are relatively mild, or for parents who do indeed need to develop a basic foundation for parenting their child. In this book, Dr. Stein presents numerous case studies where after just a few weeks (or even a matter of days!) of employing his methods, the child's problems vanished completely and they suddenly became a shining example of the happy, accomplished, and well-adjusted child. His book is filled with so many of these simplistic stories of miraculous, instantaneous recovery that it becomes laughable. While his 'magic bullet' claims may sell books by the score, beware. If something is too good to be true, it no doubt is.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Facts, Please, Not More Fiction, January 19, 2002
This review is from: Ritalin Is Not The Answer: A Drug-Free, Practical Program for Children Diagnosed with ADD or ADHD (Paperback)
In reading the "Brief Description," three errors are blatantly evident. When Mr. Stein states, "Between a quarter to one-third of all school-aged children in the USA today are diagnosed as suffering from something called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)," he is greatly at odds with documentation from the National Institutes of Health. In "Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" it is stated that ADHD is "estimated to affect 3-5% of school-age children." That is far from the figure of 25%-33.3% given by Mr. Stein. In addition, when Mr. Stein states that ADHD is "a diagnostic category that didn't even exist twenty years ago," he is mistaken. Since 1902, ADHD has been known by many names including Minimal Brain Dysfunction, Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood, and Attention-Deficit Disorder With or Without Hyperactivity. The current classification, as found in DSM-IV, is Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, reflecting the inattentive characteristics as well as the characteristics of hyperactivity and impulsivity. His third, and most grievous, error is the false claim that "approximately two million of these children are being coerced by teachers, administrators and doctors into taking Ritalin or a similar type of mood-altering medication." This mistake is two-fold. The first thing to consider here is that there are not two million patients (let alone children) taking medication for ADHD. As per information from the Dept of Justice, there are approximately 17 million prescriptions written each year for all forms of methylphenidate and adderall combined. Because these prescriptions can only be written for a 1-month supply and must be renewed for each refill, that translates to approximately 1.4 million patients per year, 80% of whom are children. If you look only at the 11 million prescriptions per year written for all forms of methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta, etc), that translates to .917 million patients per year receiving methylphenidate prescriptions. 80%, or .734 million, of those patients are children. These figures include prescriptions for patients with depression and narcolepsy as well as ADHD.
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67 of 83 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A sound approach to treating ADH D without medication, April 19, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Ritalin Is Not The Answer: A Drug-Free, Practical Program for Children Diagnosed with ADD or ADHD (Paperback)
As a psychologist with twenty years' experience counseling ADHD children, I found Dr. David Stein's book, "Ritalin Is Not The Answer," an easy-to-understand, insightful and viable solution to the controversy surrounding the use of Ritalin with ADHD children. He first outlines the fallicies of the disease or chemical imbalance model for ADHD, and then introduces his "Caregivers' Skills Program," the ultimate goal of which is to enable children to self-monitor their behavior. To achieve self-monitoring, however, he stresses that medication must be withdrawn completely so that new skills can be learned independent of the drugs. He shifts the focus from the "symptoms" which imply "disease" to a list of targeted behaviors. The goal is to either improve or eiminate the targeted behaviors. This approach avoids the prevalent but disenfranchising tactic of labeling ADHD behaviors as a "brain disease" and prescribing medication. The parental role in the Program--that of conveying specific instruction to motivate and empower the child to take charge of his or her own behavior--re-establishes parents as authority figures in the chld's life. Dr. Stein clims that his Cargiver's Skills Program "produces dramatic and positve changes in children by completely eliminating ADD and ADHD patterns without the use of medication." I believe that the application of his techniques would not only produce the claimed results, but also would empower both parents and children thereby enhancing the parent-child relationship. This appears to be an effective, easy-to-apply alternative to medicating our children with Ritalin and other drugs. If you child has been diagnosed as ADHD, this book offers great hope. Ty C. Colbert, Ph.D.
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