Saturday Bonus Podcast - ​Are We Overmedicating Our Children

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Ray Breyer's is the pipe man. He owns Pipeyard, Inc. and they buy and sell pipe all day long. And I am shocked how much business we've been able to send him across the country. Entire pipelines going across three different states where they need to get the pipe pulled out. He's like, I'll pull the pipe out, I'll sell the pipe. People buying pipe, people selling pipe. The people that buy pipe are environmental managers, pipeline project managers. Somebody that's got an abandoned pipeline that's been removed. They want the pipe yard ink, compliance and regulatory folks. They want to get those pipes out of there. Selling pipe, folks that need carbon steel pipe, the pipe yard ink stocks everything you need, any kind of pipe. There is stuff that people call him for, industrial stuff, that he doesn't even have, and he tracks it down. He's working his phone, and his team is working their phones all day long. He's got a yard, they've got pipe. They are working the phones to get stuff for people all day long. 409-788 pipe. 409-78 pipe. Did you know that most insurance companies will pay for a man to have testosterone replacement if he's below 350? Isn't that interesting? You've probably heard that testosterone will, well, invigorate you. your wife may enjoy that or she may want to be left alone but your wife may enjoy that but there's so much more let me tell you more energy more strength you feel better synergenics go get your blood tested you paid your insurance premiums hoping that you would never get fire smoke damage water damage hail damage hell we have so many storms and hurricanes come through here. And the national carrier now doesn't want you, doesn't want to pay you. Chad T. Wilson law firm fights so that you do. He is the lawyer that will fight to get you covered. Go to claimdenied.com or email me and I'll connect you. Claimdenied.com. The Michael Bari Weiss Show. Welcome to our bonus podcast. President Trump, along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.., is trying to make America healthy again. They've looked at the connection between vaccines and autism. They've reestablished the presidential fitness test in schools. They're looking at the chemicals put into our food by the food industry. Another issue we've seen rise dramatically over the last couple of decades is the... Overmedication of our children. It's dangerous. Dr. Leonard Sachs, physician and psychologist, joins Prager U. CEO, Marissa Strite. By the way, Prager You does some great work. Some good organizations out there, T.P. USA, Prager U. Hillsdale College. And they discuss the toxic culture, weak parenting, and a corrupt medical system. and how it is working together to fail our kids. They discuss the crisis of over-medicated children, the ADHD and antidepressant epidemic, and why the best parenting mix means mixing love with firm boundaries. I hope you find this interesting, and maybe you find a place to apply it. Dr. Sachs, people ask me,

all the time, what are doctors telling me? Because I have access and I can hear the whispers of the things that the doctors are saying and I get to ask these questions. And really, frankly, one of the reasons why I even started this show was because I have the ability to call somebody like you or other doctors and say, you know, things make no sense. There are things that make no sense that our children are going through. And, you know, people come up and say to me, you know, Marissa, it's so hard to be a parent these days. And I'm sure that the... difficulties of being a parent has changed over the years, right? Maybe we're a little less worried about finding food. We're not living through the Great Depression. But we have other challenges, whether it's screen time and mental illness. And on the one hand, we're so wealthy as a nation. On the other hand, we're so depressed as a nation. And it really is hard to figure out. What is it that we're doing wrong as parents and why are our children suffering so much? Is it really that hard to be a parent these days? Or has postmodernist parenting just made it so difficult in a culture that is pervasive against the family unit and what is needed in order to raise a child? I think the key problem is that our culture. has changed. An American popular culture has undermined the authority of parents. So the first chapter of my book, The Collapse of Parenting, is titled The Culture of Disrespect. American Popular Culture has become a culture of disrespect. So I'll give you an example from my own practice. I'm a family doctor. And you're also a psychologist, which is rare, right? A family doctor and a psychologist. I'm a family doctor, MDM, and I'm also a PhD psychologist. example for my own practice. So mom says, you know, Dr. Sex, I don't understand what's going on with my eight-year-old son. He's so defiant. He's so disrespectful. I don't understand the words coming out of his mouth. His father and I never talk like this. Where's this coming from? And I said, does he watch Disney Channel? Does he watch Nickelodeon, Nick Jr.? And she said, well, of course. I said, lock it down. No more Disney, no more Nickelodeon, no more Nick Jr. I said, I'm not saying all TV is terrible. You know, nothing wrong with Home and Garden television, but no more Disney Channel. And three weeks later, she called me, she said, it stopped. He was learning this from the Disney Channel. You watch the Disney Channel. People think Disney is family friendly. It's not. You watch the Disney Channel shows like Dog with a Blog are unbelievably disrespectful. The father supposedly a school psychologist knows nothing about children. The talking dog is always wiser and more insightful than the idiot dad. Live and Maddie, another Disney Channel show. The mother also supposedly a school psychologist knows nothing about what teenagers need or want. The two girls roll their eyes in disbelief at the ridiculous, clueless, stupid suggestions made by the out-of-touch mom.

These shows teach kids that being disrespectful to parents is cute and funny. No Disney Channel, no Nickelodeon, no Nick Jr., do not allow these into your home. But it's not just the Disney Channel. When I talk about the culture of disrespect, again, my book, The Class of Parenting, the first chapter goes into great detail about how all of American popular culture, the culture that kids experience. speak English at home, and they have a device with internet access. It's not just TV. It's the most popular songs. It's the most popular YouTube videos. The culture of disrespect breaks the bonds across generations. In order for parenting to work, kids have to respect. their parents. They have to listen to their parents. You know, I begin the new edition of the collapse of parenting with something that happened in the office. Last year, when I was writing the new edition, mom brought her daughter, a six-year-old girl, into the office. She was sick. Mom explained, had a fever and a sore throat. And, okay, moms explained that. I said to the girl, okay, got to open wide and say, ah, and know her sugar head. No. I said, okay, mom, looks like you're going to need your help here. Would you please ask your daughter to open wide and say, ah? And mom said, her body, her choice. Okay, my body, my choice, longtime slogan of abortion rights activists, mom is adopting this slogan to defend her daughter's refusal to allow me the examining physician to look at her throat. Look, parenting only works if parents have some authority. But this notion of authority for many parents now, they're uncomfortable exercising authority. Gotta go back to Deuteronomy 6. And I have to at Adonoi to Hehachah, and all of avachal, and will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart. Now, the next phrase is usually translated, teach them diligently to your children. But you know Hebrew. You know that's not quite what the Hebrew says. It would be easy to say that in biblical Hebrew, the verb for teach us lamade. But that's not the word there. The verb is shenan. Shanain doesn't mean to teach. In biblical Hebrew, it means to chisel in stone. So a better translation of that would be...

