Patience Over Pills; Let Kids Develop

Boys Generate Energy Learning; More School Accomodation, Less Amphetamine

Inspired by Recovery: Laura Delano's Story

The other night, I went to a Brownstone supper club to hear Unshrunk-author Laura Delano speak of her one-way street of teen psychiatric treatment: pills at ever-higher doses with MDs’ never suggesting fewer meds or lesser amounts. She recounts depression so severe she was called "treatment resistant"; nonetheless, at this talk, she was energized, coherent-- and while very emotional, and easy to bring to tears, quite sane.

She has outgrown her problems. Maturity, it turns out, may be the best antidote of all—though it can’t be bottled, and more often than not it’s the last thing we stumble across in our restless hunts for better lives, for ourselves or for our children. Like the old joke about car keys—always found in the last place you look—maturity arrives only after every shortcut and quick fix has been tried. This slow, often hidden process of growing into oneself—and just as importantly, growing away from a problem—resonated with me, especially in two episodes from my now-adult older son’s childhood. Parents encounter many traps along the way, where impatience and misdiagnosis from institutions can misdirect a child’s development.

My Son’s ‘"Too Tall" Jones’ Impediment

When my older son was just shy of four, he was attending a Montessori school which mixed ages in an "open classroom"-approach early on. At an early-September Parents Day – while kids were playing, the speech therapist pulled me aside to say my son desperately needed to be enrolled under her (additional cost) tutelage.

Why? Because he said “LELLOW” instead of “ YELLOW.” I somewhat floored her by saying that his “only speech-problem is that he is too tall.”

She repeated her case, deliberately and slowly, as if I were bit on the simple side and hadn’t understood the basics of speech therapy.

So I asked: “How old do you think he is?” “

“Six,” she answered without hesitation.

In fact, he wasn’t even four, so when I said “3.9” she said, “oh my, he’s tall for his age!” And then it was like comedic timing, one beat, two beats, three beats-- before the scales fell from her eyes, ... “oh, I see what you’re saying”.

Sure enough, with time, and without therapy-- his speech developed normally. Today, he gives public talks with clarity and confidence; podcasts with wit and verve; all the while never mispronouncing “yellow”.

This pattern repeated itself later in fourth and fifth grades. Teachers pushed for his getting an ADHD label. They badly (in both senses of the word) wanted him medicated. He was bright, curious, quick-minded-- but also energetic, fidgety, the way many boys are. The classroom model-- sit still, keep quiet, take turns (essentially following girls’ prototypical pretend-play tea-party)-- was a poor fit for many boys, who learn through absorbed self-directed probing and repetition or physicality and excitement.

On the topic of ADHD, Prof. James Swanson (pictured) states: “it's a continuum of behavior, these [“DSM-IV Symptoms of ADHD (sic)] are NOT necessarily symptoms of psychopathology”

Yet instead of adjusting schooling; having more “recess-” physical activity scheduled; or perhaps segregating boys and girls at this stage -- the reflex was to have Ritalin prescribed (for the present moment and presumably quasi-eternally thereafter).

As a physician, I knew better. Ritalin, after all, rests on surprisingly thin early evidence-- little more than a handful of children in the first studies. Amphetamines produce effects that teachers mistake for “improvement.” Stop the drug, the child feels withdrawal, and it looks as if the medicine was indispensable. It’s like giving a child coffee, then concluding he can’t function without it.

I was aware of the essence of “Ritalin Gone Wrong” decades before Dr. Alan Sroufe published this (2012) article in the New York Times.

I refused to have him medicated in this manner, “speed,” amphetamines, which have dose-habituation anyway. Instead, he and I adapted. Writing was an early struggle for him—he hated sitting at a desk, typing out assignments. So we went on walks. I asked him about his book reports and recorded his answers. Back home, I ran them through Dragon NaturallySpeaking, creating a framework for him to edit and expand. He did the thinking; I only unlocked the form. His teachers were astonished at his sudden improvement. They suspected I was writing for him. But all it took was asking him questions—and listening, and transcribing.

Beyond Labels: Critiquing Modern Education and Psychiatry

On the heels of my recent interview with Dr. Roger McFillin, a clinical psychologist who hosts The Radically Genuine Podcast and has become one of the sharper critics of modern psychiatry– I am reminded of his message that psychiatry too often turns ordinary human struggles into diseases, medicating states like grief that should be honored and worked through, not blunted by a pill. To drug-medicate grief, he argues, is to rob us of the very process that allows love and loss to be transformed into resilience.

