VOL. 5 #163 • feb 21, 2014
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Inbox
Kids on medication who experience success don’t see
themselves as doing better; they see the medication as
doing it for them.
Thank
you
for
the
thought- provoking articles in
THE ENGLISH UPDATE, especially
the guidance in Dr. Miriam Adahan’s
“Effective Interference When Children
Fight.” Dr. Adahan is a warm and
experienced long-time guide in child
behavior. I had the good fortune years
ago to participate in her insightful and
effective sessions of EMETT (Emotional
Maturity Established Through Torah)
which helped guide me more calmly
through the early childhood years of
my children.
-Shoshana Dolgin-Be’er, Jerusalem
I found the case stories
in Dr Adahan’s article “How to
Interfere When Your Kids Fight” very
disturbing, so much so that I wrote to
Dr Adahan to confirm their veracity,
assuming that she must have made
them up. Unfortunately, she confirmed
that the cases are true. What I mean
by “disturbing” is seeing how much
damage can be done when parents turn
a blind eye to sibling rivalry.
I’m no expert educator, just a parent
trying to raise his children to be happy,
emotionally-healthy individuals, which
is a tall order in this day and age.
Nevertheless, Dr Adahan’s methods
make sense (no doubt since they are
Torah-based). It is true that wellmeaning parents can do damage by
interfering, yet we dare not ignore
the possible consequences of apathy.
Well-educated parents can interfere
effectively (perhaps facilitate is the more
accurate term) and help to ensure that
their children emerge from childhood
as caring, confident, and productive
members of society.
-Baruch Truscott
P.S. Dr Adahan has an entire box of
hands-on tools that help children (and
adults) develop self-awareness and selfcontrol.
better; they see the medication as
I want to commend Rabbi
Rubin for the important article “Our
Most Precious Possession.” He included
a letter from a mother to a cheder
principal which should be read by every
mechanech of our children. I believe
that it’s so important that I’ve decided
to have it translated into Hebrew and
distributed in the chedarim.
-S.S., Ramat Eshkol
accomplishment and internal reward
doing it for them. They have difficulty
accepting the self-esteem boost that
would normally come from a sense of
doing better. This is why the non-med
treatment aspect is so important. The
medication may be good for initially
helping the child to focus, but when
they can rather LEARN to focus and
attend on their own, the sense of
is much greater. This is why the results
of medication paired with behavioral
treatment is so much higher.
Another
issue
that
needs
to
be addressed is the existence of
“psychological or trauma ADHD.”
Oftentimes, when we’ve experienced
Thank you so much for
publishing Shoshana Greenblatt’s
series on Geula. I will never look at
the place in the same way. Her lyrical
writing was so uplifting and inspiring.
It was poetry in prose.
Dr. Miriam Adahan
trauma, such as child abuse, one of the
Another
important
variable in the Ritalin
controversy is the attribution factor.
Kids on medication who experience
success don’t see themselves as doing
in the short-term, but the key here is in
mind’s methods for protecting us from
those memories and thoughts is to keep
us from focusing on them. This internal
chaos causes difficulty in focus in
general. Medication MIGHT help this
addressing that trauma via traditional
psychotherapy, not drugs.
-A Reader, Jerusalem
MAZAL TOV
PIDYON HABEN
Klugman Family
Komona
MARRIAGE (son)
Margulies-Eagle
London/Har Nof
MARRIAGE
(daughter)
Goldberg Family
Mattersdorf
ENGAGEMENT
(son)
Galatz Family
Ramat Shlomo
MARRIAGE
(grand/daughter)
Wolodarsky Family
Kiryat Belz/Tzanz
BABY GIRL
Friedman Family
Neve Yaakov
MARRIAGE
Karol-Stromer
(Chicago/Teaneck)
Alon Shvut/Katamon
BABY GIRL
Nuriel Family
Ramat Eshkol
MARRIAGE
Schachar-Knobel
Neve Yaakov
BABY GIRL
Stark Family
Ramat Eshkol
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