A childhood full of psychotherapy rather than a childhood with a father. I bet they would have doped me up bigtime had this stuff been popular then. I knew it was a waste of time, the therapists knew I was totally normal, but it made my absent parents feel better... so the therapists got their Corvettes and I got an intense interest in the effect of parentlessness on children.
i agree with you that some kids (maybe a lot of kids) who are put on meds probably should not be--but whether the majority should or shouldn't be is another matter.
having 2 parents probably protects a lot of kids from horrible fates. and insurance companies would rather have people on meds than in therapy, because it costs less.
also, if you go back to the days before everyone needed a college education to get a job, it didn't matter if kids dropped out of school because of short attention spans--they could still get jobs and function in the world.
but, for any individual child, once they get to the point where they can't function in school, the question is what do you do? you can't turn the economy back to 1800, you can't necessarily undo all the damage that has been done in each instance, you can't get the parents back together, and you may not be able to undo the physical harm done by environmental toxins (or genetics).
each individual child has to be evaluated individually, and then something (therapy, diet, meds, or whatever) has to be done.
i hope things have worked out well for you.
IMHO, ONE thing that is sad about this topic, is because of all the "anti-depressant" drugs being handed out like candy to almost anybody who wants them.
If we end up getting a Queen Hillary" style "National Socialized Health Care Database" set up, there are going to be an ever increasing number of a whole bunch of kids, and adults, who will NEVER be able to HONESTLY, TRUTHFULLY, and (most important to the "Sarah Brady Bunch",) LEGALLY be able to fill out a FFL form, let alone have the rights that were given to us by the constitutional framers in the 2nd Amendment.
It's just something that folks who either willfully, or in the case of some children, are "made to" by some doctor or their parents, "sign-on-to" without realizing that by doing it, could have "unforseen circumstances" later in their lives, and NOT just the one "little one" that I posted above.