chisel these words and sighs and scribe these words in the hearts of your children. And I include an exegesis of Deuteronomy 6 in my book The Collapse of Parenting. And right alongside that exegesis, I have a, I cite a column from the New York Times, my longtime columnist, Jennifer Finney Boylan, where she wrote a column on enlightened parenting. And she says, enlightened parenting means, and I quote, setting your child loose to decide for themselves their own right and wrong. And if in so doing, your child becomes a stranger to you, then so be it. That's the New York Times. Well, if you set your child loose to decide for themselves their own right and wrong, what they'll discover is Lil Nas X, Drake, Cizza, mainline pornography. It's a dereliction of duty because it's a toxic culture. Biblical parenting means you incise these laws on the hearts of your children. But many parents have listened to the New York Times and National Public Radio and set their kids loose. in a toxic culture. And the result is kids who are defiant and disrespectful and confused and anxious and depressed. You know, it's interesting that you don't only bring up the culture, but you bring up the shinantam, the portion of chiseling the truth into a child. And I have a master's in education, and I remember going through my education degree. And they would say to us, you know, children don't come with a manual. And, you know, now as a parent and as an adult, but even then, I thought to myself, well, you know, the Torah, the Old Testament is kind of a manual for raising children. It is a manual for understanding human nature. It's just this, again, postmodernist approach that the youngest are the ones who are the wisest who know everything and there's nothing to learn from the past. And so, you know, this, you talk about this culture of disrespect and. So much of it is being taught through Nickelodeon and, frankly, even NPR. Do you know that when I was getting my degree in education, they would tell us teachers that we need to listen to NPR every morning in order to know the truth? That's what they would teach us. And then here you are, a practicing physician who brings up companies like NPR. as a warning, something that we should actually not listen to because it would teach parents and adults that the child knows best, right? The child could pick their own gender. The child could pick what they want for breakfast. If they want to eat skittles and M&Ms for breakfast, you know, maybe that's okay. It's mind-boggling and it's absolutely silly. But, you know, why do you think this is happening? Why would NPR and Nicolodeon, why are they making shows that you know? We all know are bad for our kids.

Yeah. When people ask me, what do I mean by the collapse of parenting? They often think I'm blaming the parents. I'm not blaming the parents. I'm blaming the culture. The culture has changed. It's become a toxic culture. And you're asking why. Yeah. So I think we have to look a little bit at American history. And I look especially at this interval between roughly 1972 to 1997. It's really interesting if you actually go back and watch. a press conference from the 1950s or the 1960s, the reporters were so respectful. When you look at a press conference with President Eisenhower, or isn't President Robert F. Kennedy Jr., it's almost like they're bowing to the president. Mr. President, if you would be so kind, like they're treating him like royalty. In 1973, President Nixon said, I am not a crook. In 1997, Bill Clinton said, I did not have sex with that woman. They were lying to us. In 1964, Gallup, pulled the American people. And the American people, more than 80% of Americans said you can trust the government to do the right thing all the time or almost all the time. It's incredible. Today, more than 80% of Americans said you cannot trust the government to do the right thing. The concept of authority, the concept of trusting. people in power to do the right thing is gone. Well, they lost our trust. And they lost our trust. And I'm not asking people to trust the government. I'm not. I'm not. But the problem is when we lost trust in the government, we lost trust in authority. And the concept of trusting authority took with it trust in parents. And the problem is when you lose trust in the concept of parenting, You lose something very important because parents have a unique responsibility. Parents have to teach right and wrong. And kids are living in a culture of you do you, whatever floats your boat. If it feels right, do it. And unfortunately, many parents now teach right and wrong in the same way. And they will literally say to their kids, you know, I personally wouldn't cheat on a test, but, you know, hey, that's just me. You do you, whatever floats your boat. And there has been an explosion in cheating over the last 20 years, which I document in my book The Collapse of Parenting. If you're going to teach your kids not to cheat. You have to teach that there is such a thing as right and wrong. And you have to do the right thing because that's the right thing to do. In order to teach that, you have to teach from a position of authority. How do you do that? It's very difficult to do that if you haven't taught your kids that parents have authority.

