Howard Glasser

My passion in the medication debate stems from my clinical work with families with challenging and intense children. I got to see that with 2-3 weeks – at most within 2-3 months for the most difficult children – that the very same intensity that had gone awry became the very fuel for that child’s greatness. And I got to see that their extra added intensity was therefore a great blessing, rather than cause to label them with a diagnosis – predicated upon a view of the symptoms as pathology requiring medications.

I got to see that entirely different course of action could light up an infinately greater runway for a child and their family instead of taking a course of actions that so often endangers a child with unforeseen side-effects, perhaps the worst of which is the meta message to the child that something is drastically wrong with them in regard to their life force because neither they or their parents or teachers can handle it – we need to make their intensity go away.

If we really saw life force/ intensity as a blessing that could be transformed into greatness we would never ever dream of doing that. Life force is precious. It is common to us all and some simply have the gift of having more than others. Without it we’d be lost. Without it we might not even be able to get out of bed. Without it we wouldn’t be able to live our dreams or live or fulfill our passionate lives. We need our future generations of children to have their intensity intact so that can do the great things we need them to do. We can’t afford for future generations to be lost with their intensity suppressed.

Besides, at most medications simply give the illussion of improvement. In a way “improvement” pale in comparison to what I found to be consistently obtainable “transformation.” Before the meds kick in and after they wear off the problems are still there – nothing has changed and there has been zero healing. Isn’t healing what we want. Don’t parents and teachers deep down simply want all along to see this child use their intensity in great ways. With medications the parent is none the wiser on how to best help this child nor is the child any the wiser on how to best help themselves. There must be a better way and there is.

The reason I can say this is that by grace I stumbled upon devising a method of helping these children that I came to eventually call The Nurtured Heart Approach and that is what I will write about mostly in this blog. I will do my best to tell you how the approach came to be and what kinds of impacts it is having, as well as giving you some sense of what it is and how it works. As this is my first blog I will save most of it for subsequent notes but for now I want to say that what I found through this work has given me great hope and that is what I want to inspire in you.

I don’t want to waste my time fighting the pharmaceutical companies. Other people have that talent and I applaud that. I simply want to show over and over again that with the right kind of approach these very same children of concern can easily be “transformed” to be the best children on the planet.

I’ll give you one example for now – Tolson Elementary in Tucson, Arizona – has been using this approach now for over 10 years and in since that time, as a school with well over 80% free and reduced lunch and other demograpgics that go with an at-risk population, they went from a school with the highest rates of suspensions, bullying, teacher attrition, use of diagnosis and medications in their large school district – a school designated as failing and with a high rate of special education – to a school that is designated as excelling – going from over 15% special education to less than 2%, to almost zero bullying, suspesions, teacher attrition, with zero use of diagnosis and medications and more.

They did this because they began changing drastically the way they relate to children. This is what I will describe as these blog posts unfold and evolve.

I certainly believe in symptoms. I believe there are kids loaded with symptoms that frustrate, annoy and drive parents and teachers to distraction. However I also believe that the energy that drives these very same symptoms can be rerouted to greatness. Greatness can be awakened in the most difficult children with methods that are geared to how these children respond to relationship and energy. Then we don’t have to hope that they will find a “way” to channel their energies to activities like scouting or dance, baseball or soccor or any other activity. Not that these are bad. It’s just that there’s a better solution – where the child awakens to who they really are as a great person and as that assimilates and integrate then we will have a child who acts-out in an entirely different way – they act-out in greatness and manifest that wherever they go.