Lazy Parents, ADHD, and the French

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "...but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

False Teachers, Fraud, and Eternal Judgment

My name is Mike Abendroth, and today is a theological cornucopia. Now, see, the word like cornucopia, I like because, I don't know, it's probably one of the few words I learned in the corn-fed state of Nebraska.

See, normally in public school in Nebraska, we don't learn words that are poly-syllabic, but if it has the word corn in it, then we do. From the you-get-what's-coming-to-you department, Christine Daniel, this is what the Orange County OC Weekly says, Christine Daniel, who hawked phony cancer cure on TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network, gets 14 years, $1 .2 million fine.

This story was published May 17, 2013, by Matt Coker, and here is what Matt says. An ex-doctor and minister who hawked a miracle cancer cure via a program on the Costa Mesa-based Trinity Broadcasting Network was sentenced today to 14 years in federal prison because of her brown sludge.

It was actually made of a suntan lotion and beef flavoring, Selah. Besides TBN, Christine Daniel, 58, of Santa Clarita, also sold the phony cure through her wellness center and ever-changing names in Mission Hills.

In addition to the prison stretch, U .S. District Judge Robert Timlin, who remanded Daniel into custody following the four-hour hearing in L .A., ordered her to forfeit nearly $1 .2 million. When the then-licensed physician and ordained Pentecostal minister was arrested in L .A. in October 2009, she'd by then taken $1 .1 million from 55 families over three years for her herbal C-extract, letter C.

At least six patients died over a six-month period. As we reported at the time, Daniel appearing on TBN's Praise the Lord program was not her only Orange County connection. She had privileges at Los Alamitos Medical Center, according to her official website.

Besides cancer, Daniel claimed C-extract cured multiple sclerosis, strokes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, and hepatitis, boasting a 60 to 80 percent success rate for the most advanced forms of cancer.

Victims from around the country told Judge Timlin that Daniel instructed them to stop their chemotherapy and other traditional cancer treatments and pay her $5 ,000 for her C-extract. One patient who spent $13 ,000 died a few months later.

Isn't that sad? Isn't that shameful? When I read things like that, I just say to myself, this is false teaching. Now of course I'm sad when people lose their lives for something like that. But if you get mad or disgusted or sad or upset or furious because people who are hucksters sell fake physical cures, it's doubly compounded for her because she's selling fake spiritual cures as well.

It's one thing to die, one thang, it's a thang, it's one thing to die from the wrong medical treatment or treatment in this particular case and still go to heaven. It's another thing to die from the wrong medical treatment and then die eternally as well.

False teachers, many will follow 2 Peter 2. Their sensuality and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed and in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep.

And then Peter goes on to say, this is the reason why. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.

If he did not spare the ancient world but preserve Noah, a herald of righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. If by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.

And if he rescued righteous lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked. For as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.

Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. And especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

No wonder he goes on to say, Peter does in 2 Peter chapter 2, they are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. You want to go to a spring and drink some water after you've been walking through the arid desert and you get there, there's no water.

And so these people, they promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. Well, she's getting what she deserves. And when you charge people $5 ,000, you're a real medical doctor, but you're no doctor in ministry, of course, for suntan lotion and beef bouillon squares.

Of course, I am supposed to want her to get saved in jail and go to heaven. I'm supposed to want that, but I'm really having a hard time figuring that one out. I mean, you know, Lord save the lady. What's her name again?

Christine Daniel. Save her, forgive her. I mean, I'm no better than she is, but those kinds of things really grate me. Well, my name's Mike Avendroth, and so let's go to maybe a happier story. What would be happy for you?

Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD

Well, this was very, I was happy to read this. I don't usually read psychology today. I think this article appeared in psychology today, but it was some Eric Bancroft tweet or something. Marilyn Wedge, offer of pills are not for preschoolers, a drug-free approach for troubled kids.

Hoorah, Marilyn Wedge, MD. Pills are not for preschoolers. Isn't that nice? And she writes an article, and it's called Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD. And so at the beginning, she says that French kids, as she is trying to set the story up here, are different for lots of reasons.

And one of the reasons they're different is in France, they don't use the DSM-IV, and that is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. So they have different classifications. And what they have is the CFTMEA, croissant, Jean, a classification, French of the troubles mental of infants and adolescents.

So the les enfants and les adolescents, I don't know how to pronounce French words. I don't really know that part. Ce soir, I see I don't know that. But it was released in 83, updated in 88 and 2000. It does say here, according to this particular doctor, the focus of the CFTMEA is on identifying and addressing the underlying psychological or psychosocial causes of children's symptoms, not on finding the best pharmacological band-aids with which to mask symptoms.

So right there, I have to always say this. I don't know why. Maybe we don't want to have the reserves at No Compromise Radio depleted in lawsuits. Maybe that's a good reason. I am not a medical doctor.

I am not selling suntan lotion with beef bouillon cubes. I don't want to tell you to take your kids off the medicine. Like a doctor might tell you, it's okay to do. But I will say to you that I think, I'll start gently, and then maybe we'll get more no-co.

