Update On Medication

I just realized that I wrote a post on medicating one of our kids for ADD and then never told you how things were going.

Well, Child has started a different medication, not a stimulant, and after two weeks on it, we are seeing a marked improvement in behavior, attitude and self-control.  YAY!!!!!  Child asked me this morning how I thought s/he was doing, behaivor-wise.  I told him/her all the positive improvements I've seen this week and then I started crying :-)  Typical Barb move there!  I was crying because I am so grateful to have my child back!  S/He is a wonderful, sweet, caring child, but the issues s/he has been dealing with eclipsed, totally eclipsed, all of the wonderful qualities s/he has.

We don't know if it's the medicine, the natural remedies we are also trying, or if it is just God's super-natural grace producing these good results.  Regardless, God is answering our prayers for healing for our child.

My friend, Sara, shared a link with me on Facebook today, also, regarding how a Christian should view psychiatric medication.  It is an excellent article!  This part, in particular, really touched me (and made me cry again!).

If you feel like a failure because your child is taking psychiatric medication, our guess is that you have worked harder at your parenting than ten other parents combined. We hope you are not judging your parenting success against the parent whose child sits quietly, gets all A’s, does homework without supervision, rarely gets frustrated, and is compliant and obedient. Parenting probably had little to do with any of that!

Some kids are just hard. The strategies that worked for some parents will not necessarily work for you. To make matters worse, you will receive an endless stream of advice, which will leave you angry, because you feel like you should do everything you can for your child and the advice is often contradictory. We hope you will not add guilt over medication to that list. Rather, success is marked by “help me and my child, Lord Jesus.” It isn’t measured by having a medication-free zone in your home.

All this is to say that wisdom about these kinds of decisions can take different forms in different situations. A divine directive would be nice: “do this or take this and everything will be fine.” But our Father has a better way. We confess our neediness, consider relevant biblical teaching, seek the counsel of others, make the hard decisions, learn from what helps, avoid those things that hurt, and know God-with-us. For some of us, a positive decision for medication will be a wise consequence of this process.

Can We Be Positive about Psychiatric Medications?

By: Ed Welch

Topics: Medication

Published: Apr 04, 2012

I hope those of you that have wonderful, but difficult, children will be encouraged by those words, as I was!