[tmd]

Osu! Dent you've just hit the nail on the head buddy!

In the UK there has been a huge increase in reported cases of ADHD over the last decade and guess what? They have recently done a study and found over 50% of the kids in a sample of about 500 (just in one London borough by the way!) had been misdiagnosed.

This is a huge issue where schools and parents look to actually have disruptive kids labeled as having a serious mental condition simply because they can't control them - to my mind this is used as an excuse to cover up the fact that we have parents and teaches who have no idea how to discipline children.

The rule of thumb is simple if the kids a pain in the butt up to 90% of the time but fine 10% of the time he's just acting up - 100% of the time and it's a very serious uncontrollable mental condition. ( I am no mental health expert this is just what I picked up from the reports I read)

I was a horror at school but always good for my Mum and Nan - other kids are the reverse - it's called being a kid. One contribution to this was that they only 'discovered' I was left handed at about 8-9 years old so I was struggling to keep up in class and a way to disguise that you can't keep up is to play up. I come form a broken home, was a scruffy, disruptive little urchin and I'm pretty sure if I was a school today they'd have me Ritalin.

I am in now way belittling a very serious mental condition - in fact it angers me that parents and teachers who pull this card out too soon or too often not only wrongly label kids who need other types of support and guidance but also reduce the funding available to help those who need it.