Customer Reviews

The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses: What to Do When Your Child Is Labeled a Problem by the Schools

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This book will make any parent a better parent. While it is a challenge to the epidemic of "ADHD" diagnoses and the massive drugging of our children, it is also a beautiful book that offers strength, courage, hope and specific techniques to better help our children through their difficult times.

Breeding exposes the dangers of "biopsychiatry" and its mad rush, driven by drug company profits, to drug our children. The intention of these efforts are to make the children more manageable, more controllable, more able to fit into the school system, a structure that is inherently child-unfriendly.

My daughter was "diagnosed" with "ADHD," and the teachers and counselors at her school pressured me to medicate her. John Breeding's work has been an incredible resource for me, helping me to resist that pressure, and seeing her wonderful spirit for the treasure that it is.

Parenting is incredibly difficult. This book will help you, challenges you to get good support for yourself, because only when you get that help for yourself can you rise to the huge task of attending to your child's emotional needs. Without good help for yourself, you can't help them.

The main resource so many parents hear about when their child is diagnosed with ADD or ADHD is CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder). Many of them don't know that CHADD is funded by the drug company that produces Ritalin!!! This book offers a sane alternative to the voice of the drug companies. It is a challenge to step outside the current mainstream thinking about children and "behavior disorders."

Breeding shows how there is something terribly, terribly wrong with the fact that millions and millions of our children are being drugged ... because of high-spiritedness, because of boredom with the mind-numbing school experience.

Every parent, every person who works with children, should read this book!

I am a Wild Colt, much older and wiser now. Breeding has a way of showing that every child (and adult) is as unique as a snowflake and should be given the chance to become who they really are without chemical leashes. I was on Ritalin until I figured out I could refuse it. What Dr. Breeding proposes in this book is what I needed as a child, the space to become myself. My loving parents did what they thought was best for me but all I remember was feeling drugged and shuffling around kicking dirt during recess instead of intereacting and socializing with the other kids. My grades were awesome and I was well behaved; I was miserable. Read this book, there is truth here. Norman Moore

I thought Dr. Breeding's book was outstanding, because anyone dealing a child who is labeled a problem/disabled/special education would find comfort and understanding reading this selection. Appropriately dealing with situations that involve children who are considered a problem is a very daunting job if you do not know what you are doing. This book clearly describes and defines the problems that labeled children face in America.

Dr. Breeding has a style of writing which is easy to comphrehend, because he does an excellent job at explaining the topics he presents. For example, he doesn't just claim "drugging children is harmful." He provides a full and complete explanation of why parents should look at other options outside of medication for their children. So often parents are pushed, bullied, and shoved into the easy way to resolve problems with children, and end up paying greatly at a latter date. If you want an open and honest insight Dr. Breeding's book is a page turner.

I was impressed with Dr. Breeding's anti drugging stance, because almost every child I have ever seen be placed on medication perform poorly socially, academically, and emotionally in the long run. Even the few that do demonstrate excellence academically end up latter on with either a drug problem or taking even more drugs to focus. I appreciate a doctor's willingness to just tell the truth.

This book also highlights the important aspect of becoming a better parent, because it is much easier or more successful to parent children when you actually understand them. I think most parents find frustration with thier childre, because they do not understand, therefore, do not know how to effectively respond.

To date, I have now read a lot of writings by Dr. Breeding, and I find him to have a superior grasp of children's behavior. Typically I've resented any mental health professionals, but I like and trust Dr. Breeding. His website is a valuable source of information also for any parent or even teacher searching for the truth and understanding.

There are a number of amphetimine type drugs currently being pushed by child psychiatrists and others to make children more compliant in public and private schools. The use of such drugs has nothing to do with good parenting or good education, and nothing to do with good medicine. This book exposes the deceitful marketing tactics that many parents are being subjected to by "professionals" with a vested interest in their children being drugged. It helps parents decide what to do when faced with the sometimes overwhelming pressure of school personnel to put a child on a drug.

I praise Dr. Breeding in his quest to inform the parents of children who are subjects of an abused educational system. I found this book enlightening and would recommend it to all who would like to know the truth about ADHD.

While I agree with Mr. Breeding on his stand against medicating children and doing whatever it takes to find a workable solution, much of his philosophy is impractical and unrealistic. I admire his courage though and a lot of what he says rings true for me.

Some valuable and unique insights on the problems we face with regard to public education. However, the strong anti-medication stance taken by the author is overkill, and one should not let the affiliation with the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and the quotes from L. Ron Hubbard go unnoticed.

I first read this book at a time when we were going through severe side effects from medicating my 7yr old son for ADD. I felt drawn to this book because it offered hope and alternatives to the medication route. However, having read the book I found that Dr. Breeding jumped to conclusions that were not well founded either through his own research or through the literature. His agenda in the book is clearly to dissuade readers from ever using medication for ADD again. Clearly, there is an abuse of ADD medication in the U.S. and for taking a stand against this I definitely applaud Dr. Breeding.

However, having read this book it clearly is an example of 'throwing the baby out with the bath water'. There are many children for whom medication makes a real difference in their lives. Why treat a chemical inbalance in the brain any different from another medical condition? We could equally well argue that any health problems we experience should be handled without medication.

We all agree that the wildest colts may make the best horses, but in real life, those wild colts MUST be tamed. If left to run wild they will most certainly NOT make the best horses. They must be trained and guided in love and consistency.

If medication enables our children to learn and be trained to develop into responsible and well-balanced adults, then I think we should be extremely careful before entirely disregarding the possible benefits of using medication.

In closing though, I still believe that Dr. Breeding's warning about overmedicating too many kids is an important one. Let's just be careful NOT to throw the baby out with the bathwater! If you read this book - please do so with an open yet critical mind!