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Great observation! I shudder to think how many of us would've been diagnosed with ADHD back in the days before Ritalin was invented. I know I would have. I learned how to manipulate the system to avoid going to music class with a teacher I really disliked back in Grades 4-6 in order to get one-on-one time with a guidance counselor working on stuff which was a lot more fun.

To this day, I'm still very good at independent projects and still very poor at music skills as a result.

A few years ago, my wife and I were unofficial foster parents for a family of six kids which included one ADHD diagnosed boy who accounted for over 90% of the problems we had with those kids. One particular trying day, I was trying to get the kid to take some responsibility for his actions and he blurted out "I have ADHD and you're going to have to learn to deal with it!"

"No", I said, "it is your problem, not mine and you're going to have to learn to deal with it! The world is a cruel place and if you act like that around people who don't care about you, the consequences are going to be far more severe than when you do it around people who actually care."

The kid was more shocked than he would've been than if I had slapped him hard. Nobody had ever told him that before. From then on, his outbursts became far less frequent.