Children are far more receptive to their fathers than to neurotoxic dopamine agonists at their dopamine receptors.
No other branch of medicine would even dare take 3 years to come up with the "proper" dx.
I'm willing to bet that you're intelligent enough to know that making a generalization based on your personal experience is what is known in rhetorical circles as inductive fallacy.
Did your teen years include a week of inpatient and a week of outpatient because of a manic episode?
Would parental attention alone have been the proper solution for that situation?
One size does not necessarily fit all, and our mileage DOES vary.
And it wasn't the school or the shrink that kept pressing for adding ADD to the diagnosis, it was his psychologist who kept quietly stating "I think that he's also got ADD." And the psychiatrist poo-pooed it. And, we believed the shrink because he had the bigger credentials. And finally the shrink listened to the psychologist.
There's nothing in your recommendations that we haven't already tried, and every night homework would take HOURS.-- And even if the homework was done, frequently it would be lost before it got turned in.
And, as the psychiatrist said when we questioned the bipolar side of the equation after being told that he had ADD as well, was that if he hadn't been bipolar, then his symptoms wouldn't have subsided when he was given Depakote.
Same goes for his ADD: We've seen a dramatic improvement in grades, attitude, temperament and organization after he got put on 15 mg of Adderall once a day.
(And that's for a 120 lb 13 year-old. Those dosages the study mentions seem a bit on the high side, (especially for preschoolers) from what I've read on the subject).
It's not a cure-all, but it's making things more tolerable while we continue to pursue therapy, etc.