Raising kids on drugs

In elementary schools across America, children are drilled to "Just Say No" to drugs. Recently, the anti-drug campaign has become much more intense than when I was in elementary school (admittedly, I thought that was impossible), to the extent that a pair of ten-year-old twins I was traveling with last semester whispered, horrified, to their father, "Daddy, why is he smoking? Why would he do that to himself??" upon spotting a college student whom they knew smoking. The war on drugs has taken admirable leaps toward improving the general health of our society through its educational programs.

However, it's not the children's view of drugs that I am so worried about. It's their parents'. In particular, how parents are viewing the kind of drugs that are more and more being prescribed to chemically modify a child's behavior. A New York Times article last week highlighted the story of one child in particular to illustrate this modern dilemma:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/02kids.html

This feels particularly relevant in light of the most recent reading for Biblical Heritage, in which John Wesley gives detailed guidelines on how best to raise one's children (a text of this sermon can be found here). Wesley's point implies that one must raise and discipline one's children, and goes further to dictate how accomplish the feat of raising one's children well. This is also expounded on several times in the Bible, especially in Paul's teachings.

With doctors more and more prescribing behavior- and mood-altering drugs, not only are they potentially ruining a child's good health, which was one of the major points of the NYT article, but they are also shirking their moral responsibility to both nurture and discipline their children. 

For example, I know of rambunctious boys and girls who got put on ADD medication at young ages because they were "hard to handle," and their parents had a hard time disciplining them. However, it seems that the bar for "hard to handle" has been significantly lowered in recent years, and many of the people I know who were put on ADD medication simply stated that they were bored most of the time and just got into trouble more because of it. This is probably by no means true as a whole, but most of the people I know who are or were on medications like the ones prescribed for ADD also happen to be some of the smartest people I know. It makes sense that they just maybe needed to be challenged more in school. However, not knowing the full story in every case, it may be that prescribing behavior-altering medications is necessary for a child's health. And I'm sure there are many cases pointing to this; why else would it be so acceptable for doctors to be continuing to do this? However, in cases where the medication is replacing proper upbringing, this seems to be both contrary to both the Bible and secular moral reasoning.