Applying his point (retroactively) to my son’s case, medication would have become the excuse for any growth or maturity he accumulated along the way—and later, a crutch. Instead, he had the satisfaction of genuine achievement, the sense that progress came from within. That satisfaction, as McFillin might say, carries a person much further than any drug ever could.

The broader lesson is this: children often “grow into” themselves if we give them time. The rush to medicate reflects institutional impatience more than true pathology. Schools want compliance, not character. And parents, overwhelmed, sometimes accept the quick fix. But what is lost is the child’s natural development, the learning that comes through experience, through trial and error, through scaffolding knowledge on one’s own terms.

We’ve allowed schooling to drift into cultural malpractice—busy promoting ideologies, from gender theories to test-score metrics, while failing to nourish genuine curiosity and resilience. Instead of tailoring education to aptitude and excitement, we impose a one-size-fits-all mold. Not every child will be an attorney or an accountant. Some need Aristotle; some need a workshop; some need space to run.

It’s worth remembering that what we now call “high school” was once an exclusive place. Elementary school taught the “elements,” and many people never went further. My two grandfathers came from Eastern Europe with little formal education—one nearly illiterate—yet both managed to provide, to save, and to raise families. One brought five children into adulthood, including two attorneys, two teachers, and a secretary. His own success was measured in resourcefulness, loyalty, thrift, and grit; providing, not a diploma.

Today, schooling has become a mechanistic system designed to keep kids penned in, when many—especially boys—might thrive through vocational work or experiential learning. We forget that society needs plumbers, HVAC technicians, homemakers, and tradespeople every bit as much as lawyers or accountants.

I’m reminded of an old TV advertisement for Barney’s Men’s Clothing. The spot shows kids dreaming big—one wants to be a musician, another a ballplayer, another the mayor. And then Barney, quietly practical and impeccably dressed, says: “Well, you’re all going to need clothes.” It was funny, but also true. Aspiration is vital, but so are the unglamorous, everyday roles that keep society functioning.

Yet our schools insist on forcing every child through the same high school rigmarole, figuratively strapping them in; but literally medicating them, far too close to A Clockwork Orange’s form of learning.

We live in an age of customization—AI curates our playlists, clothing companies adjust for body shape, medicine promises personalized therapies. Why should schooling lag behind? Why should our children be medicated into compliance rather than guided toward growth?

Echoes in Adulthood: The Cycle of Dependency

I saw the same pattern play out years later in my own work. During my tech startup days, ~2016, I had a brilliant 26-year-old man working for me (same generation, and possibly the same childhood predicament, as my son). For a week to ten days, he would knock it out of the park—organized, effective, making calls, producing excellent work. The following week, his pace would slow; he’d still get things done, but with less energy. And then he’d vanish—out sick for a week. When he returned, he was groggy and sluggish, almost starting from scratch. Every month, lather, rinse, repeat.

Eventually he confided that he was cycling on his ADHD medication—essentially speed. He’d get the burst of focus, crash, take time off, then start again. Back in medical school we were told never to write prescriptions for speed. By the 1970s it was considered off-limits: addictive, dangerous, prone to tachyphylaxis (needing ever-higher doses for the same effect). It had already left wreckage in the weight-loss craze of the 1950s and 60s. And here it was, decades later, recycled under a new name, sold as a solution for restless students.

The medicine “did something,” no doubt—it gave him those sharp bursts of performance. But in the bigger picture, it was disastrous. No employee, no matter how talented, can vanish for a week every month and expect to thrive. This was not training his mind for maturity or resilience. It was short-term fire at the expense of long-term growth. The forest was being sacrificed for a few flashy trees.

The same can be said of our children. We risk mistaking a temporary pharmacological effect for genuine development. What really matters—the ability to focus, to persist, to learn how to wrestle with boredom and frustration—only comes with maturity, experience, and patience. These cannot be bottled. They arrive slowly, like the car keys found in the last place we look, but they arrive all the same.

My son is now a thriving adult-- educated, employed, married, contributing. He needed patience, not pills. And I suspect that is true for many children. The best prescription is often the simplest: time, attention, and the willingness to walk with them, literally and figuratively, until they find their own stride.

For more on this topic please see my interview with Yaakov Ophir, author of “ADHD is Not an Illness and Ritalin is Not a Cure”