If you don't have a moral framework, you have to ideally have a moral framework. So I urge parents, you must establish a moral framework. You must establish a firm foundation. And you must assert your authority. Otherwise, your kids are going to be drifting and your kids will be at risk. And this is for the sake of your kids. So, for example, there's a chapter in my book on overweight. In 1971, four percent of American kids were obese. Today, more than 20% of American kids were obese. Now, there are multiple factors driving that, all of which I go into it. So it's a lengthy chapter and it's a detailed chapter with many scholarly references. But why did this happen? One big reason this happened is because in 1971, American parents told their kids what's for supper. And today, American parents... ask their kids what's for supper. I was speaking to parents in Chappaqua, New York, which is an affluent suburb of New York City. And after my talk, husband and wife came down and they told me how they made a healthy and nutritious supper for their kids. And their kids looked at their supper and said, yuck, we don't want to eat that. Let's just order pizza. And so dad got out his phone and got pulled up the Domino's app and daughter ordered her personal pizza with her favorite toppings. And son ordered his personal pizza with his favorite toppings. And I asked, Ted, why'd you do that? Why didn't you just tell them this is what's for supper? And dad said, well, I don't believe in starvation as a means of discipline. I said, they're not going to starve. Look, 50 years ago, if mom made a healthy supper and the kids didn't approve, she didn't run out and buy them a pizza. No, they went to bed hungry. She would say, if you don't like this, you can go to bed hungry. But today, parents... Won't do that. Today, parents will order Domino's pizza. Now, if you let 12-year-olds decide what's for supper, there are a few 12-year-olds who will choose broccoli, brothel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach, spares, and kale. But there are many more 12-year-olds who will choose pizza, French, fries, potato chips, and ice cream. If you let kids decide what's for supper, you're going to get a lot of fat kids. That is one... One of several reasons why there are many more fat kids today because parents have abdicated their authority. What is childhood for? What is the point? Humans are maturing for more years than most animals live. Why?

We don't have to wonder. We have scholars like Dr. Melvin Connor at Emory, who has devoted his career to addressing this question and wrote a tome, 800 pages, Oxford University Press, titled The Evolution of Childhood, looking at development in our species and comparing it with development in all these other species, mostly other primates. Addressing the question, why? Why does it take so many years? Why is childhood and adolescents so long in our species? And the answer he and other scholars give is it takes so many years because it takes many years for the adults to teach the kids right and wrong. Setting your kid loose to discover for himself his own right and wrong is not only an abdication of responsibility. It's profoundly unhuman. It's not in our DNA. It's not what we're programmed to do. Inscribe these laws in your hearts of the children. That's biblical parenting. And it is evidence-based parenting. That's common sense. You know, doctor, when you mention the impact of politics on parents and parenting in America, I can't help but think about the... Department of Education, which was created essentially to tell the parents that they don't know what they're doing. And there is a department of education that is going to help oversee what values and what is truth and what should be taught to kids. And I think that it would be interesting for somebody to look into whether there is a shift in the mindset of parenting around the same time where you had these large teachers unions and you had these large conglomerates of Again, Department of Education NGOs that came back to the parents and basically said, don't worry about teaching values to your children. Separate, you know, the church out of the education of a child. And essentially, your role as a parent is to bathe the child, feed the child, and bring them into the school so that the values can be taught not by the parent, but by the... supposed government experts. And I think that probably led to that. I remember when I was an educator, I was told to tell parents, Please don't worry about doing homework with your children. Please don't worry about educating your children. You don't need to be stressed out with that. Please just make sure that they get a nice, healthy meal at the end of the day and in the morning so they can come back fresh so that we, the experts, can teach them everything. And this is basically the opposite of what you're saying. The first teachers of virtue must be the parents. And the parents should work in collaboration with the schools to teach.

virtue to the children. And I attended public schools in Ohio, K through 12. And I am alarmed by what's happening in many public schools across United States. You know, as I mentioned, I visited over 500 schools over the last 24 years. And if you go to my website, Leonard Sachs.com, you can look at my list of visits. And if you go back 20 years, you'll see it used to be mostly public schools. And now it's all Christian schools. Because I'm not welcome at the public schools anymore. So I am concerned about what's happening at the public schools, and I tell parents, you need to be on your guard. I recently joined with other psychologists and the Alliance Defending Freedom to write a friend of the court brief. My old school district, I was a family doctor in Montgomery County, Maryland for 18 years, and Montgomery County, Maryland decided to launch a program. to indoctrinate kids in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and have the teachers read to them the stories about transgender kids. Trinity's Rainbow, a boy who becomes a girl and a girl who becomes a boy. And a consortium of parents, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim said, we want to opt out. And the school district said, no, you can't. And so they sued and they lost and they sued and they lost and they went to the Supreme Court. And we wrote a threat to the court brief in support of the attorneys representing those parents. And the Supreme Court heard their case in April and then recently ruled in favor of the parents. Yeah, this is the Mahmood versus Taylor. Yes. Saying, yeah. And again, it's common sense. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution gives parents a right to free expression of their religion. And in Islam, in Christianity, in Judaism, if God has made you male, it's not in your authority to remake yourself as female. And the... school district by saying by contradicting that is basically interfering with the parents constitutional right of free expression of their religion so unfortunately you now do have to be on your guard yeah and recognize that in many public schools your constitutional rights are being interfered with um so yeah that's a problem you talk about the religious element of it but you also have the

scientific receipts for the absolute fact that there are differences between the sexes and there are two, they're males and females. And your research on this, which I think you brought with you to look at is absolutely fascinating. And I think so many of the cases that are now making it to the Supreme Court, the underlying issue here. is in 2025, scientists can't tell the difference between a male and a female. It's that ridiculous. But physicians like you have to generate studies that show the absolute obvious that males and females are in fact different. It's not just a biblical truth. It's also a scientific truth. Well, it is troubling because, as I said, I've visited a great many schools, and I can tell you that in many, many public schools, particularly in the large school districts now, teachers are officially prohibited as a matter of policy from using the words, boys and girls. You're not allowed to say, boys and girls, would you please line up? Boys and girls, please settle down. That's prohibited. A teacher can be disciplined now if she uses those words. If she uses the words, ladies and gentlemen, she'll really get in hot water. Because using the words, boys and girls, reinforces the heteronormantibinary. And anyone who reinforces the heteronormative binary must be a Republican and you're going to be disciplined. And that's really unfortunate because we now have, as you mentioned a moment ago, we now have some extraordinary new research that shows how profound these differences are. So if you, if I may. Yes, let's look at them. So this is a really astonishing study from Stanford, neuroscientists at Stanford, looking at data from 1,500 young adults from across the United States as well as from Germany. So they did a bunch of things with these young adults. So they're in a high-resolution MRI scan. They're looking at brain activity in these young people. And the first thing that they did was what's called neural fingerprints. So researchers, neuroscientists have known for many years that every human brain has a fingerprint. So what they mean by a fingerprint is when you're just sitting, not doing anything, your brain doesn't shut off. you're thinking. You're thinking about what you've done, what you're going to do, where you've been, where you're going to be. And that fingerprint of brain activity, it turns out, is unique to you. It's more unique to you than the fingerprint on your own finger. So the researchers wondered, how does the fingerprint of brain activity differ if you look at men compared with women? Does it differ? Maybe it doesn't differ. And this is what they found. All the women are at the top left-hand corner. All the men are at the lower right-hand corner, no overlap, huge gap between men and women. What does that mean? What that means is that whatever's going on in the brains of women at rest is completely different from what's going on in the brains of men at rest with no overlap between the two.

