God bless your son and you and the rest of your family!
We worked through the bad years and he got better. When he was 19 he went into the Army and his aggressive nature has found a home.
Wow! You mean you actually spent time and effort on your son instead of popping a pill or some other easy solution! <\sarcasm off> :D
If you put your kids on Ritalin that bars them from the military -- forever. The Army knows what Ritalin does -- it makes kids docile and mellow and that ain't always good.
That's interesting, I did not know that Ritalin has permanent effects. That's so scary.
I'd venture to say it's never good. Being docile and especially mellow by nature can be OK, alhough it has it's problems as does being aggressive and assertive, but artificially induced it's nothing but problems.
In a few, probably very rare cases, a kids bad behavior, or perceived bad behavior, can actually be traced to something physically amiss. But in those cases the solution is to fix the problem, say via food supplements, surgery, or whatever, not mask it over by doping the kid up for years. Anyway, plain old strong coffe, works about as well with many of the kids. Ritalin is related to speed (methamphetamine) so it's really an uppper for most people, but not for some. For them, coffee can work pretty well, without the nasty long term side effects. The first year my wife taught (or maybe the second, it was a long time ago) she had a kid like that, but it was the kids private doctor that suggested the coffee, not the school nurse or pychologist. (they didn't one of the latter). The kid brought big thermos to school every day, and if starting gettnig hyper, he'd be pulled out for a few minutes for a cup of coffee, and then he'd be fine again. Well as fine as the little guy ever got, which wasn't so very bad. (I went on a couple of their field trips, so I got to see him in action as it were.)