In Travis Scott's catchy song, Antitode, he eloquently sings, "Poppin' pills is all we know." Well, contrary to popular belief, he is not talking about the swinging twenty-year-olds and crazy college students, but about the children of America.
Just kidding, but it is not a far stretch if you think about it.
Every summer I return back to summer camp to be a cabin counselor for a group of 10-14 eleven and twelve-year-old girls and I couldn't think of a better way to spend my sweaty, hot, summers. Among the black widow spiders, raccoon infestation, constant humidity, perspiration, and campers asking every 3 seconds, "What's for lunch", there is one thing that bothers me: the amount of medication I have to direct to the nurse at check-in. Whenever the parents check the campers in with the counselors in the cabin, we have to ask if they have any medications and if so to drop them off at the nurse's station. Every year, there is an increase in the number of parents that answer yes to the medication question.
These medications range from daily vitamins and allergy medicine to ADD/ADHD pills to more important diabetes or heart defect (necessary) medications. Even more so there are random antibiotics and preventative medications that parents are imposing upon their children.
Why are we giving children more and more unnecessary medication these days?
Every soap around the house is now antibacterial, killing every strain of healthy bacteria in a child's body, making them MORE susceptible to illness. Then when they do contract these illnesses we give them MORE antibiotics killing even MORE healthy bacteria. The cycle continues.
If a child has the slightest boo boo or pain, we automatically turn to the medicine closet and find the Advil, Tylenol, Aleve or whatever we think is best to cure the child automatically instead of letting it pass within the hour.
And by far my biggest gripe about medication is ADD/ADHD pills. If a child is behind in school, parents automatically assume they have a learning deficit and must be put on ADD medicine and be given the extra time on tests and such. These pills make children see the world in tunnel vision and not act like the hyperactive, curious humans they are. Kudos to the parents who have children that are truly in need of these medications to help them succeed in school but let them ween off of them during the summer. Summer is meant for exploration, excitement, fun. It's not meant to be tamed down by a white capsule of chemistry.
Considering I want to be a doctor and my dad is a doctor I understand the wonders that medication can bring and how it can enhance our lives for the better. But there is a point in time where we need to step back and realize how many foreign and unnatural substances we are placing into our bodies and our children's bodies. I also do know however how large the prescription pill addiction epidemic is becoming. Could the trend of giving a copious amount of medicine to children lead to more prescription pill addictions?
Let's let our bodies do their job naturally and let the kids be kids.
