Another thing that irritates the h#ll out of me are the mothers who tell me, "My little Johney's problems can't be food issues. I've tried eliminating everything I can think of and nothing works. My son's pediatric GI told me that it takes SIX MONTHS for the brain to BEGIN recovering from a food intollerance. He also told me that he has CURED EVERY CHILD WHO HAS COME TO HIM OF ADD, ODD, ADHD, etc by changing their diet for a period of one year. But one year is way to long for most parents and schools to wait, so they just medicate the kids and sigh and say that there's nothing else to do. ("I took my son off everything; sugar, red dyes, gluten, milk for a MONTH and he didn't improve..." It takes 6 months! That's like saying, "I've been pregnant for a whole month and the baby didn't come. I guess I need surgury to have it removed." These things take time, for the love of Pete!)
ADD symptoms are also the same symptoms a child will show when they are sick. When they are tired. When they are in chronic pain and can't even pinpoint, verbalize or understand what they are feeling they will act out. When they are hard of hearing or have a tummy ache. When their body chemestry is wrong or they are missing a vital mineral or vitamin. It's too darn easy to drug 'em into behaving and ignore the fact that there is a very high probablity that something else is wrong. We expect all kids to fit into this nice neat little package and get very upset with them when they won't comply. We insist that something must be wrong with their brains then pour medications into these same brains and say that we're treating their illness.
And it's the public schools that insist we fall in line.