@majorrich
Unfortunately plain old behavior modification is not really in fashion these days so some teachers (as well as doctors) are too quick to prescribe pills where plain old fashioned effort can yield the same results.
But true ADHD is a neurological condition and if you ever encountered a child who truly had it, you wouldn’t doubt it.
As a teacher, I’ve come across it enough to realize how these children live in constant frustration at not being able to focus and learn like average kids. They want to. But no matter how hard they try, they just can’t.
When my nephew was quite young my sister also had to deal with a teacher insisting he needed to be put on medication and she asked my advice.
I told her he wasn’t even nearly eligible. His main problem was that he could learn just fine if it was something he was interested in but if not, then it was a bust.
When he was only five he wanted to learn how to play chess. He loved games of any type. Obviously chess has a lot more complexity than checkers and one needs to be able to remember the allowed moves for each separate piece.
Within a month or so of my teaching him, he was playing regular games with no difficulty.
ADHD is not something a kid can turn on and off at will. They have the ability to focus or they don’t. Obviously a kid who can play chess at five can focus and concentrate just fine. So, it’s just a matter of making it in the kids own best interest to apply the same skill to schoolwork, and that’s where a lot of teachers opt to put kids on medication rather than dealing with their boredom with schoolwork :)
If a child is misdiagnosed then those medications just mess up their whole systems unnecessarily. It’s a good thing you knew your son well enough to resist.
But for kids who do truly have ADHD the right meds can make all the difference in the world and lift them out of a constant downward spiral.