Better Living Through Chemicals 233- is willing to devote sufficient time to monitoring your
child’s progress carefully and continually over time - continually evaluates when it’s time to consider tak-
ing your child off his medication
When children have a poor response to medication, it
is often because one of the foregoing elements was miss-
ing from their treatment.
All medications—aspirin included—have side effects.
Your doctor should help you weigh the anticipated bene-
fits of medication against the potential risks so that you
can make educated decisions. Although it’s important to
have faith in the doctor’s expertise, it’s equally important
that you feel comfortable with the treatment plan he or
she proposes, or at least that you’re comfortable with the
balance between benefits and risks. If you are not com-
fortable with or confident in the information you’ve been
given, you need more information. If your doctor doesn’t
have the time or expertise to provide you with more in-
formation, you need a new doctor. Medical treatment is
not something to fear, but it needs to be implemented
and monitored competently and compassionately.
Not all the medications described here have been offi-
cially approved for use with kids, and many have not been
studied extensively in use with children and adolescents,
especially with regard to their long-term side effects.