Author John Breeding Lectures in Connecticut

New Canaan Advertiser

By Sara Poirier

Thursday, April 29, 2003

Doctor tells parents about alternatives to “drugging” hyper children

A psychologist from Texas told a group of mothers, grandmothers, child advocates that protecting one’s children, and transforming oneself is an alternative to drugging children who are deemed hyperactive with attention deficit disorder, at a lecture sponsored by AbleChild.org on Friday, April 23, at New Canaan Library.

Dr. John Breeding is the author of “True Nature and Great Misunderstandings”; a book that tells its readers how they understand the world revolves around how they see it.

“We think it was a big success and we’re glad that we’re getting the information out to parents”, Sheila Matthews, national vice president of Ablechild, said Monday, April 26. “We were glad that the New Canaan (Department of Youth Services) came.”

Ms. Matthews is a New Canaan resident, and her organization- which donated “True Nature” and his previous book, “The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses,” to the library after lecture – is run by parents advocating informed consent and the right to refuse medication. (See related article.)

Dr Breeding said all children have what he calls a “true nature: where they exhibit brilliant intelligence, have an abundant amount of energy, are intensely relational with much self-determination, and have strength and uniqueness.

“Children are born with all these tremendous qualities but they’re also totally vulnerable,” he said. “The unfair use of rank causes revenge.”

Dr. Breeding also contended that there is no evidence that attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder exists.

He added that emotional expression is part of younger children, part of their natural healing process. He also said that among false assumptions about biological psychiatry are that adjusting to school is good, failure to adjust is the result of a “mental illness”, that a “mental illness: is a medical disease and that a “mental illness” is the result of a biological and/or genetic defect.

Also, he said that people falsely think that “mental illness” is chronic, progressive and basically incurable, that it can and must be controlled by drugs, and is sever cases by electroshock, and that people with it are irrational and unable to make responsible decisions, making coercion necessary and justified.

Dr. Breeding cited State legislation in Connecticut (An Act Concerning Recommendations for and Refusals of the Use of Psychotropic Drugs by Children) that is in line with the Federal Child Medication Safety Act. The Federal law, which is before the Senate, would prohibit school personnel from requiring the use of psychotropic drugs in children in order for them to return to school.

The Connecticut law says that parents cannot be arrested for not giving drugs to their children diagnosed with attention/deficit/hyperactivity disorder, something some members of Ablechild present at the lecture said happened to them.

“You can go a long way if you just protect your children from the craziness and destruction of the world.” Dr. Breeding said. He added that doing that would bring out a child’s true nature.

“Parental hell is when you have banished painful feelings into your unconscious and you are projecting them into your child,” he said. “Parental Heaven is when you see your child through the eyes of delight.”

Dr. Breeding said he agrees that some children have issues that need to be dealt with, but that “blaming and drugging them is not the approach.”