My son has ADHD - it's real, and medication helps him tremendously. We tried many other alternatives - vitamins, diet changes, behavior mod, social skills classes, etc. - before giving in to meds, after extensive testing by a psychologist and a psychiatrist that we've known for 30 years and trust. The medicine has helped a great deal - he is not on Ritalin but on one of the other meds. For example, he was unable to learn to read until we started medication - he literally couldn't keep focused long enough to sound out the word - then he suddenly began to read whole sentences. It was amazing.
I think the problem is that -- with the financial incentives that exist to over-diagnose -- you have a core of actual sufferers from the condition in the middle, and a penumbra of doubtful cases outside that, and outside that the poor kids whose parents don't care, or just want them to shut up, or wish that the ADD meds would easily solve whatever problem their child really has. Wishful thinking, because the effects of the medication on a true ADHD sufferer are so dramatic.
You have the perfect example of when it is needed. The big telling sign is that your son could not read, and you tried other things to help him.
It just irritates me the parents that their kids can read, they don't try different non-med alternatives, and they put their kids on meds.