I'm imagining what the men are thinking about. Well, we don't know. But they went further. They didn't stop there. With all this high resolution analysis that they were able to do, they were able to determine. By analyzing brain structure and brain function, they were able, looking at the men, roughly 750 men from across the United States and Germany, they were able to determine, just by looking at the brain structure and function, they could predict cognitive functions such as intelligence with high accuracy. But that model, and I'm now showing you that some of the graph from their chart, the graph on the left shows the graph among the men. showing that they could predict very accurately the cognitive functions such as intelligence among the men. But the male model applied to the women doesn't apply at all. And likewise among the women, what that tells you. is that the brain structure and function that determines intelligence among men is completely different from the brain structures and functions that determine intelligence among women and vice versa. How does this impact people who are saying, well, maybe somebody is transgender or they identify as a female or a male? Where do they fit into anyone of, is it what you're born? at birth, basically. I would argue that this research completely undermines that argument. This research shows that sex is binary. You are male. or you are female. Now, you need to distinguish between sex and gender. Sex and gender are two very different things. Sex is you are either male or female, with the very rare exception of intersex individuals. There is something called intersex, which is very rare, less than 2 and 10,000 individuals. In a sample of 1,500, you may not have had a single intersex individual. So an intersex individual, for example, might be an X, X, X, Y, Chimera, an individual who's a fusion of half X, X, and half X, Y. That particular anomaly occurs with a frequency about 1 and 2 million live births in our species. But with the exception of intersex individuals, every human is either X, X, or X, Y. So you're either male or female. But gender... is masculine or feminine, and we're all a mix of masculine and feminine trace. So, for example, I love to shop for groceries. I get a big kick out of it, and I love grocery shopping. I could spend three hours in the grocery store. My wife hates to shop for groceries. If we relied on her, we would starve.

I don't know how to fix our lawn tractor. I don't do it, and I wouldn't know how. I was raised by a single mom. My wife's late father was a mechanic, and she's very adopted fixing the lawn tractor. So in some respects, she's more masculine than I am. We are all a mix of masculine and feminine, and that's fine. Gender is complicated. And that's okay. We're all a mix of masculine and feminine. Some boys love to dance ballet. Some girls want to be fighter pilots. That's fine. We're all a mix of masculine or feminine. But we are all either male or female. So again, there's a lot of confusion out there. I was recently counseling. a young man who happens to love ballet and is convinced that he is a woman and wants to transition. He's not. He's a gender atypical boy. He's a feminine boy. He is confused because he's immersed in a toxic culture and he's fallen in with some very confusing people. But he's not a woman. He is a gender atypical boy. So unfortunately, we've got a very toxic culture now that are leading a lot of these kids astray. So again, this study got a lot of attention. And again, the left of center people who insist that gender is just a social construct responded. And they said, well, all the subjects in that study were 20 to 35 years of age. This is the Butler feminist study. Yes. The respondents to that. The people who responded to that study said they're all 20 years of age or older. They've had 20 years of being subjected to the heteronormative patriarchy, the toxic patriarchy. So that just proves that this sexist patriarchy warps your brain. Well, I respond to them that we have other studies where they looked at women in the third trimester pregnancy and at high resolution MRI scans of the baby in the mother's womb. And on the left, you see rich connections in the brains of the female baby that you don't see at all in the brains of the male baby. And you see rich connections on the right in the brains of the male baby that you don't see in the brains of the female baby. This is in the third trimester of pregnancy before the baby is even born. And what these studies show us is that male and female are... not merely social constructs. They are biological realities. As a family physician, I imagine that you see many people with all of this confusion, including the gender confusion where they want to go on medication. I can't even tell you how many children I know in Los Angeles who are taking puberty blockers, all kinds of medications. In addition to the other types of medications that children are prescribed these days for anxiety. And I just, it is mind-boggling to me and very concerning to me, the long-term impact while they're growing up, going through priority and taking all these meds. And I just, what is the warning to parents? So many physicians are telling them, well, you know, it's not a big deal, you know, just have them try it for a few years and see how they do.

Well, I think those physicians are very unwise. We're learning more and more about the dangers of puberty blockers on fertility, on bone health. But we're also learning that all these countries across Europe are banning them for children under 18. The United Kingdom, Dr. Hillary Cass was commissioned by the United Kingdom to conduct a multi-year study, and she did. And she and her colleagues looked at every study, published in every country. And last year, they said, stop. The evidence does not support the use of these medications. A medical approach using puberty blockers is not supported by the evidence. And her work was so comprehensive that the National Health Service in the United Kingdom immediately said, All right, we're done. There will be no more use of these medications in children under 18. We're shutting down the gender clinics. It's done. And I think the United States is now an outlier. Western Europe and the United Kingdom have said, no, we're not doing this anymore. And now the United States is... basically alone among Western countries in continuing to experiment on children when Sweden and Denmark have stopped, which is really strange. So it's scary, it's unwise. And there is now so much evidence. And it's happened so quickly. You know, I started a medical practice, a family practice in Montgomery County, Maryland in 1990 from nothing from scratch. And we went from zero to 7,000 patients. And I knew my patients well, and they confided in me. And we had many gay patients. We had many lesbian patients. How many transgender patients did we have? None. Zero, not one. As of 2008, we had none. This was not a thing. In 1994, the American Psychiatric Association said, how common is transgender? They said, it's so rare, it's very hard to estimate. But we estimate that one in 30,000 men and one in 100,000 women are transgender. Two years ago, the CDC surveyed American high school students. on sexual orientation and gender identity. 3.3% more than 3 in 100 high school students in this country now say that they are trans. So between 1994 and 2023 in less than 30 years, we went from 1 and 30,000 to more than 3 in 100. That's a change of more than 2 orders of magnitude in 30 years.

