ABSTRACT
This paper questions the current practice of diagnosing children who are disruptive, using the label ADHD, and treating them with Ritalin, thus pathologizing and medicalizing common childhood behavior. The suggestion put forward is that these children experience a deficit of appropriate parental attention and love—this is the attention deficit. If it is perceived as “Blaming Parents,” then so be it. Our goal, though, is not to blame, but to assign responsibility and, therefore, point out remedial direction. The authors propose a restructuring of parenting as the appropriate response to disruptive childhood behavior rather than using medication only. Their impression (and perhaps biased but sincere opinion) is that medication is warranted in less than 5% of cases. We include two case illustrations demonstrating these principles.
