[lelio]

children who it is said can’t pay attention – are perfectly capable of sitting still with a video game and paying rapt attention for hours on end.
That doesn't seem like a rousing statement against the use of Ritalin. Your kids can stare aimlessly at the boob tube?
What Mr Boortz seems to miss is that ADHD is more than just bouncing around in the classroom, its not being able to concentrate. While he might point to a kid drooling in front of Grand Theft Auto 3 and say that's a success, it really isn't. Show me case studies where ignoring ADHD ever helped the child.

[GovernmentShrinker]

That's an important point. One of the symptoms of ADD/ADHD is the tendency to hyperfocus on repetitive tasks, like video games, i.e. get quickly and completely "lost" in the task, and forget about other things that one really wants to do, and be genuinely oblivious to outside stimuli (someone calling your name, the sound of the phone ringing, the smell of smoke from burning food on the stove, etc.). This pattern bears an eerie similarity to a common symptom of autistic spectrum disorders.