How did that happen? Why did that happen? Well, what we've learned is that gender identity is much more fragile than we thought. And that's a surprise. That's a surprise. So I wrote a book called Why Gender Matters back in 2005, first edition published in 2005 by Double Day. I had one paragraph on transgender because it really wasn't a thing back then. Then the publisher asked me to write a new edition. And the new edition has 12 chapters, the last four of which are gender non-conforming lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and a deep dive into this question of why did it become so much more common? It became so much more common because we dropped the ball. We failed to teach boys to become men and girls to become women. We set them loose in a toxic culture that is teaching all the wrong things where it's cool for boys to be girls and girls to be boys to break the boundaries. So again, I was consulted about a girl who was depressed. and saw a TikTok video that said, only girls are depressed. If you transition to being a boy, you won't be depressed. And she told her parents that she wanted to transition to being a boy. And they consulted me. And I said, I know. that your daughter is not trans. How did I know this? Let me share with you a few more slides to tell you how I could be so certain. So. Neuroscientists have known for many decades, for more than 40 years now, that there are two visual systems in the brains of all higher mammals, including humans. One visual system is looking for what? What is its color? What is its texture? The other visual system is looking for where? Where is it going? How fast it moving? Is it colliding into something? I'm not going to go into the anatomy too much. But this is really relevant for parents because if you give your kid a blank piece of paper, and a box of crayons. And your kids, five, six, seven, eight years of age. What do they draw? Girls draw people, pets, flowers, and trees. And this is true of every girl. Including girl who hates dolls and would rather play with a basketball. She's still drawing a girl with a basketball. But most boys don't draw people, pets, flowers, and trees. Most boys try to draw a scene of action. Human figures, if present, are stick figures.

lacking eyes, mouth, hair, and clothes. It's not a well-organized two-dimensional picture on a horizontal ground. This is another boy's picture. Another tank. Yes. Are these boys getting kicked out of school? Well, sometimes they are. I try to speak to the teachers when I can and explain that this boy, who I know well, actually another patient of mine, this boy is a very loving, kind, sweet boy who's never heard anybody. So this finding is robust. It doesn't matter if we're talking about a Japanese girl in Japan or an American girl in the United States. Girls everywhere draw people, pets, flowers, and trees. And Jerry and Alexander, her colleagues at Yale, have shown that the P-System, the system that has color, detail, and texture predominates in females. Incidentally, not just in humans, but also in chimpanzees and monkeys. Whereas the M system, the system looking for speed and collision predominates in males. And this helps to explain the differences in the pictures that they draw, as well as the fact that when you give monkeys a choice of playing with dolls or trucks, the girl monkeys prefer to play with dolls. The boy monkeys greatly prefer to play with trucks. So these differences are robust across species. But going back to this girl, this is a girl who always loved to play with dolls throughout her childhood, always insisted as dressing as a princess for Halloween, wanted to be a fashion designer. Then at age 14, there was a family stress. She saw that TikTok video that said that only girls are depressed, boys aren't depressed, and she decided she wanted to be, to transition to being a boy. But her parents showed me the pictures she had drawn. This is one of her pictures. And here's another of the pictures that she has drawn. That's a girl's picture. And I could tell the parents with great confidence, she's not a boy. She's a girl. So what did it end up happening with her? I could tell her with great confidence she is mistaken. She's not trans. She's depressed. The correct diagnosis here is adjustment disorder and depression. Allowing her to transition to the male role is not in her best interest. She's mistaken. She's confused. 14-year-olds are often mistaken and confused. That's not unusual. And she should not transition. She should get good therapy. She should probably be on an antidepressant medication, but she should not transition to the male role. Putting her on testosterone is the last thing she needs. She needs... consultation, psychotherapy, and antidepressant medication. She doesn't need testosterone. So, doctor, I'm going to close this because maybe we can talk a little bit about medication. It's something I happen to be very concerned about. I can't tell you how many kids I know are on antidepressants. It's not just the gender purity blockers and all kinds of stuff like that. It's the bipolar medication. It's the anti-anxiety medication. You wrote a book. We were talking about this earlier. I want to actually grab your books.

back again because I think there's so much interesting stuff in here. I will never forget what you told me that when you translated your book about boys and your book about girls into French and combined it into one book, the French told you that you don't need the chapters about ADHD because apparently in France they don't have children or at least that many children. You were the 10,000. who are taking medication for ADHD. So clearly America is more medicated than most countries, maybe all countries around the world, and it's not just the gender issue. It's the depression and everything else. And so, you know, what are we going to do about that? And how did we even get here? Absolutely. So the ADHD issue is when I've been writing about for more than 20 years. And there are so many problems with that. One is what I call the medicalization of misbehavior. So let's imagine a boy in school and he is defiant and he is disrespectful. 30 years ago, the teacher, the principal, might have said to the parents, your son is defined. He talks back. Next sentence would have been, this is unacceptable. You need to teach your son what is expected of minimally acceptable behavior in a school setting. Today, the same behavior from a boy, the teacher, the principal, the counselor is likely to say he may meet criteria for oppositional defiant disorder. He may be on the spectrum. Have you thought of having him evaluated? This is what I mean by the medicalization of misbehavior. And the next sentence, of course, is, well, where would you recommend that we take him? And he goes to see the professional, and he is very often put on a medication.

