Just looking at the figures for Ritalin - the most common drug for ADHD in the UK- makes you wonder. In a ten year period, the number of cases rose from 4,000 to 360,000. The costs to the National Health Service are a cool 28 million ! But many parents are querying whether this term is being abused and that disobedient behaviour is being labelled as a medical condition.

Experts disagree and there are two camps. In one camp, we have those who say that the actual number of children diagnosed with ADHD is only a fraction of those really suffering from the problem and that the ratio is 1 in every 20 children. In the second camp, we have those experts who say that many children are misdiagnosed and that the problem is exaggerated.

You cannot easily diagnose ADHD and sometimes the diagnosis is interpreting a questionnaire and that is hardly objective. One way of making the distinction is that a child may only misbehave in certain situations or settings. The genuine ADHD child will have problems in all situations. It is a medical condition though and is present since birth.

Symptoms of ADHD are different from child to child. However certain behaviour patterns emerge. One main pattern concerns hyperactivity, the other impulsiveness. The child is constantly restless and cannot concentrate on any one task for more thn two seconds. The inability to calculate risks goes hand in hand with impulsive behaviour. The child will have difficulty in following instructions and will be distracted very easily. He or she will not be very good at taking turn in playing with peers.

A larger and larger number of parents are single and breadwinners. The family structure has changed and the single parent will find it a challenge in bringing up children. Social reasons too play a role in that the children themselves play outside less and less. They are glued to the TV and computers. This leads to more consumption of snacks which contain additives which may cause hyperactivity.

Doctors have come in for criticism also.There are many cases of a misdiagnosis where the child does NOT have ADHD. The pharmaceutical companies are laughing all the way to the bank as they watch their sales of ADHD medications rocket! Side effects of some of these drugs are worrying. A popular drug, Adderall, was recently taken off the market in Canada because there was evidence of heart problems in children with a predisposed heart condition. Research recently published does stress that therapy rather than drugs is much more effective in the long term.

If you are having problems with your children and you may think they have ADHD, the link below will take to a doctor's site whose children were diagnosed with ADHD. he has develioped a drug free method which will help you solve the problem of badly behaved children, whether they have ADHD or not.