I totally agree with Danny on this Sophina. All my kids display the odd symptom or two from time to time. I think it is important to sometimes let them be them and I find it ironic that we encourage our kids to be forward and not be shy and then this---they are and they are labelled adhd. Sometimes there are reasons to be looked at to solve the problem of being easily distracted or the other behaviours associated with adhd. When you think about it kids are just miniature adults...and adults come with different personalities. We all are different and some of us are outgoing and forward and get what we want in life and others hang back. There are actually advantages to ALL the different personalities. I mean some adults go into buildings to save people and that takes tremendous lot of guts and strong willed attitude. Then there are the ones that are able to deal with injuries in a&e. Think about all the different professions as an adult that you could not do and figure. The average class head count per teacher has greatly increased in recent times and with the changes around capital punishment at school, it means now that teachers cannot control kids as they used to be able to. In my day we had a board duster thrown if we breathed in the wrong direction! These days kids are more intelligent at an earlier age and sometimes just not interested in the way the teacher is putting things across. there are any number of reasons why a kid can be pigeon holes as adhd, but ritalyn has been known to cause other mental health problems which you will discover at those URL's that Danny posted. What I would do is to go into the school and sit down and work out a solution around what the best ways are of handling your child when he is displaying adhd symptoms. With Ashley, they devised a reward scheme and they separated him from the other students for a period of time if he displayed undesirable behaviour. This is much better than taking a drug. You can do the same at home too. When our child is doing stuff at school, get the teacher to pay him particularly good attention when he actually achieves something or finishes a project. Also I would go back to the doctor that diagnosed him and want to know why they say he has adhd. You have to cure the cause with these things and look to what it is, whether it is chemical or otherwise and remove it. Giving them ritalyn is just not really treating the real cause and is just like you or I taking a medication to calm us down---with all it's other side effects. Have you been in the class for a day or two observing him from a distance (or daycare if he is younger) to actually observe what he is doing? Just observing like that in itself may answer a few questions about what is causing him to be distracted from work. Let us know how you go. Regards Val