And the result is a generation of kids who are being medicated. Kids in this country are much more likely to be on medications like Adderall or Vivance than kids outside of North America. Kids in this country are much more likely to be on antipsychotic medications than kids outside of North America by factors of 10 or more. which is really alarming. And why is this? Why is this? So, Senator Chuck Grassley was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when he summoned Dr. Joseph Biederman, who was chair of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee. And he said, Dr. Biederman, you've really been pushing Adderall for children. You have said that if a doctor prescribes Adderall for a child and the parents do not promptly fill and dispense the medication, you have said that those parents should be considered for charges of criminal child neglect. Dr. Biederman, are you by any chance accepting money from the drug companies that you haven't publicly disclosed? And Dr. Biederman said, well, certainly. And Chuck Grassley said, Dr. Biederman, can you tell the committee how much money you have recently accepted? And Dr. Biederman said, well, I don't know, maybe $300,000, $400,000. And Senator DeGrassey said, Dr. Biedermann, I want you to return to your offices at Harvard Medical School and return to this committee under subpoena if necessary and give us an accurate account. And he returned a few weeks later and said it was just over $1.6 million. That number was never independently verified. It could be more for all we know. Now, Dr. Biederman broke no law. There's no law against doctors accepting money from the drug companies, and there's no law of requiring them to disclose it. His action was not illegal. But it was unethical in my judgment. He was acting as a paid spokesperson for the drug companies. He's getting more money from the drug companies than he was getting from Harvard. He was promoting their medications, and that's a problem. So Senator Grassi then summoned Dr. Fred Goodwin, who was chief of the National Institute of Mental Health, part of the NIH, arguably the most prestigious position an American psychiatrist can hold. He stepped down from that position to accept a position with National Public Radio, NPR, to host a program for them called the Infinite Mind. as host of the Infinite Mind, he did a program on ADHD, where a mom called in and said, Dr. Goodwin, my son's been on medication for ADHD for years. He's been on Adderall, and he's been on this medication for years. And I'm thinking I should take him off the medication over the summer maybe and see what he's like off medication. What do you think, Dr. Goodwin? And Dr. Goodwin said, oh, no, certainly not.

He said, my good friend and colleague, Dr. Biederman at Harvard, says these medications are for children with ADHD just the same as insulin is for diabetes. If your son had diabetes, you wouldn't take him off insulin for the summer, would you? No, of course not. His medications are perfectly safe. You should keep them on the medication. And Senator Grassy said, Dr. Goodwin. Have you accepted money recently for the drug companies that you've never publicly disclosed? And Dr. Goodwin came prepared. He said, yes, I have. It's just over $1.3 million. 1.3 million. That's a fair chunk of change. Doctor, don't you think you should have disclosed that to your listeners on national public radio, that you were getting a lot more money from the drug companies than you are from NPR, that you're basically functioning as a paid spokesperson for the drug companies? Shouldn't you have said that? Certainly not. Well, why not, doctor? Could you explain to the committee why you didn't feel any need to disclose that? Dr. Goodwin said, because it is standard practice. Everyone in our industry does that. And that was the most troubling line of testimony that Chuck Grassley heard in my judgment. Here's Dr. Goodwin, one of the most renowned and distinguished leaders of psychiatry in the United States, telling us it is standard practice for all the leaders in his field to take millions of dollars from the drug companies, not to tell us. Why is it the case that kids in this country are many times more likely to be on medication? Medications like Adderall, Vyvans, Vrispidel, Syracin, compared to kids in other countries? Well, it's because the leaders of child psychiatry in this country and not elsewhere are pushing these medications. Why are kids in this country more likely to be on medications compared with other countries? Because in this country and not elsewhere. medication is the first resort. In this country, and not outside of North America, doctors will say, well, let's try Vivance and Adderall and see if it helps. So I spoke at Harvard University at a conference titled Learning and the Brain. And I would love to tell you that my presentation was the buzz of the conference. It was on Why Gender Matters, but it wasn't. The presentation everybody was really excited about was a presentation by Dr. John Gabrielli. Dr. Gabrieli somehow got permission to give powerful stimulant medication to normal kids and to withhold stimulant medication, like Adderall and Vivance, to withhold medication from kids with severe ADD. and then studied the ability of kids to learn on and off stimulant medication. There's just experimenting on children. Yes. He got permission to do this. Where are the parents? He got permission to do this. Now, other researchers have told me they tried to get permission and permission was denied. Dr. Gabrily got permission. We can argue about whether that was ethical, but he got permission to do it. And he found that medication helps normal kids.

