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"In a recent study, MichiganStateUniversity researchers found that while 7 percent of school-age children suffer from ADHD, many of them may have been misdiagnosed. The study, which examined 12,000 children&amp;#039;s records, measuring the difference in ADHD diagnosis between the youngest and oldest children of kindergarten age, found that the youngest were 60 percent more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than the oldest. The study also found that when students reached the fifth and eighth grades, the youngest were more often prescribed stimulants than their older classmates. &amp;quot;Many ADHD diagnoses may be driven by teachers&amp;#039; perceptions of poor behavior among the youngest children in a kindergarten classroom,&amp;quot; said Todd Elder, assistant professor of economics at MichiganState in Lansing, according to ABCNew.com. &amp;quot;But these &amp;#039;symptoms&amp;#039; may merely reflect emotional or intellectual immaturity among the youngest students.&amp;quot;  Have you ever met a child with ADHD? I don&amp;#039;t mean a kid with a lot of energy who can&amp;#039;t sit still, but a kid who really has ADHD? You may think you have, but the phenomenon, in my experience as someone who spends a lot of time with kids, is lot rarer than the diagnoses would suggest. A child who has ADHD has compulsive behavioral problems, almost as if the machine that is their mind has a glitch in it. And as you try to get them to calm down, you can sense that even they want to. You sense an inner struggle within them, between their desire to calm down and their complete inability to do so. It&amp;#039;s compulsive. Trust me, once you&amp;#039;ve seen it, you&amp;#039;ll know the difference.  Children are energetic, they don&amp;#039;t listen, they have a hard time paying attention. They want to run and jump and sing and yell and fight and play. That is normal behavior for a child, and often the behavior of a smarter, more precocious child who is merely bored. Or, as the MichiganStateUniversity study suggests, they are merely the youngest. What seems like such a crime to me in this is the parents&amp;#039; inability or unwillingness to protect their children from the powers that be. Whether it is their teacher, the school nurse or any other figure of authority, they don&amp;#039;t know your child. YOU know YOUR child.  To let someone impose medication on your child is a grievous failure as a parent.  For those parents who do have a child who really does have ADHD, medication may be the best option for treatment. But don&amp;#039;t let teachers tell you who your child is. You know your child and if he or she is energetic, articulate, flighty and playful, that doesn&amp;#039;t mean he or she has a disorder. And it certainly doesn&amp;#039;t mean you should resort to medication. Putting a small child on medication can seriously disrupt both their mental and physical development. So make sure your child is really suffering before you medicate them, instead of just being hyper during Silent Sustained Reading. For more signs that your child might be struggling, read &amp;quot;Your Child&amp;#039;s Emotional Health.&amp;quot; - Alexandra Gekas, Associate Editor "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/news/a45137/over-1-million-children-misdiagnosed-adhd-2124/>