Target Population

I noticed that there is a type of boy that struggles with the traditional parenting and educational approach. They are usually sensitive and creatively gifted. They are strong-willed, independent, perfectionistic, highly emotional, have low self-esteem even when they portray themselves as confident, have above-average intelligence and have a brain that requires constant excitement and stimulation to pay attention. They exhibit discipline problems and are usually diagnosed with ADHD because the traditional approach to teaching is not aligned with their learning style. In addition to ADHD, they collect many more labels and diagnoses (e.g., depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder) which only focus on their challenges, but not on their strengths. Unfortunately, their feelings of inadequacy from this mismatch between traditional child development practices and their unique neurobiology leads them to eventually use substances to self-medicate their pain. Once this self-medication starts, it is very challenging to undo the practices that result in such feelings of inadequacy. In some cases suicide and addiction becomes a risk, but in many cases self-medication by consuming pills such as Xanax, Percocet and OxyContin can result in unintended death by fentanyl poisoning.

In 2020 I started a PhD program that gave me the research tools to utilize knowledge from the fields of attachment, genetics, neurobiology, evolutionary biology, creativity, sensitivity, and giftedness to better understand and support the needs of these challenging boys. By using my previous and current clinical experience of working with parents and my ongoing doctoral dissertation research, I started to refer to these children as Non-Prescriptive. I was looking for a term that was not a diagnosis and that did not communicate a negative connotation, but that instead signaled their difference along with the need to utilize a different paradigm (as compared to the traditional prescriptive medical model) to understand and support their needs.