more than it helps kids with ADD. What does that mean? It's a tremendously important finding. So many times parents have come to me and they've got the Conner scale from the school and the kids off the chart, not paying attention to any class. But because I'm both a psychologist and a family doctor, I'm comfortable doing the evaluation, which many family doctors and pediatricians are not, but I am. So I'll do the evaluation. And I'll say, look, your kid doesn't meet criteria. Your kid does not meet criteria for ADHD. And the parents will say, yeah, but the other doctor prescribed the viviance, and it was so helpful. The parents are interpreting the response to medication. as though the response to medication has some diagnostic significance. The medication was prescribed for ADHD. It was very helpful. Therefore, the kid must have ADHD, right? Yes. Wrong. Right. Dr. Gabrieli's study and others like it shows that these medications help normal kids as much or more than they help kids with ADHD. So I'll give you another example for my own practice. So. Another boy, middle school boy, off the chart on the Conner scale. Conner scale is just a form that the teacher fills out. Is this kid paying attention? Someone not paying attention, not are all paying attention. He's off the chart. He's not paying attention in any class. He goes to psychiatrist. Psychiatrist looks at the form. He's not paying attention to any class. He says, well, let's try by JD Vance and see if it helps. It's tremendously helpful, and he's doing much better. But now he's got palpitations. He's got no appetite. So parents see something I wrote in the New York Times about the dangers of the medications, so they bring him to me for a second opinion. And I do a more careful sleep history. I say to mom, is your son getting plenty of sleep? She says, oh yeah, we make sure he's in his bedroom every night and nine o'clock in night. I say, the boy, do you have a video game console in your bedroom? He says, of course, doesn't everybody? I say, were you playing last night? Of course. When did you finish? 1.30, 2. Mom's like, you were playing video game at 2 a.m. last night? So he's playing video game past 1.30 in the morning. He's trying to wake up at 6. He's getting less than 5 hours sleep at night. He's sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation perfectly mimics ADHD of the inattentive variety. There is no Conner scale. There's no Vanderbilt interview that can distinguish between inattention due to sleep deprivation from inattention that's due to true ADHD. What's Adderall? What's Viband's? Their amphetamines, their speed, they will compensate for the sleep deprivation. But the appropriate remedy for sleep deprivation. is sleep, not schedule two amphetamines. So I say to mom, you got to get the video game console out of the bedroom. No more video games in the bedroom, no phones in the bedroom, no screens in the bedroom. And you know what? The inattention goes away. He never had ADHD. He was sleep deprived. This happens a lot.

What do you think are the long-term effects on a child growing up with antidepressants? Yeah. So I can speak to other medical professionals, and I have done, about the treatment of depression. I have many concerns about SSRIs, and I think they should not be the first choice. I recommend tracidone as a first choice. I think tracetone is underutilized. It is the safest of the antidepressants. It is less habit forming. It's the easiest to get off of. I do not, as a rule, as a family physician, prescribe antidepressants before puberty is pretty complete. I don't prescribe antidepressants to prepubescent children. You know, these are one of the things that it keeps running through my mind is how hard it is to find. health practitioners that we can trust and that we can really lean on. And what I keep saying to all the doctors that come on the show is for those who are brave enough to speak the truth and go against the culture, the narrative, the pharmaceuticals, there are sadly few and far between. And so what advice would you give to a parent who is scared? Many, many, many, many parents are scared. They're scared to hear that their child could commit suicide if they're not giving the, given the puberty blockers. They're scared to not give their children the antidepressants because they're afraid that they're going to commit suicide. We're constantly told that if we don't medicate our children, they're likely to commit suicide. Parents are getting confused and they're scared and we don't even know who to trust anymore. Well, let me address each of your comments there because each of them require a response. Would you rather have a live son or a dead daughter? Was a line that the transgender activists have used for many years when the daughter says she wants to transition to being a boy claiming. that by transitioning to the male role, you decrease the risk of suicide. We now know with certainty that that's a lie. Transitioning to the male role does not decrease the risk of suicide. It doesn't. We know this. So that's simply a lie, pure and simple. And this came out very dramatically this past December when the ACLU attorney, Chase Strangio, was arguing this case, this Kermetti case at the Supreme Court. and came very close to making this claim. And Samuel Alito Samuel Alito had done his homework and asked him point blank and confronted the ACLU attorney, Chase Strangio, and he had to acknowledge the truth, which is that there is no evidence to support the claim, that transitioning decreases the risk of suicide. So I would say to parents, if anyone ever claims,

a child or teen who thinks they're trans has to transition to decrease the risk of suicide, you can tell them there's no evidence to support that. And as a family doctor, I have seen these unfortunate individuals who have been sucked into this rabbit hole and have transitioned and it doesn't help. And it's a mess. There's no easy fix. So. Your second point was antidepressant medication. I want to say a word in defense of other doctors. Speaking as a medical doctor, we medical doctors live in fear of you, the patients, that you're going to post a bad review. And we are trying really hard to please you because nasty reviews can really hurt us. So you have to shop around a little bit. You have to find someone who will listen, who will not just try to get rid of you by writing a quick prescription. There are good doctors out there. but you might have to shop around a little bit. Yeah, it's a very fair point. I think that people think that when they go to a doctor, they always have to walk out with a prescription. It's what we've been sold. You know, my kid has an ear infection. I go to a pediatrician. I think I'm supposed to come out with something because I waited in line and I paid for it. And you're right. We have created a consumer market for medication, right? The parent is going to the pediatrician or to the physician and says, Fix my child. He won't sit still and he's not getting great grades in school. And therefore you need to give me something to fix him right away to mute him as opposed to changing the entire conversation. And I do think that America is waking up. I do think parents are waking up. I do think many parents are now going to physicians and saying, wait a second, what can I do before you prescribe me something? Talk to my child. Let's talk together. Let's talk about their diet. Let's talk about their sleep. Let's talk about their habits. And I think that. If, you know, more people listen to physicians like you who are willing to work with parents like us, who are basically saying, sometimes you need medication, but it should not be the first resort. It should be the last resort. And let's try to work together to help the child. What also gets back to what we were talking about earlier, the medicalization of misbehavior. So that child, so suppose your child is on the autism spectrum, and that's a real thing. There is no medication that's going, never use a diagnosis as an excuse. So your child is disciplined and the parent is upset and says my child's on the spectrum. He can't help it. And I say to that parent, never use a diagnosis as an excuse. I understand, I understand that Jake is on the spectrum. And that's true. He is on the spectrum. That means you're going to have to work that much harder to explain to him that he does have to listen, that he does have to play by the rules, because self-control is required. Self-control does predict good outcomes.

