First of all, thank you to everyone for the very warm welcomes! I'm obviously not very good at responding to posts, as you can see, but I'm trying...
I agree, to a point, with all of your reasoning about ADD/ADHD. My personal belief is that some doctors and parents tend to "jump the gun" and put children on medication whether or not they truly need it. Rather than realizing that children are children, and will be pesky, and annoying, and wonderful all at once, they see misbehavior, and immediately latch onto the idea that thier kids are "ADD". Conversely, however, there are parents (of which my sister is one) who think that medications simply disguise the "real" problem, and solve nothing. My sisters children are all ADD/ADHD, and are on no medication whatsoever. Instead, she has chosen to use the Feingold Diet, which is a diet of no additives, no perservatives, no artificial anything. Ever. Which in and of itself can't be bad, but it requires a great deal of cooking from scratch, and a real hunt and peck method of grocery shopping. I used it slightly with Grey, and discovered some things, but it wasn't something I stuck with. In our situation, I couldn't. Making virtually everything from scratch just wouldn't work for our lifestyle. We now watch Grey's ketchup intake (too much of it "wires" him), and his corn syrup intake (which is a lot harder to keep track of. You wouldn't BELIEVE the amount of foodstuffs that contain corn syrup!
As far as television goes, too much television is never a good thing. But then again, I grew up without one. That being said, we normally have the television on in our home. Either on The Disney Channel, Cartoon Network or Nogin during the day, and The Discovery Channel at night. But we also don't let Grey sit in front of the t.v. all day. He is restricted in his access, normally a few hours a day, then we make him go outside to play.
Okay, I think I'm done with my soapbox. LOL.
ANYway. Grey is off to school today, and on his meds! Yay!
He's excited about 1st grade, and learning. I hope this year is better than last year...
Have a
day, everybody!