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We've Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication |  | Author: Judith Warner
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Seller: spectrumbooks
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 69707
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 1594487545
Dewey Decimal Number: 618.9289
EAN: 9781594487545
ASIN: 1594487545
Publication Date: February 23, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In her provocative new book, New York Times-bestselling author Judith Warner explores the storm of debate over whether we are overdiagnosing and overmedicating our children who have "issues."
In Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, Judith Warner explained what's gone wrong with the culture of parenting, and her conclusions sparked a national debate on how women and society view motherhood. Her new book, We've Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication, will generate the same kind of controversy, as she tackles a subject that's just as contentious and important: Are parents and physicians too quick to prescribe medication to control our children's behavior? Are we using drugs to excuse inept parents who can't raise their children properly?
What Warner discovered from the extensive research and interviewing she did for this book is that passion on both sides of the issue "is ideological and only tangentially about real children," and she cuts through the jargon and hysteria to delve into a topic that for millions of parents involves one of the most important decisions they'll ever make for their child.
Insightful, compelling, and deeply moving, We've Got Issues is for parents, doctors, and teachers-anyone who cares about the welfare of today's children.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
 Thank you, Judith Warner. March 3, 2010
anonymous (North Carolina)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
Judith Warner initially planned to write a book on how American children were falsely diagnosed and over-medicated by thoughtlessly competitive parents seeking a quick fix for their perfectly healthy (albeit quirky) children, for reasons ranging from enhancing their competitive edge (e.g. to raise their "B" grades to "A" grades) to "calming them down" to make parenting easier. She admits she once strongly believed, as many do, that hordes of children were medicated for "flavor of the week" disorders by lazy parents and unscrupulous doctors, and at the recommendation of teachers who needed their young charges to sit still for hours on end at school. What she discovered, however, after seeking such people...is that she couldn't find them. What she discovered instead were parents of sometimes desperately ill children who finally turned to medication (sometimes after years of "denial" about their child's illness) in desperation, more often than not as a last resort, and with great guilt, after trying every other nutritional or behavioral therapy they could identify. To all those adults who ask "where were all these children before when we were growing up?," Ms. Warner notes that they were always there. It's not that there are so many more now -- it's just that now we know what to look for. A kid with what we now know as Asperger's was once just labeled "weird." Similarly, we all knew kids with ADHD in school -- they were the wild, undisciplined kids who couldn't behave (not "wouldn't," but actually couldn't), or couldn't perform, or were labeled "stupid" or "lazy" and for whom the "treatment" ranged from failure to spanking. Ask any adult who lived through ADHD as a kid -- they remember, and they will tell you it exists. In serious cases of mental illness, children were labeled as anything from "retarded" to any other number of other maladies, and parents were urged to send them away to hospitals or institutions, perhaps forever. We're not talking about "quirky" or "different" kids here, or rough-housing little boys who are simply expelling energy -- we're talking about children that are often suffering terribly from the disorders that plague them. Ms. Warner also dispels the myth that practically "all" children are on medication. In fact, a very small percentage of children are medicated, probably fewer than actually need treatment. Most compellingly, she notes that, while it is encouraged, and even admired, for an adult to admit to and seek treatment for a mental illness, for some reason people don't want to extend that same privilege to children. That there is the idea that we should, without reservation, celebrate these "quirks" and "differences" and allow children to "outgrow" them, or alternatively that such children are simply budding geniuses and that treating them would stifle their creativity. What people seem to ignore while they are romanticizing these "differences" is that the children in question are often suffering terribly. Ask any parent of a child with ADHD so severe that they cannot function on any level at school or in social situations, for whom medication has allowed them to at least function on a fairly normal level, how "wonderful" it was for their children before this help became available. Thank you, Thank you Judith Warner, for speaking up for these parents who are simply trying their best in the face of this prejudice.
A must read for parents who are just starting the journey of parenting a child "with issues". March 3, 2010
KikaWigman (NY)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
First, a BIG GIANT THANK YOU to Judith Warner! As a parent of a child "with issues" this book is documenting not just our journey, but the very similar journeys of many other parents. It is a great relief to read that our experiences were not unique. It deeply sad that we were out there on our own, while others were experiencing these things as well. If you as a parent are just starting this long and difficult journey this book is a must read! Also a great book to put into the hands of those within your circle of friends and family who stand in judgment of you!!!!
Finally, someone took a deep breath... March 19, 2010
D. WISELY (DaleForce One)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I've been a child clinical psychologist for 28 years and have seen pretty much all the changes in our cultural and medical views of childhood mental disorders as outlined in this book. Finally, someone sees the need to steer clear of all the hysteria and rhetoric and do something which child health professionals have been doing forever--actually getting to know these children and--gasp!--TALKING to their parents instead of condemning them. I'll say flatly that this book is nothing short of heroic. It demands to be read by anyone who is interested in a clearheaded, well-researched, and beautifully written work, stripped of all the ill-informed, judgmental and paranoid nonsense which abounds.
Myth-Busting at It's Best March 24, 2010
Jennifer Stone Gonzalez (Burlington, VT)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
After I finished "We've Got Issues," I bought four copies to give to friends. We need a way to move discussions about childrens' mental health forward, and this book -- because it is so well written -- helps us do that.
I agree with another reviewer that the material in the book is not revolutionary. Warner writes:
"Most of those who need mental health services don't get any care at all. Too much power and influence has been given to drug makers, rendering the science the public relies upon for information highly unreliable. Too much stigma remains. We tend to believe that, today, we have moved beyond the age-old prejudices against people with mental illness. But, in fact, that prejudice is alive and well in our time and has a new and socially acceptable face: it expresses itself in the eye-rolling laments about "pushy parents" and "drugged-up kids."
In 2005, Peter Kramer made the exact same points in his book "Against Depression."
But Warner, who writes principally for intelligent moms (she's the author of a great book about motherhood, and is also a former NY Times columnist), takes the message closer to home. The first part of the book -- where she tells about how the book came to be written -- is especially persuasive.
Parents would be wise to pick up a copy of Judith Warner's book, read through the research she presents, and begin to face their fears about mental health issues in their own families and schools. It would do a world of good.
Disorders, Traits, Gifts March 5, 2010
K. McElheny
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
First, I would endorse the positive observations in the first two reviews. The book's account of the journey from one point of view to another makes it highly accessible. Warner recognizes that the same behavior in different degrees and people can reflect Disorder, Trait, or Gift. Variant attention can be Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Direction Diversity, or A Different Drummer; thinking outside the box can be a gift, unless one is in an ensemble helplessly running counter to the beat agreed on.
Warner's book is nicely complemented by Gary Greenberg's "Manufacturing Depression."
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
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