Our son has been dignosed with High-functioning autism and ADHD.
He is not taking any medication at all. However, because he is homeschooled, he is not required to sit for most of the day being compliant to someone else's agenda.
When we do bookwork he has someone beside him so that when his attention wanders he has assistance in bringing him back to the matter at hand.. And although he has trouble concentrating on things he is not particularly interested in, he has masterful concentration when he is doing something that excites his passions.
He is not required to sit too long in one place. We have a vegetable patch, chickens and pets. He gets involved with the care and maintenance of these. He is able to walk around, run about - he pursues his own interests much of the time. Even though he is very active, he is allowed the space and time to create and learn from practical experience.
In short, he gets to "do" and in the doing, his urges to disrupt and misbehave are greatly diminished.

Parenting is one of the hardest jobs in the world. One case in particular ( family of five ), only one showed the signs of the problem. This child was one of the least disciplined and with high disrespectful tendency,s and out of controlled behavior, than all the rest.

From the ages of 2 to 3 was where the child was not given the correct foods, was not payed the right amount of attention through work and child-care placements and has more tendency's of being spoiled brat than anything else. Childcare seems to be a factory for this, and the super nanny series also points to this direction.

What are we teaching our children in this day and age? Greed, selfishness, Confusion, Hate, Jealousy, Bad morals and Ethics, Lying, Cheating, Stealing, Uncaring, Bitterness, Wastefulness, Destructiveness, Bullying, Violence, Sexual Perversion, Eating disorders, and Blindness to reality. Obesity, Drug taking, Alcoholism, False and Ridiculous role models (sporting, Movie stars, Politicians, and the list goes on due to pressures of a world that is to busy makeing money other than focusing on the razing of children.

Now the same child today still shows the glitch from the 2 to 3 of that most important bonding time, and now 12, no drugs was needed at all.
The other four had full parental time, and all is well. I think the factors of all discuss on this thread are the many parts of the jigsaw.

I don't think you can point the finger at any singularity and giving them pills, for some, its just an easy fix to a complex problem.

The US is finally opposing big pharma, but it will be a long project.

Great cognitive and behavioral programs have been developed.

I'm a former principal and we used Play Attention (www.playattention.com)with our ADHD kids. Works great. High tech with coaching ad behavioral management. No drugs needed.

If the author read the release from the NHMRC he would have seen that there is no real effort to restrict medication but simply to clarify diagnostic procedures. Speaking from experience in the field I can say that behavioural interventions cannot treat ADHD anywhere near as effectively as medication. This is an established and well known fact in the field. Parents should not be embarrassed about having a child with the disorder. Delaying treatment often leads to more problems.

"ADD" = Absent Dad disorder!

Peter wrote "The vast majority of children treated for ADHD seem to be boys... Behaviour issues in the home are much more difficult when there is no father living in the home. Having a father present, physically and emotionally, helps give boys especially a sense of purpose and belonging. Boys suffer more than girls after divorce for this reason, according to many sources, such as Sebastian Kraemer. But in our post-feminist world, nobody wants to hear that males have difficulties."

Over 80% of ADHD diagnoses are boys!
Ask any a parents group "whose daughters are doing great at school?" and you see all the hands come up. then ask "Whose sons are struggling?" another sea of hands.

Forever until 1985, boys and girls received the same average marticulation ... the mark that determines if they get to uinversity....

Between 1985-97, boys results plummeted... until boys marks were 7% below girls! This sould have raised alarm bells... after all, aren't girls a smart as boys (and visa versa?)

Something had changed... boy and girls don't have sudden evolutionaty genetic changes like this...

The alarm bells did go off in the female-dominated education department... loudly! They didn;t change things to help boys! Oh no.. they re-structured the department so that the average marks ar4e no longer available - even under FOI!

But what is clear is that only a third of uni students are now boys. The most prestigious courses - Law and Medicine are basically 'girls clubs' now.

And 80% of children with ADHD are boys... join the dots!

ADHD is not a disease, it is a resut of 20 years of feminist retribution against all males. TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT!

Innocent boys are suffereing beacuse the education pedagogies and teacher training and curriculum has been written specifically to make school boring and difficult for boys, and dumbed-down to help girls and motivating for girls.

Innocent children, boys, are being crucified at the alter of feminist retribution. And nobody has the funding to find out and fight against it!

Citations available
PartTimeParent@poBox.com

partTimeParent - my wife and I have been married for 20 years. During my boys' early years I was able to scale back my working hours, and I spent a great deal of time with them. I still spend a lot of time with them, particularly at one of our favourite pursuits, bushwalking and camping in Tasmania's wilderness.

Yet my eldest has ADD/ADHD.

Sounds like your cosy little conspiracy theory has some problems.