I haven't been on this forum in many months but just happened to jump on today and this was the first thread I read. I empathize with the original poster's son. Although I was born in the 50's, I was not diagnosed with ADD until the 90's, and as a result I think my life was much harder than it might have had to be otherwise. I just want to make a few comments that may or may not be helpful.
First, please do not automatically refuse medication just because you may correctly perceive that a lot of kids are being medicated that shouldn't be. The pharmaceutical industry is a big business in America and they won't be happy until everybody is taking about a dozen expensive pills every day, granted, but some of the medications really do work and can make a world of difference. I did NOT get any medications (in part, I believe, because to this day my mother hates the idea of taking any pills) and to many people my life could be considered a train wreck. The biggest problem I had were that I could not stay focused on any task because I would become bored to tears with it. Even if it was an activity I had formerly liked, I would get bored with it in nothing flat. Employment of any kind was hell because I would get bored by the repetitive tasks inherent in any job, usually in about two weeks. I think the longest I ever held any employment was about eight months. You can probably imagine how that impacted my life.
But the second thing is, be aware that some people are diagnosed with ADD when what they really have is Asperger's Syndrome. I think doctors don't even look for this because while it is at least somewhat socially acceptable nowadays for a child to have ADD (unlike when I grew up), Asperger's Syndrome is still associated with "high level autism" and parents just don't want to hear that. However, the thing about Asperger's is that a child can be exceptionally bright intellectually, but have no "social skills." In a way they are very "me" centric, because they simply do not perceive how their actions affect others.
Some adults that you may perceive as being mean individuals actually have this - when they interact with someone (say a store clerk in a store where they felt they were cheated on a purchase) they are simply concerned with protecting their own rights and do not understand that if they yell at the clerk, it may really upset that person. Their feeling is, if they had cheated someone, they would expect to be yelled at (and in fact that is often how they grew up, since their lack of social skills often resulted in them being the kid that was picked on by both other children and even some adults, so they just come to believe that it's okay to treat people badly when you are upset. It is a vicious cycle, their bad behavior causes them to be treated badly, and in turn they come to believe it's socially acceptable to treat people badly, which makes them even more disliked).
But, if someone takes the time to explain to them how they have hurt someone else's feelings they are often very remorseful. They truly didn't know they had hurt the other person!
ADD and Asperger's are not the same thing, although Asperger's is often misdiagnosed as ADD. I mention that because of the comment about how the original poster's child doesn't play well with others. While some ADD children may create conflict in play just to relieve boredom, an Asperger's child will be the kind that will bash another kid over the head with a toy, having no empathy for the pain they other child feels - until it is explained to him! You'd think it should be obvious that such an action would hurt someone else, but the Asperger's child just isn't thinking about that. It's not that he doesn't know it on an intellectual level, but his brain just doesn't make the connection at the time of the event.
Although I was diagnosed late in life with ADD, I suspect that I may really have had Asperger's, which was virtually unknown when I was growing up. I truly believe now that the main reason I was pushed ahead two grades in elementary school was because in both cases it got me out of one teacher's class (who'd had all of me she could take) and into another teacher's class. Unfortunately, placing me into a class where everyone was two years older did not in any way enhance my social development, especially when they started going through puberty and I had no idea what was happening to them.
And the reason I mention all that is to say this: Although I don't recall saying it as a small child, I do know that by the time I was a teenager I frequently lamented the fact that I had ever been born. The world seemed like a cruel, unloving place (still does, for that matter) and it just seemed to me that I would have been far better off, as would many of those I came in contact with, if I had never been born at all. I know, I have seen the movie "It's A Wonderful Life", but somehow I missed out on the "having friends" part and the "happy ending" part.
So if you don't want your child to have the kind of life I did (and trust me, you don't), please make sure he is diagnosed properly (make sure they do an evaluation for Asperger's - it may seem hard to live with, but better to be treating the correct condition than the wrong one) and at least give the medication a chance. If you want to take your child off it during the summer, that's a possible option. Or if you can get him into a school that actually challenges kids' minds and keeps them from being bored to tears, rather than just warehousing them for most of the day, that would be even better (in my opinion, most public schools are horrible places to send a child, especially one that has difficulty with sitting still and feels like he's gonna die if he can't get up and move around).
Just some advice from someone who's been through it. I'd hate to see any other kid go through what I went through, and what I've told you here only scratches the surface.
