There was no such thing as ADHD 20 years ago and we all grew up just fine.
But there was such a thing called "disciplining your children". Not so today...
Dittos to what you both said! We had recess in the morning, at lunchtime and in the afternoon, so we could run off any extra energy we had. That took care of any ADHD we might have had! Most days, our teacher would play games with us -- outside -- and we would go outside even in winter! The teachers and the principal also had the "board of education" to keep us in line. Oh, and we all ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and no one ever had a peanut allergy.
Those were the days...I keep hearing about all of these kids in my daughters classes are are allergic to almost everything you can think of...bread, peanut butter, sugar, chocolate...I'm waiting for some kid in her class to be allergic to air.
And after they realised how many kids were dropping dead after eating those sandwiches, they stopped giving them those things. ADD is a very real disorder, despite the rantings of folk psychologists. It's not simple "just boys being boys and being bored with school". It's more complicated than that. I have ADD and througout all my life, it's been very hard to concentrate on anything. I've had interests in many things but I just abruptly quit because I got distracted by something else. I've never been even close to concentrating on things until I started taking caffine pills, which are similar to ritalin, but without all the bad side effects.