I Give My Young Child Mental Health Meds — And It’s Saving Our Family
Giving our young child medication for her emotional dysregulation was an act of parental love.
I just opened an email from a parenting coach who I normally like a lot, and it made me so deeply frustrated that I knew I had to write this post.
The email in question was encouraging parents of children with OCD, ADHD, anxiety, and other mental health differences to avoid medication.
“I get it,” the parenting coach wrote. “Many parents are feeling lost when it comes to their child’s issues and have been led to believe that medication is the only solution… But, like you, their gut tells them there must be another approach that can work just as effectively.”
Her magic solution? Parents should focus on calming their child’s nervous system—and their own, as well.
And listen: I agree with that last part. When faced with dysregulation, of course we need to calm down all the nervous systems. If there’s one thing seemingly every parent I know has internalized, it’s that we must stay calm.
We listen to podcasts on reparenting ourselves so that we aren’t triggered by our children’s outbursts. We identify and remove unnecessary demands. We use declarative language and offer choices and create “yes spaces” and take belly breaths and name our feelings and… the list goes on.
But the problem is that, for some families with dysregulated kids, these strategies aren’t enough. Our children need medication first, so that they can effectively use all the other tools we’re giving them.
Now, I don’t believe meds are a cure-all. I don’t think they’re a substitute for self-regulation strategies, and I don’t believe, for very young kids at least, that they should necessarily be a line of first resort.
But in my family, it wasn’t until we added meds to the mix that all the parenting strategies we’d spent years learning seemed to make a difference.
Since she was a toddler, our now five-year-old’s big feelings have regularly taken over her body. She’s been unable to calm down, unable to listen, unable to feel safe, unable to identify what she wants or needs. In these moments, it’s felt like our kind, thoughtful, articulate daughter has left the room, and a terrified, angry creature has taken over.
After many appointments and assessments and workshops and webinars and BOOKS (my god, the books), we finally tried an anti-anxiety medication, under the guidance of a trusted psychiatrist.
It’s hard to overstate how much things changed for the better.
We found that, almost overnight, our kid was able to tap into the emotional regulation skills we knew she had but often couldn’t access. Now, when she has big feelings, she’s still here with us—present, in the room. We can still talk with her and help her. Her prefrontal cortex is still online.
There’s more. Once on medication, our daughter simply didn’t get upset by nearly as much. We went from multiple meltdowns and tantrums a day to less than one.
We also didn’t need to turn our lives or family values upside down. We didn’t need to, for instance, give her unlimited access to screens in an attempt to avoid activating her nervous system. (We’re not opposed to screens and enjoy them in moderation, but we definitely prefer to have some limits in place.)
The best part is that our kid is still our kid. She’s still wild, funny, creative. She still talks a mile a minute when she’s revved up. She’s still capable of high highs and low lows—but the lows don’t ransack her little body and mind.
I truly believe, to my very core, that giving her medication was a profound act of parental love. It was also an act of self-love — because I, too, am now enjoying living in a home that is calmer and kinder. It was an act of love for my husband, and for our son, and for everyone who is affected by our family unit. We gave our daughter what she needed to be happy and healthy, and it’s had beautiful ripple effects across our community.
The other day, after picking up my daughter from an extracurricular art class, I commented on how she’d seemed perfectly happy there—whereas, in the past, she would have seriously struggled with separation anxiety.
“Well,” she interjected, “that’s because I was younger back then. When I was little, I got sad and mad all the time. But now that I’m bigger, I don’t feel upset very much. I can handle things.”
See that? Medication has helped my five-year-old see herself as strong and capable. It’s opened up the world for her. And that is something to celebrate.
