And along came a teacher

One day, out of the blue while I was picking up my son early from school because of something he did or took or hit, his teacher walked outside with us and closed the door behind, leaving the classroom temporarily teacher-free. She looked into my eyes and probably sensing my loss for direction offered some advice in one brief sentence that changed my life completely. She said, "Meds have worked miracles for children with ADD" and with that she kindly smiled and returned to the room like a Genie summoned back to her bottle.
All the short walk to work with my son I could not get those words out of my head. Was there something wrong with my son? Did my son Have ADD? When I got to work I called our pediatrician and booked an appointment. He gave my son a physical and I asked him if he knew anything about ADD. He said he did and he gave me some questinoaires to fill out, have my sons teacher fill out, and then return with them completed at my son's next appointment. There were a over a hundred questions and you answered them with, "never, sometimes, and frequently." I was pretty shocked by the questionaire. There was so many things that my son did that were on those sheets of paper I could hardly believe it. I was even more amazed when the forms were filled out by both myself and my sons teacher. Identical responses to all the questions, and the ones that we responded to positively (almost all of them) they were almost all, "frequently." The funny thing was that during the doctor visits my son was pretty well behaved. He didn't even fidget much. He looked so calm and cute and happy. Probably because of this the doctor then referred us to a psychologist. We visited her a couple of times and she prescribed some ritalin after she was sure my son was ADD. After a couple of visits he would start to climb the walls and it was then I learned that for short periods of time in new environments an ADD person is so stimulated with the new surroundings that they can appear to be having a "honeymoon" from their symptoms. I balked at the ritalin thing, not wanting to drug my son, and asked about alternatives. She suggested exercise, behavior charts and the Feingold Diet. Our journey had just begun.