[Ravaged Nation]

If the mom can homeschool her son, she should. My 4th daughter would qualify for this diagnosis because of her short attention span (per the school district guidelines). She's very intense and has such a zest for life and learning. My opinion is that this is her personality, therefore, I will work around her weaknesses and strengths and instruct her myself. And you know what? For a kindergartener, she reads 2nd grade level. I am so proud of her.

[GovernmentShrinker]

My guess is that it has less to do with her "personality" than with her IQ. "ADD" seems to be a lot more common in very intelligent children and adults, and I think it has a lot to do with the perpetual difficulty of dealing with a world that is geared to average intelligence. An adult or older child can learn self-control to deal with unavoidable boredom, but expecting a kindergarten-aged child who is reading at the 2nd grade level to have anything but a short attention span for kindergarten level school activities is just plain ridiculous. She'd probably be just fine if they'd plop her into a 2nd grade classroom, but of course they won't do that because they aren't interested in promoting high academic achievement.

[ContraryMary]

My daugher spent most of first and second grade with the nurse or principal complaining of aches, pains, headaches. At one time the principal suggested medication for her. We nixed that.

We finally figured out that she was bored and not challenged enough. So we worked with the school on that. Today she is in 7th grade, a straight A+ student. The teachers let her do a lot of extra credit assignments.

We were lucky. She goes to parochial school. I'm sure if she had gone to the local public school, they would have pushed much harder for medicating her.