September's coming.......

.... and that means it's back to school, and that means the ADD meds come roaring back to life with a vengeance. We have a lot of pediatricians in the area who are big prescribers of these. I don't have any great insights into our over-medicated kids, but in performing the transactions I often feel it's the parents who need the meds more than their kids. For some, I know that these
medications can be a god-send --- the kids read better, get better grades and feel better about themselves. The parents may be anguished about using medication but want to try to help their kids any way they can. On the other end of the spectrum are the parents who are impatient, self-absorbed and a nightmare to deal with. You can easily see the type of chaotic environment the kids must live in and why they may have some trouble behavior-wise. My least favorite of these parents are the well-off suburbanites who you suspect don't have the time of day for their kids. They act terribly put-out by the whole pharmacy visit routine and may even complain loudly about the co-pay going up while the kid stands miserably in the background. I just hate that. And of course the whole idea of having to plan ahead for that next 'refill', which needs a signed prescription, is foreign to them.

Some parents really have it together -- they will call and set things up during the last week of August in anticipation of school starting. Others, not so much. It will be the Friday before Labor Day when they suddenly realize school starts Tuesday, and then it will be my fault that they can't pick up the prescription in an hour. Sigh. Oh well, somethings never change ...!