Children are over-medicated. I'm not talking about thyroid medicine. I'm not talking about diabetes medicine. I'm not talking about any of those kind of organic issues. I'm talking about behavioral medicine.

That is to say, your kid squirms around a lot, and you want to sedate them a little bit. Or in this particular case, you give them some uppers. Remember that old Saturday Night Live skit? You have puppy uppers, and then at night, you got to go to sleep.

You got doggy downers. And so what do we have today? We have monster drinks and Red Bull drinks for adults, and I guess other kids. And then now you have the neurobliss and neurosleep things, because you got to come down at night, right?

Where's my Red Bull? I need it. So we have kids who have behavioral problems. And when we give them drugs, I think she's right. We're just masking the symptoms. So she says, to the extent that French clinicians are successful at finding and repairing what has gone awry in the child's social context, fewer children qualify for ADHD diagnosis.

So pathologizing normal children, childhood behavior, and then giving them drugs. Here we have the French. Now this is just going to be kind of a joke, but it's true to some extent. The secular French.

Could there be any more secular society in the world than the French? Well, maybe the German society. I don't know. But Europe? The French? I mean, is anything good come out of France? I don't know. Is it Bordeaux?

Maybe it probably does. Tour de France? I guess so. Evian water? I guess. But seriously, think about it. If unbelievers are recognizing, we're just sedating the kids and it doesn't cure anything. I remember when I was running across campus at the University of Nebraska.

It was probably 1979, pouring rain. I'd run from one building to the next, to the next, trying to work my way back to the campus where I was staying at the dormitory. Where did I stay? Harper. Harper, Fram and Smith.

And I lived in Harper. Didn't like it, but lived there anyway. And so I slipped and went through the eight foot glass door and it jammed a big spike of glass inside of my calf, my right calf. And just went and got it stitched up.

They didn't really do a very good job. And I remember my roommate had some Jack Daniels and he said, just drink some of that. You'll feel better. And I did until the next morning when my leg hurt and my head hurt.

So we have symptoms and we have roots and we have Christians who just don't ever think, at least in my mind, they don't think through the situations biblically and spiritually. And here I'm trying to tell you that if you take your kid in America to the doctor and you start talking about behavioral issues before you know it, more often than not, they're going to give you a little piece of paper.

And that little piece of paper is called a prescription. And now you're going to put your kids on these medicines. Here at the church, I believe we still up in the library have a DSM-IV because I like to have parents who ask me about Prozac or Ritalin or some of these other drugs.

Those are the old names. I don't know what the newer drugs are these days. Cibolta, I don't know. Maltomiel, I'm not sure. They're beef bouillon cubes, practically, in my mind. Of course, they work. They take care of symptoms, but they don't help you.

They don't help the children. This is not giving your kids medicine. So I send them up to look at the DSM-IV and the indications for use are super subjective. And then it says, you know, I said, read the test stuff, you know, test results that we have no long-term studies in use of children past, you know, six months use, six weeks use.

I think Ritalin was six weeks. We've studied children who've been on Ritalin for six weeks. We haven't studied them any longer. Now, I'm sure they've got some new studies out by now because it's been around for such a long time.

But I'm just saying, Christian, you have to think through these issues. Mental illness. Well, if you tell a kid to sit down and that kid doesn't stay seated and they get up, I don't think the problem is ADHD.

I think the problem is they just sinned. They're rebelling. Now, if you're asking a kid to sit for 19 hours straight and some unreasonable demand, okay. But if you just tell a kid to sit down and don't get up and they fidget around and probably boys are more fidgety than girls and it's called disobedience.

It's not an illness. Quit naming it something different because then you have no hope. There's a hope for diagnosing sin because we know who the Savior is. We know about confession and repentance and forgiveness and restoration and reconciliation.

Don't we? Of course. But illness is just something you've got. Just kind of randomly happened. Just kind of like, well, the luck of the draw. Top of the morning to you. And plus, when you say mental, what do you really mean?

What do you mean mental? If your brain has a sickness or a disease. If your brain has a tumor in it and it's pushing on other things and it affects things, that's called your brain's got a problem. It is an organic problem.

But I don't think Christians these days, I think they're so naive. They don't even think through the issues of, hmm, is there a difference between a brain and the mind? And if you never ask the question, you never get to the answer.

Do you? You just walk in, my kid's doing some stuff. Here's a script. Tear it off. Fill her up. And you know what I think a lot of this is? I'm sure this is going to get me some email. Let it be. Parents are lazy.

Well, I know this because I am a parent and all too often I'm probably lazy. Training children. In Ephesians chapter six, in light of all God has done for us in chapters one and two and three, in peace with God.

And God has chosen us and we have a great Savior. And then what do we do with the stewardship that we have been given? And how faithful must we be to train our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?

It's hard to do. And we are lazy people. And it just never stops. I have a 21-year-old, a 16-year-old, a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old. And I get tired of reining them, raising them, training them because every day it just never stops.