for all adults down the road. And that's going to be true for Jake, just as it's true for everybody else. And it's going to be harder for him than it is for other kids. But that doesn't excuse him. That doesn't let him off the hook. It means it's going to be harder for him. And you have to work with the school. The school's not your enemy. You have to work with the school. You have to be in partnership with the school to help Jake to learn the rules. I'll end with this, something that I learned from your book about parenting, and that is that being too strict is not going to backfire. I agree about that when it comes to parenting. I'm a pretty strict parent, and I think you need to give a child love and boundaries, and boundaries is really important. The same should be applied to physicians. Being strict should not backfire, right? You got to stand with the truth and stick to the truth, even if it is against the culture, even it means that you're pushing back against what, you know, what people don't want. you're in a position where you took an oath to protect us. And that means that you need to be strict even when we push against you as a physician. And as parents, when our children push against us, they're just doing their job. That's their job as a child to push against us. And our job as a parent is to show them the boundaries. during those years that we're forming their identity and forming their character and forming their vision and view of life. And if we're not strict with them, what's really going to backfire is that, is that they're going to just be set loose in a challenging world that does require a very deep understanding of human nature. Well, Diana Baumram, speaking of strict parenting, Diana Bounder was the great pioneer of parenting research. Before Dana Boundernd, the gurus of parenting were people like Dr. Benjamin Netanyahu Spock, who were basically sharing anecdotes from their experiences of pediatricians. But Banna Bounderan was the first pioneer of parenting research. And she and her colleagues would go into homes and spend... dozens of hours over weeks, just observing parents and seeing how they parented. And she and her colleagues coined the terms, created the terms, authoritative parenting, authoritarian parenting, permissive parenting, and then followed these kids over decades to see what are the outcomes. And they found if parents are too strict authoritarian and they're beating the kids and spanking the kids, authoritarian parents, those kids end up being criminals. They are incapable of sustaining romantic relationships because they never received love. They can't give loves. No love. The permissive parents who are very loving, but they don't enforce the rules, they're permissive.

Those kids end up being anxious, depressed. They have terrible credit ratings. They don't pay off their loans. No boundaries. No boundaries. The best parents are the authoritative parents who are both strict and loving. Love and boundaries. Yes, love and boundaries. Exactly. The best parents are the authoritative parents who are both strict and loving. And by the year 2000, she had just so much evidence and so much data over decades of research. Everybody agreed. Best parents are authoritative parents. No arguments. But in the years before her death in 2018, She herself wrote that American parents have become confused. They now mistakenly think you have to choose between being strict or loving. Love or boundaries. They don't realize the best parents are both strict and loving. And that's the point I try to make in the new edition of the collapse of parenting that the best parents are both strict and loving. You've got to learn from Dana Baumrend. I love that book. I love your book, The Collapse of Parenting. I recommend it. I think for anybody who comes up to me and says, wow, it's so hard to be a parent. I say just read Dr. Sachs' book. I think it's just going to clarify a lot of the things that are in your gut already, but make total sense. And it does take a little bit of courage to go against a herd. But that's what parenting is about, having courage to do the right thing for our children. Thank you. Thank you, doctor. It was great having you on. Thank you. If you like the Michael Bari Weiss Show and podcast, please tell one friend. And if you're so inclined, write a nice review of our podcast. Comments, suggestions, questions, and interest in being a corporate sponsor and partner can be communicated directly to the show at our email address, Michael at Michaelberryshow.com, or simply by clicking on our website, Michaelberryshow.com. The Michael Bari Weiss Show and podcast is produced by Ramon Robles, the King of Ding. Executive producer is Chad Nakanishi. Jim Mud is the creative director. Voices, jingles, tomfoolery, and shenanigans are provided by Chance McLean. Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily Bull is our assistant. Listener and superfan contributions are appreciated and often incorporated into our production. Where possible, we give credit. Where not, we take all the credit for ourselves. God bless the memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long live Elvis. Be a simple man, like Leonard Skinner told you, and God bless America. Finally, If you know a veteran suffering from PTSD, call Camp Hope at 877-717 PTSD and a combat veteran will answer the phone to provide free counseling.

Ray Breyer's is the pipe man. He owns Pipeyard Inc. And they buy and sell pipe all day long. And I am shocked how much business we've been able to send him across the country. Entire pipelines going across three different states where they need to get the pipe pulled out. He's like, I'll pull the pipe out, I'll sell the pipe. People buying pipe, people selling pipe. The people that buy pipe are environmental managers, pipeline project managers, somebody that's got an abandoned pipeline that's been removed. They want... The Pipyard Inc. Compliance and Regulatory folks. I want to get those pipes out of there. Selling pipe, folks that need carbon steel pipe, the Pipyard Inc. stocks everything you need, any kind of pipe. There is stuff that people call him for, industrial stuff, that he doesn't even have, and he tracks it down. He's working his phone, and his team is working their phones all day long. He's got a yard, they've got pipe. But... They are working the phones to get stuff for people all day long. 409-788 pipe. 409-78 pipe. I'm on testosterone, and I encourage everybody else to be on testosterone. If you're below 350 on your testosterone level, a very good chance your insurance will pay for you to have it. You know why? There's a lot of studies that say it's very good for you, not just your sex life, but your energy, your strength, all sorts of good things. Do your own research. Don't trust me. But you should do your research, and you should get your blood panels checked, and they'll do all that for you at synergenics. Go to fixmylowt.com. Fix my lowt.com. Whether you write a check every month or it's on direct deposit or auto pay, you write a check to your insurance company for a reason. You could have spent that money on anything else. You made a good decision to hedge against bad things happen, and then it did. Hurricane, windstorm damage, hail damage, fire, smoke, water damage. And that insurance company, 10 states away, denied your claim, and they should not have, and you know it. Go to claimdenied.com. It's the Chad T. Wilson Law firm, and they will fight for you. Claimdenied.com. 713-226,000. 7132-2-2-6,000.