RITALIN: MIRACLE DRUG?; OPINIONS OF PARENTS VARY ON DRUG'S USE

Like most moms, Priscilla Owens wanted the best of everything for her only son.

She and her husband, Mark, believed a $250-a-month parochial school and day care would be best for their child, a somewhat sheltered 5-year-old whose friends would be attending there. The working couple cut some extras, saved their money, and put Shawn in kindergarten.

Three weeks later his teacher requested their first conference about Shawn's behavior. After several years of trouble-free day care, Priscilla Owens couldn't believe it.

The teacher immediately said she thought he had attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, she said. "I felt three weeks wasn't long enough to determine anything, but I didn't want to make a big fuss."

But the troubling news continued to come. First, Shawn's teacher sent home a page of capital "Bs" Shawn had written with all but two marked incorrect. Owens thought they looked legible.

Then the pink slips began -- notes Owens had to sign detailing Shawn's alleged failure to sit still, his terrorizing of other students, his general disruptiveness.

Owens knew her son could misbehave. As an only child, he often got excited around other children. But she hadn't known Shawn to do anything violent or cause excessive problems.

Owens said her son's teacher began encouraging her to go to Dr. James Dinkins, a Cape Girardeau pediatrician, and get a prescription for Ritalin. Instead, Owens made an appointment with Dr. David Callahan, a St. Louis neurologist.

After hours of testing, Callahan concluded the capital "Bs" were fine, Shawn didn't need Ritalin and there was a "mismatch" between Shawn and his teacher. He detailed the findings in a three-page letter to Shawn's regular doctor, Daniel Bieser.

The day after Shawn's appointment, his teacher stopped Owens in the hall to see how things went.

"I told her the doctor said Shawn was fine and didn't need Ritalin," Owens said. "She said, `Then we're just going to have to isolate him in a different room.'"

Owens went back to the classroom, got Shawn, and never took him back to the parochial school. Today, he is student in Cape Girardeau public schools.

"I had my first conference with his new teacher, and she said he isn't having any behavior problems," Owens said. "He might have a slight learning disability, so he's going through testing now.

"Now I'm thinking, what if I had put him on this drug and there was another problem I could have been helping him with? There are people diagnosing these kids with ADD who have no business doing so."

Like Owens, most parents dealing with the Ritalin issue have strong feelings about it. There are those who think Ritalin is a godsend for ADD children.

Kathy Baker of Sikeston is somewhere in the middle. Her son Bryce started taking Ritalin in fourth grade to treat his short attention span and some behavioral problems. His teacher had encouraged Baker to ask a doctor about the drug.

It helped -- he was quieter and made better grades, but Baker worried about his health.

"He lost 15 pounds," she said. "He couldn't eat and his hair was falling out. He had no personality."

Bryce continued taking Ritalin off and on through the sixth grade, when Baker decided he shouldn't take it any more. Some of the problems returned, but Baker said she put her son's health over anything else.

Peggy Pruett, now the Cape Girardeau coordinator of Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder, saw similar side effects when her son began taking Ritalin in fourth grade. When he tried it again as a high-school sophomore, the results were different.

"He wasn't keeping up or getting his assignments in on time," Pruett said. "He would bring home school work -- not homework -- that he couldn't get done in class. Finally, at the end of the 10th grade, I was at the end of my rope."

At a conference, one of his teachers suggested Pruett try Ritalin with her son. A doctor tested the boy and gave him a prescription. Within a few days, low and failing grades became average. During his junior and senior years, he stayed on the "B" honor roll.

Many of the people Pruett works with have children on Ritalin, and they are encouraged to keep up with the latest developments in treating ADD, she said.

"I think it is a wonderful drug," Pruett said. "I know it can be abused, but in my son's case it made the difference between total success and total failure."