And so if you're a lazy parent, well, the pill, and I don't mean, you know, the pill, the contraceptive pill, but a pill is perfect for you. But is it good for the kids? I don't think it's good for the kids at all.

And I think when you have the French secular psychological society saying basically the same thing, if you won't listen to me, maybe you listen to them because, you know, I get it. Well, Mike's just a theologian.

Some nurse wrote me a while ago when I was talking about mental illness and, you know, stick to what you're good at because you don't have any idea what's going on. P .S. You know, I'm on all these drugs, psychotropic drugs.

Here, though, it's not moi. I think that is actually a French word. It's not moi. Quit pathologizing normal childhood behavior and quit pathologizing lazy, sinful, parental behavior. That's what it is.

Parents, it can't be bothered. Attention dad deficit disorder is what it is. Where are the dads? This author goes on to say here on No Compromise Radio today, I'm quoting Marilyn Wedge, PhD, author of Pills Are Not for Preschoolers, A Drug-Free Approach for Troubled Kids.

She writes why French kids don't have ADHD, she said. And then, of course, there are the vastly different philosophies of child rearing in the United States and France. These divergent philosophies could account for why French children are better, generally better behaved than their American counterparts.

Isn't that fascinating? The French holistic psychosocial approach also allows for considering nutritional causes for ADHD type symptoms, artificial covers, that would be if you sang a song, I have a cover band, certain preservatives, allergens.

See, I think that would be fine to look into. From the time children are born in France, parents provide them a firm cadre or frame or structure. They're not allowed to snack whenever they want, mealtimes or for specific times during the day.

French children learn to wait patiently for meals. They let their babies cry out if they're not sleeping through the night at age four months. French parents recommend, observes, loves their children just as much as American parents.

They give them piano lessons, take them to sports practice, blah, blah, blah. But they have a different philosophy of discipline. Can you believe we need to take our cues from French parenting? So even if you don't want to take your cues from a Christian Bible teacher, well, then maybe you could do it from a French secular parent.

Finally, French parents believe that the hearing the word no rescues children from the tyranny of their own desires. And spanking when used judiciously is not considered child abuse in France. As a therapist who works with children, Marilyn Wedge says, it makes perfect sense to me that French children don't need medications to control their behavior because they learn self-control early in their lives.

They grow up in families in which the rules are well understood and a clear family hierarchy is firmly in place. In French families, as Druckerman describes them, parents are firmly in charge of their kids instead of the American family style in which the situation is all too often vice versa.

Fascinating study. If your child has a behavioral issue, then I think you've got an issue where you think, what does the Bible say when we have a lack of self-control? What would the Bible say about that?

What does the Bible say about listening, listen, listen, listen, listen? What does it say about parents who don't have the time to train children? When people first start coming to church services here for corporate worship on Sundays, their kids can't sit still.

I don't mind because they're coming from a completely pagan American environment. But a few years into it, if the parent's growing before you know it, the kid is sitting still. Why? Because the parent has had to practice.

What we used to do at home is I'd have Kim sitting in a chair next to my daughter Haley, and she'd be two, and it would be five-minute practice, and then 10-minute practice. And we actually had couch time where a kid couldn't get up from the couch for a half hour, and you just work your way up to it.

We'd have reading time. Here's a bunch of books, and you don't get off that couch for 30 minutes, and you learn to just sit still. Have all kinds of times like that. Play time, and blocks time, and Play-Doh time.

And friends, if you default to your kid's got problems, then let me go back to the mind-brain differentiation. We are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul. What's the next one? Well, it depends if you're quoting Deuteronomy, or it depends if you're quoting Matthew.

Mind and strength. Mind isn't in the Hebrew, but what is implicit in the Hebrew language, mind, is explicit in the New Testament. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul. Mind and strength. Let's call a lack of self-control, let's call disobedience, let's call not listening, let's call not training children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord what it is.

Sin, rebellion, transgression, a trespass, iniquity, whatever sin word you want to give it, I'd be fine with, because then when we confess our sins, then we have a just God who's also generous and gracious, who forgives us our sins.

If it's an illness, then it's duck and jive stuff. But if it's, hmm, when we do this, and we plant corn, well, corn grows. And if we're sinfully lazy with our kids, and they're out of control, well, guess what?

You've earned it. This is not some, well, other kids are more behaved, and I just, you know, I just happened to get a kid who had diabetes, and I got a kid who's got ADHD. That's a lie. Do not fall for the lie.

And again, if your kid's on ADHD, here's a medicine, I would go to the doctor and say, my child's on such and such. It doesn't really seem to be working. Can we wean him or her off? And if your doctor says no, well, how long do you think my child will be on?

Forever. Then I think you should get a different doctor. That's what you should get. So, my name's Mike Abendroth. I'm not a medical doctor, but I think you should listen to medical doctors like Marilyn Wedge.

Ph .D., pills are not for preschoolers. A drug-free approach for troubled kids. And if the French secular press psychology people who don't even think that they believe in the Lord God Almighty Jesus Christ, I think if they're onto something, how much more should the church understand the way God has called us to raise our children?

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.