A medicated childhood, when unnecessary, certainly seems to qualify as child abuse to me. Discussing one form of abuse shouldn't diminish another.

It's also very debatable whether the disorders manifested by children are a symptom of their psychiatric health, or of their environments. Many schoolchildren diagnosed with mental disorders become fine when removed from schools. In their cases, sitting in desks six hours a day was the problem - they had energy and needed to expend it.

Let me first refer you to a movie "Uncle Buck," if you haven't seen it then you should, it's quite funny.  I bring it up however for the incident when he visits the school over the little girl.  I'm not saying that all teachers / administrators are such horrible people, but it's that kind of attitude that is drugging our children.

I would claim a small amount of authority on such situations.  I have Torettes, and when diagnosed, the doctors immediately wanted to feed me heavy tranquilizers.  ADHD treatment is little different, it's the 'drug the child into submission so he doesn't bother someone,' mentality.  They would rather drug the kids into submission rather then addressing the real issue, be that the kids at home environment, or just too much energy.

I consider myself lucky, my mother walked out and found a different doctor who with my mothers help treated the condition with an approach involving a minor mood stabilizer to keep the 5 year old from having suicidal thoughts, and training.  Training to recognize a tic as it happens and stop in consciously, training in memory to supplement the total lack of short term memory that comes with the disorder.

The sad part is, both my mother and I have attempted to share my experiences in controling and managing Torettes with other parents of Torettes kids.  They don't listen, too happy to keep druggin their kids and talking about the latest new drug they're trying.  I see little difference in the parents of ADHD kids.

To me, having lived through this, I see ADHD as a stretch, and most certainly heavily over diagnosed.  I see far more potential for success if they were taught to focus that energy into their studies.  For that matter, I've known people with ADHD, my daughters God-Father for one, he never had drugs, but was instead taught to focus it.  Yes his attention when unchecked flicks from here to there, but he retains it as well.  ADHD children taught to use it can learn more, faster, by letting them guide their studies.  That's my 2 bits anyway.